Rachel bore the abuse as if it were a penance sent down by God for the sin of being a woman. Her mother had endured the same sort of abuse from her father, with the same resignation. It was just the way things worked.
Then, one day, while Rachel was waiting at the laundromat for Merle’s shirts to dry, a woman approached her. It was the day after a particularly vicious beating and Rachel’s face was bruised and swollen.
“It’s none of my business,” the woman said. She was tall and stately and in her mid-forties. She had a way about her that frightened Rachel, a presence, but her voice was soft and strong. “But when you get some time, you might read this.” She held out a pamphlet to Rachel and Rachel took it. The title was The Wheel of Abuse.
“There are some numbers in the back that you can call. Everything will be okay,” the woman said.
Rachel thought it a strange thing to say. Everything was okay. But the woman had impressed her, so she read the pamphlet.
It talked about human rights and dignity and personal power. It spoke to Rachel about her life in a way that she had never thought possible. The Wheel of Abuse was her life story. How did they know?
Mostly it talked about courage to change. She kept the pamphlet and hid it away in a box of tampons under the bathroom sink. It stayed there for two weeks. Until the morning she ran out of coffee.
She could hear the sound of Merle’s plane disappearing in the distance as she stared into the mirror at the bloody hole where her front teeth used to be. She dug out the pamphlet and called one of the numbers on the back.
Within a half hour two women arrived at the trailer. They packed Rachel’s belongings and drove her to the shelter. Rachel wanted to leave a note for Merle, but the two women insisted that it was not a good idea.
For the next three weeks Rachel lived at the shelter. The women at the shelter cared for her. They gave her food and understanding and affection, and in return they asked only that she acknowledge her own dignity. When she made the call to Merle to tell him where she was, they all stood by her.
Merle promised that it would all change. He missed her. He needed her.
She returned to the trailer.
For a month Merle did not hit her. He did not touch her at all. He didn’t even speak to her.
The women at the shelter had warned her about this type of abuse: the withdrawal of affection. When she brought it up to Merle one evening while he was eating, he threw a plate in her face. Then he proceeded to give her the worst beating of her life. Afterward he locked her outside the trailer for the night.
The trailer was fifteen miles from the nearest neighbor, so Rachel was forced to cower under the front steps to escape the cold. She was not sure she could walk fifteen miles.
In the middle of the night Merle opened the door and shouted, “By the way, I ripped the phone out, so don’t waste your time thinking about it.” He slammed and locked the door.
When the sun broke in the east, Merle reappeared. Rachel had crawled under the trailer, where he could not reach her. He lifted the plastic skirting and shouted to her, “Listen, bitch, you’d better be here when I get home or you’ll get worse.”
Rachel waited in the darkness under the trailer until she heard the biplane roar down the strip. She climbed out and watched the plane climb gradually into the distance. Although it hurt her face, and the cuts on her mouth split open, she couldn’t help smiling. She had discovered her personal power. It lay hidden under the trailer in a five-gallon asphalt can, now half full of aviation grade motor oil.
A policeman came to the trailer that afternoon. His jaw was set with the stoic resolve of a man who knows he has an unpleasant task to perform and is determined to do it, but when he saw Rachel sitting on the steps of the trailer, the color drained from his face and he ran to her. “Are you all right?”
Rachel could not speak. Garbled sounds bubbled from her broken mouth. The policeman drove her to the hospital in his cruiser. Later, after she had been cleaned up and bandaged, the policeman came to her room and told her about the crash.
It seemed that Merle’s biplane lost power after a pass over a field. He was unable to climb fast enough to avoid a high-tension tower and flaming bits of Merle were scattered across a field of budding strawberries. Later, at the funeral, Rachel would comment, “It was how he would have wanted to go.”
A few weeks later a man from the Federal Aviation Administration came around the trailer asking questions. Rachel told him that Merle had beat her, then had stormed out to the plane and taken off. The F.A.A. concluded that Merle, in his anger, had forgotten to check out his plane thoroughly before taking off. No one ever suspected Rachel of draining the oil out of the plane.
16
HOWARD
Howard Phillips, the owner of H.P.’s Cafe, had just settled down in the study of his stone cottage when he looked out the window and saw something moving through the trees.
Howard had spent most of his adult life trying to prove three theories he had formulated in college: one, that before man had walked the Earth there had been a powerful race of intelligent beings who had achieved a high level of civilization, then for some unknown reason had disappeared; two, that the remnants of their civilization still existed underground or under the ocean, and through extreme cunning and guile had escaped detection by man; and three, that they were planning to return as masters of the planet in a very unfriendly way.
What lurked in the woods outside Howard Phillips’s cottage was the first physical evidence of his theories that he had ever encountered. He was at once elated and terrified. Like the child who is delighted by the idea of Santa Claus, then cries and cowers behind its mother when confronted with the corpulent red-suited reality of a department-store Santa, Howard Phillips was not fully prepared for a physical manifestation of what he had long believed extant. He was a scholar, not an adventurer. He preferred his experiences to come secondhand, through books. Howard’s idea of adventure was trying whole wheat toast with his daily ham and eggs instead of the usual white bread.
He stared out the window at the creature moving in the moonlight. It was very much like the creatures he had read about in ancient manuscripts: bipedal like a man, but with long, apelike arms; reptilian. Howard could see scales reflecting in the moonlight. The one inconsistency that bothered him was its size. In the manuscripts, these creatures, who were said to be kept as slaves by the Old Ones, had always been small in stature, no more than a few feet tall. This one was enormous — four, maybe five meters tall.
The creature stopped for moment, then turned slowly and looked directly at Howard’s window. Howard resisted the urge to dive to the floor and so stood staring straight into the eyes of the nightmare.
The creature’s eyes were the size of car headlamps and they glowed a faint orange around slotted, feline pupils. Long, pointed scales lay back against its head, giving the impression of ears. They stood there, staring at each other, the creature and the man, neither moving, until Howard could bear it no longer. He grabbed the curtains and pulled them shut, almost ripping them from the rod in the process. Outside he could hear the sound of laughter.
When he dared to peak through the gap in the curtains, the creature was gone.
Why hadn’t he been more scientific in his observation? Why hadn’t he run for his camera? For all his work at putting together clues from arcane grimoirs to prove the existence of the Old Ones, people had labeled him a crackpot. One photograph would have convinced them. But he had missed his chance. Or had he?
Suddenly it occurred to Howard that the creature had seen him. Why should the Old Ones be so careful not to be discovered for so long, then walk in the moonlight as if out for a Sunday stroll? Perhaps it had not moved on at all but was circling the house to do away with the witness.
First he thought of weapons. He had none in the house. Many of the old books in his library had spells for protection, but he had no idea where to start looking. Besides, the verge of panic was not the ideal mental s
tate in which to do research. He might still be able to bolt to his old Jaguar and escape. Then again, he might bolt into the claws of the creature. All these thoughts passed through his mind in a second.
The phone. He snatched the phone from his desk and dialed. It seemed forever for the dial to spin, but finally there was a ring and a woman’s voice at the other end.
“Nine-one-one, emergency,” she said.
“Yes, I wish to report a lurker in the woods.”
“What is your name, sir?”
“Howard Phillips.”
“And what is the address you are calling from?”
“Five-oh-nine Cambridge Street, in Pine Cove.”
“Are you in any immediate danger?”
“Well, yes, that is why I called.”
“You say you have a prowler. Is he attempting to enter the house?”
“Not yet.”
“You have seen the prowler?”
“Yes, outside my window, in the woods.”
“Can you describe him?”
“He is an abomination of such abysmal hideousness that the mere recollection of this monstrosity perambulating in the dark outside my domicile fills me with the preternatural chill of the charnel house.”
“That would be about how tall?”
Howard paused to think. Obviously the law enforcement system was not prepared to deal with perversions from the transcosmic gulfs of the nethermost craters of the underworld. Yet he needed assistance.
“The fiend stands two meters,” he said.
“Could you see what he was wearing?”
Again Howard considered the truth and rejected it. “Jeans, I believe. And a leather jacket.”
“Could you tell if he was armed?”
“Armed? I should say so. The beast is armed with monstrous claws and a toothed maw of the most villainous predator.”
“Calm down, sir. I am dispatching a unit to your home. Make sure the doors are locked. Stay calm, I’ll stay on the line until the officers arrive.”
“How long will that be?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“Young woman, in twenty minutes I shall be little more than a shredded memory!” Howard hung up the phone.
It had to be escape, then. He took his greatcoat and car keys from the foyer and stood leaning against the front door. Slowly he slipped the lock and grabbed the door handle.
“On three, then,” he said to himself.
“One.” He turned the door handle.
“Two.” He bent, preparing to run.
“Three!” He didn’t move.
“All right, then. Steel yourself, Howard.” He started the count again.
“One.” Perhaps the beast was not outside.
“Two.” If it was a slave creature, it wasn’t dangerous at all.
“Three!” He did not move.
Howard repeated the process of counting, over and over, each time measuring the fear in his heart against the danger that lurked outside. Finally, disgusted with his own cowardliness, he threw the door open, and bolted into the dark.
17
BILLY
Billy Winston was on the final stretch of the nightly audit at the Rooms-R-Us Motel. His fingers danced across the calculator like a spastic Fred Astaire. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could log onto the computer and become Roxanne. Only thirty-seven of the motel’s one hundred rooms were rented tonight, so he was going to finish early. He couldn’t wait. He needed Roxanne’s ego boost after being ditched by The Breeze the night before.
He hit the total button with a flourish, as if he had just played the final note of a piano concerto, then wrote the figure into the ledger and slammed the book.
Billy was alone in the motel. The only sound was the hum of the fluorescent lights. From the windows by his desk he had a 180-degree view of the highway and the parking lot, but there was nothing to see. At that time of night a car or two passed every half hour or so. Just as well. He didn’t like distractions while he was being Roxanne.
Billy pushed a stool up to the front counter behind the computer. He typed in his access code and logged on.
WITKSAS: HOW’S YOUR DOG, SWEETIE? SEND: PNCVCAL
The Rooms-R-Us Motel chain maintained a computer network for making reservations at their motels all over the world. From any location a desk clerk could contact any of the two hundred motels in the chain by simply entering a seven-letter code. Billy had just sent a message to the night auditor in Wichita, Kansas. He started at the green phosphorescent screen, waiting for an answer.
PNCVCAL: ROXANNE! MY DOG IS LONELY. HELP ME, BABY. WITKSAS
Wichita was on line. Billy punched up a reply.
WITKSAS: MAYBE HE NEEDS A LITTLE DISCIPLINE. I COULD SMOTHER HIM IF YOU WANT. SEND: PNCVCAL
There was a pause while Billy waited.
PNCVCAL: YOU WANT TO HOLD HIS POOR FUZZY FACE BETWEEN YOUR MELONS UNTIL HE BEGS? IS THAT IT? WITKSAS
Billy thought for a moment. This was why they loved him. He couldn’t just throw them an answer they could get from any sleazebeast. Roxanne was a goddess.
WITKSAS: YES. AND BEAT HIM SOFTLY ON THE EARS. BAD DOG. BAD DOG. SEND: PNCVCAL
Again Billy waited for the response. A message appeared on the screen.
WHERE ARE YOU DARLING? I MISS YOU. TULSOKL.
It was his lover from Tulsa. Roxanne could handle two or three at once, but she wasn’t in the mood for it right now. She was feeling a little crampy. Billy adjusted his crotch, his panties were riding up a bit. He typed two messages.
WITKSAS: GO PET YOUR DOGGIE FOR A WHILE. AUNTIE ROXANNE WILL CHECK ON YOU IN A WHILE. SEND: PNCVCAL
TULSOKL: TOOK AN EVENING OFF TO SHOP FOR SOMETHING LACY TO WEAR FOR YOU. I HOPE YOU DON’T FIND IT TOO SHOCKING. SEND: PNCVCAL
While he was waiting for a response from Oklahoma, Billy dug into his gym bag for his red high heels. He liked to hook the stiletto heels into the rungs of the stool while he talked to his lovers. When he glanced up, he thought he saw something moving out in the parking lot. Probably just a guest getting something from the car.
PNCVCAL: YOU SWEET LITTLE THING, YOU COULD NEVER SHOCK ME. TELL ME WHAT YOU BOUGHT. TULSOKL
Billy started to type in a modest description of a lace teddy he had seen in a catalog.
To the guy in Tulsa, Roxanne was a shy little flower; to Wichita she was a dominatrix. The desk clerk in Seattle saw her as a leather-clad biker chick. The old man in Arizona thought she was a struggling single mother of two, barely making it on a desk clerk’s salary. He always wanted to send her money. There were ten of them in all. Roxanne gave them what they needed. They loved her.
Billy heard the double doors of the lobby open, but he did not look up. He finished typing his message and pressed the SEND button. “Can I help you,” he said mechanically, still not looking up.
“You betcha,” a voice said. Two huge reptilian hands clacked down on the counter about four feet on each side of Billy. He looked up into the open mouth of the demon coming at his face. Billy pushed back from the keyboard. His heel caught in the rung of the stool and he went over backward as the giant maw snapped shut above him. Billy let loose a long, sirenlike scream and began scrambling on his hands and knees behind the counter toward the back office. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the demon crawling over the counter after him.
Once in the office, Billy leapt to his feet and slammed the door. As he turned to run out the back door, he heard the door fly open and slam against the wall.
The back door of the office led into a long corridor of rooms. Billy pounded on the doors as he passed. No one opened a door, but there were angry shouts from inside the rooms.
Billy turned and saw the demon filling the far end of the corridor. It was in a crouch, moving down the corridor on all fours, crawling awkward and batlike in the confined space. Billy dug in his pocket for his pass key, found it, and ran down the hallway and around the corner. Making the corner, he twisted his ankle. White pain shot up his leg
, and he cried out. He limped to the closest door. The images of women in horror movies who twisted their ankles and feebly fell into the clutches of the monster raced through his head. Damn high heels.
He fumbled the key into the lock while looking back down the hallway. The door opened and Billy fell into the room just as the monster rounded the corner behind him.
He kicked the stiletto heel off his good foot, vaulted up and hopped across the empty room to the sliding glass door. The safety bar was set. He fell to his knees and began clawing at it. The only light in the room was coming from the hallway, and suddenly that was eclipsed. The monster was working its way through the doorway.
“What the fuck are you!” Billy screamed.
The monster stopped just inside the room. Even crouching over, its shoulders hit the ceiling. Billy cowered by the sliding door, still clawing under the curtains at the safety bar. The monster looked around the room, its huge head turning back and forth like a searchlight. To Billy’s amazement, it reached around and turned on the lights. It seemed to be studying the bed.
“Does that have Magic Fingers?” it said.
“What!” Billy said. It came out a scream.
“That bed has Magic Fingers, right?”
Billy pulled the safety bar loose and hurled it at the monster. The heavy steel bar hit the monster in the face and rattled to the floor. The monster showed no reaction. Billy reached for the latch on the door and started to pull it open.
The monster scuttled forward, reached over Billy’s head, and pushed the door shut with one clawed finger. Billy yanked on the door but it was held fast. He collapsed under the monster with a long, agonizing wail.
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