Lee Goldberg

Ring of Knives

The Dead Man 02

CHAPTER ONE

"Hell of a day, ain't it?"

"You said it." Matt stared out the windshield, his fingers white-knuckling his rucksack. Fog choked the winding road so badly that the tow truck seemed to be plowing through a sea of milk. The glare from the truck's headlights revealed nothing ahead but the broken flash of yellow median lines, which slipped into view just a second before being eaten up by the truck. Occasionally the jagged shadows of black pines faded into view along the roadside, only to drown, seconds later, in the milk.

The driver shook his head, snorted. "Only a fool'd be out on a day like this."

Matt decided to let that one pass.

"How long you had that Ranger?"

Matt told him he'd had the old Ford for three weeks. That he'd got it off a part-time cop in Galesburg in exchange for building an addition onto his porch.

"Ford," the driver snorted. "Fix Or Repair Daily. Ain't that the truth?"

Matt said he guessed it was, wishing to God he'd been picked up by a mute. He stole a glance at the driver. The guy hadn't gotten any better looking since Matt first laid eyes on him: beer-bellied, as bald as Mr. Clean, wearing a black Harley T, black "Don't Tread on Me" ball cap, and black Terminator wraparound shades.

And as chatty as fuck. Matt had been in the truck only twenty minutes, and already he'd had to listen to a detailed explanation of exactly how his breakdown had inconvenienced the driver socially ("had to cancel on my buds' night out"), culturally ("sure was lookin' forward to that UF match"), and reproductively ("no pussy tonight, either, I guess").

Not that Matt had had a choice: as he'd driven up the winding road, his mind occupied with making his noon interview, the fog had parted before him to reveal a huge white stag standing in the road, complete with a fifteen-point rack and black, startled eyes.

He'd slammed on the brakes, one-eightied on the wet asphalt, thumped backward into a ditch. When he stepped out, shaking, the stag was gone. He'd wondered if it'd even been there at all. Luckily, he was unhurt, his cell phone still had reception, and his backpack, tool kit, and grandfather's ax, his only remaining possessions from his old life, were safe in the trunk and undamaged.

That is, he thought he'd been lucky, until he'd had to wait two hours for a tow truck, only to learn that its cab had no heat ("cold as a witch's tit, ain't it?") and no radio ("Rush was gettin' too liberal for me"), and was filled with the sickly sweet smoke of raspberry-flavored cigarillos ("got a sweet tooth, and I'm tryin' to lose weight"). Matt had stared at the guy in amazement as the driver lit up his first. Now that he was on his fourth, Matt just kept his eyes on the road ahead, his hands in his lap, and his lips clamped tight, trying not to breathe. But with each passing minute the cab filled with a fruity funk that made him want to barf. He'd never been carsick before, but he had a feeling that his thirty-year lucky streak was about to end.

Still, the guy had one thing going for him: he didn't seem to recognize Matt, and that was a relief. Matt had no desire to explain how it was that he had survived being frozen for three months beneath an avalanche. It had been all over the papers for a while, both his miraculous recovery and his subsequent disappearance. Now no one knew where he was, or where he was headed. Matt wanted to keep it that way. He'd spent a season on ice and had lost a part of himself. But he'd gained something, too-the ability to detect hidden evil, hidden madness. It manifested in the form of rot, which only he could see. A supermodel might look like a leper to Matt. Not an easy thing to explain to the average tow-truck driver, and Matt wasn't eager to try.

He looked the driver over again. No festering sores, exactly (his wrists did look swollen and purple-but then again, he was a fatty). And no scent of decaying flesh (although who could tell beneath the gaggingly sweet fumigation of those cigarillos?). Anyway, it was hard to tell. Matt didn't understand the scope of his new powers, or if they even were powers, and not some brain-damaged delusion from sleeping with the mastodons. Matt had no clue. But someone would. And for the first time, Matt had an idea where he could find that someone.

"So where'd you say you was goin'?"

Matt glanced at the driver warily, but the black wraparound shades gave nothing away. "I've got an appointment at the Carthage MHC in Westland County," he said. "If you don't mind dropping me off, I'd appreciate it. I'll call a cab later."

"Well, we passed the Westland County line ten minutes ago. But-Carthage?" The driver let out a low whistle. "Ain't that the nuthouse?"

"Mental Health Center, I think they call it."

"Hell, they can call it the Ham Sandwich for all I care. But a nuthouse is a nuthouse-am I right?"

"Guess so." Matt busied himself by opening his rucksack, pulling out a folder. Maybe if he looked like he had work to do, the guy would stop jabbering.

"That's just a mile or two away. But hell, you don't wanna go there. Lemme take you into town first. I'll take you all the way up to Tacoma, you want. I'm missin' the UF match, but I still got me a big night planned."

"No, thanks. Like I said, I got this interview today. It was a lot of trouble setting it up."

"Huh." The swollen fingers drummed the steering wheel. "Got some kinda business there, do ya?" The driver glanced over at Matt's reflection in the rearview mirror. "Or are ya checkin' yourself in?" He chuckled at his own joke and slapped the dash.

"Neither. Just gotta talk to someone."

"Who's the someone?"

Jesus, Matt thought, this guy just doesn't fucking quit. "His name's Jesse Weston."

"You and he kin or somethin'?"

"Or something." Matt opened the folder. It contained three sheets of paper. Each had a page number in the bottom left or right-hand corner, going from 997 to 1002. Each had a header at the top that read Encyclopedia of Psychopathology. And each had a ragged edge where he'd ripped it out of a book after being reminded by a snotty librarian that reference materials couldn't be checked out.

Matt stared at the face on the first sheet of paper.

Profile: JW

37-Year-Old White Male

Diagnosis: dysomophobia; paranoia; delusion (persecutory and grandiose); dysthymia; narcissism; schizophrenia

Born of middle-class parents, JW was happily married and enjoyed an active lifestyle until experiencing an accident while spelunking. A companion of his was killed in a fall, and JW was trapped on a ledge for six days, living on bats and groundwater until rescued. Though having only superficial injuries, he subsequently suffered a breakdown, exhibiting paranoid-type schizophrenic disorder in accordance with the criteria of the DSM-III-R.

A bug landed on the page: a beetle with black, metallic wings. Matt flicked it away and kept reading.

Soon after his ordeal, JW began to claim that he could see lesions on individuals which were invisible to others, and that these lesions presaged violent incidents. He furthermore claimed that he was visited by a personage he called Rotting Jack, who taunted him, infected others with lesions, and was always accompanied by a distinct odor of decomposing flesh. Eventually, his symptoms regularly merited six points on the hallucination scale and thirteen on the psychosis index of the BPRS. JW showed early improvement with a combined regime of cognitive behavioral therapy, Flupenthixol, and Prolixin, but his condition began to deteriorate into hyperkinetic states after regular usage. He is currently residing at a facility in Washington State under the care of Dr. John Dindren.

"Got shifty eyes, don't he?"

Matt looked up. The driver's wraparounds had turned from the road, were focused on the page in his hand.

Matt wasn't sure if the driver was talking about JW, who did have a juvie squint, or Dr. Dindren, who looked nearsighted despite wearing Coke-bottle-thick goggles. He closed the folder. "I didn't notice."

"Didn't-?" The driver snorted. "Oh, you got to notice the eyes. Always take note a' the eyes."

"Huh. And why's that?"

"Well, hell, boy, everyone knows that the eyes"-he peeled off his sunglasses-"they're the windows to the soul."

Matt flattened against the far door with a sharp, harsh intake of breath. His heart pounded wildly.

The driver had no eyes.

None.

Just sockets.

And they were seething with black masses of carrion beetles.

Matt bit back a yell of fear. A hard mass of panic formed at the base of his throat, and he forced himself to look away from the driver's face before he upchucked into his lap.

"Notice anything unusual about my peepers?"

Matt swallowed. "Ah… Such as…?"

"Well, dincha notice? One's blue and one's brown! Piebald, they call it. Like a husky dog!"

Trying to get a grip. "Or David Bowie."

"Who?"

"Never mind." Matt took a slow, deep breath. Then another. Forced his head to turn in the driver's direction. His sockets were still aswarm with twin spirals of thorax, mandible, and iridescent black wings.

Matt cleared his throat. Thought carefully back through the last few minutes' conversation. Made a connection. Ask him, he thought. Can't hurt to ask.

"So…" Matt's voice sounded thin and strained. "You said you were going to Tacoma tonight. What's in Tacoma?"

A strange smile played on the driver's lips, like he'd tasted something bitter-and liked it. "Oh, my ex is havin' a birthday party. She don't know I'm comin'. Thought I'd surprise her, meet the new beau."

Matt's nausea got a little worse. "Crash it, huh?"

"'S right. Got a gift for her that she's never gonna forget." More beetles pulsed through the twin holes in his skull. Some pattered into his lap.

Matt nearly lost his lunch. And not just because of the beetles. "What… kind of gift?"

"The kind that keeps on givin'." The driver turned his beetles towards Matt. Several of them took flight, spanning the distance between them. Matt swatted them away.

The driver grinned. "Sure you don't wanna come? Might see somethin' worth puttin' on YouTube."

Or Faces of Death XII, Matt thought. "Uh, no. But thanks. I see the sign up ahead for Carthage MHC. You can just drop me off right there. Like I said, I'll call a cab later, come by and pick up the Ford."

"Suit yourself. But you're missin' out. Gonna be a night to remember."

# # # # # #

As soon as he was out and the truck pulled away, Matt noted the license plate and pulled out his cell phone. With shaking hands he called the Tacoma police and left an anonymous tip. Nut-job tow-truck driver coming to wreak havoc on local divorcée. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Afterwards he felt better.

Maybe this is the reason I was given this gift, he thought. Not just to get caught up in carnage, but to prevent it. To head off bad things before they come to pass. To make a difference in people's lives for the better.

He liked the idea. It made him feel less like a delusional homeless man and more like a wandering knight. To save damsels in distress? He could get used to that gig.

And before he'd gone a hundred yards, he saw another chance to do just that.

# # # # # #

Halfway up the Carthage Mental Health Center's gravel driveway was a beat-up Toyota Corolla that must have rolled off the assembly line when Nancy Reagan's views on drug use were big news. Its hazards were blinking. As he got closer, he noticed that one wheel was flat.

Matt walked up to the car.

"Hey there," he said, raising a hand in greeting.

The driver turned, startled. She was a heavyset black woman with shiny gold highlights in her hair. And mouth.

"See you got a flat, ma'am?" He put his hand on the car roof, gave a reassuring smile. "I can help you with that, if you want."

"Get away from me, ya white-power, serial-killer ma'fuckah!"

Matt froze. "Hey, really, I just thought-"

"Thought you could rape my shit is what you thought, ma'fuckah." She reached in her purse and pulled out what looked to be a toy: a bright yellow plastic handgun. She jabbed it towards him. "But I'm 'a Tase your shit an' you come one step closer, so back the fuck off."

He looked at it closely. Yep, it was indeed a Taser. Took a step back. A big one. "Fine. No problem. I'm gone." He turned away.

"Damn right you is."

He started to jog up the hill. But he could still hear her.

"… up in my goddamn business…"

He sped up. But some voices carry better than others.

"… three hundred twenty-five dollars for this shit, ma'fuckah…"

Much better.

"… Tase your white ass…"

# # # # # #

Carthage Mental Health Center was a disappointment. Matt was half hoping for an ivy-covered, crumbling gothic ruin crowned with gargoyles and ravens. A set from a Tim Burton movie-that's how he'd imagined it. Instead, the Admin Building butting up against the circular driveway was pure sixties save-a-buck state construction: single-story cinder block with slit windows, pealing paint, and a weedy "serenity garden" out front that consisted mostly of crabgrass and poison ivy.

The inside wasn't much better. The floor looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in weeks. One of the fluorescent overheads flickered. A row of empty plastic chairs faced a central desk, behind which a clerk was staring slack-jawed at her phone.

"Hi there."

She kept staring at the phone, so he said it two more times.

Finally she looked up, irritated. "What?"

"My name is Matt. I called ahead?" No response. "I'm here for a visit with a resident by the name of Jesse Weston."

The clerk turned her attention back to her phone and yelled out a series of syllables. It was either a name he'd never heard before, or she was speaking in tongues.

"What's going on here?"

A pale, toad-faced wreck came out. She appeared to be wearing a gray tent. In one hand she had a clipboard, and in the other, amazingly, a cigarette.

"This guy wanna see Jesse," the clerk said, still not looking up from her phone.

Toad-Face's astonishingly wide mouth creased downward at the edges, and a mirror image of the long furrow formed on her forehead. "Oh yeah? Well, you can't. He's gone."

"Gone?" Matt wasn't sure he'd heard correctly.

"Gone. As in, Not Here Anymore. He transferred out." She turned away, started to leave.

Matt couldn't believe what he was hearing. "But I set up this meeting three weeks ago with the facility administrator. He promised me an opportunity to meet with Jesse Weston!"

"Sorry." She waved her cigarette over her shoulder at him.

"Well, where's he been transferred to?"

"Confidential."

Matt felt his face flush with anger. Behind him he heard the front door bang open. The manager whipped her pasty face around to see who it was. Matt stepped deliberately into her line of vision.

"Ma'am, I came all this way to see Jesse Weston. It's a matter of life and death. If he's gone, then I at least need to talk to whatever doctor was treating him: Dr… Ah…" He remembered the Coke-bottle goggles but not the name.

Toad-Face and the clerk shared a quick look. "Dr. Dindren," Toad-Face said-with far too much pleasure, Matt thought-"doesn't work here anymore. Sorry." Before Matt could respond, she stepped around the desk, eyes narrowed, and crossed her arms confrontationally.

"Maloria," she said, "how nice of you to drop by-half an hour late."

Matt turned. Behind him, panting, damp with fog and perspiration, was the big woman who'd chased him away from her Corolla.

"Oh, no, you don't, Hirotachi." The big woman rolled her eyes and shoved the pink palm of her hand towards the manager. "Talk to the white girl, 'cause the black girl ain't listenin'."

"Don't you use that tone of voice with me. Your shift starts at three!"

Another eye roll. "I… had… a flat, arright?"

Hirotachi (apparently the clerk had not been speaking in tongues) put her hands on her hips. "For thirty minutes you had a flat? Without calling? Why should I believe that?"

"Because it's true," Matt said.

Both Hirotachi and Maloria looked at him in surprise.

"I can vouch for her. She got a flat back there. I told her not to call, said I'd fix the flat. But I couldn't get the tire off, took forever trying. So it's all my fault, not hers."

Hirotachi opened her vast, amphibian maw, then closed it. She sucked in her thin lips and glared at him.

"See?" Maloria crowed. "What I tell you, bitch?"

"Don't you dare disrespect me," Hirotachi snarled.

"Oh, shut the fuck up," Maloria said, grabbing the clipboard out of her hand and signing in. "Talk to my union rep, you don't like it."

"Oh, I will, and I'll write it up in a report, too. But in the meantime, you might as well know you're being assigned to do janitorial in Module One."

Maloria put her fat hands on her mythological hips. "That ain't my job."

"It is now. Roger called off. Stay here; I'll get you a bucket." She spat out this last word and stormed into a back hallway, slamming the door behind her as she went.

Maloria turned to Matt immediately, cackling, holding out her fist.

"Dag, was I wrong about you. You white, but you right! Give some love, boy."

Matt executed the most Caucasian fist bump in history.

"Hope I haven't gotten you into more trouble," he said.

"Nah, nah, she just trippin' 'cause her man a freak. Hey, look…" She stepped in close, pulled Matt away from the desk clerk, and lowered her voice. "You mean what you said, about it bein' a matter of life and death-you meeting with Dr. Dindren?"

"Yeah, I did. And it is."

She pursed her full lips, gave a curt nod. "Meet me around back in twenty minutes; I'll take you to him."

Matt stared at her. "But Hirotachi said he isn't here anymore."

Maloria snorted. "You got to listen better, boy. She say he don't work here no more, and he don't."

"But then why would he be…"

She raised an eyebrow.

Suddenly, he got it. "Oh my God."

"That's right." Her gold tooth glittered. "He a resident now."

CHAPTER TWO

Twenty minutes later, as instructed, Matt stepped out of the fog to meet Maloria at the Admin Building's back loading dock. She gave him a mop, a bucket, and a maroon knit golf shirt with "Carthage Janitorial" embroidered on the chest, below a gold plastic name tag that said "Sid."

"So if I've got this, what's Sid wearing?" Matt asked, unbuttoning his flannel shirt and tying it around his waist.

"Orange fuckin' jumpsuit is what that cracker got on, after the shit he played with that retarded girl we got sent on accident last month." She shook her gold streak ruefully. "This place gone to hell is what, and that's no joke. First they cut the fundin' to nothin', then they lay off, then they start usin' part-timers. But with shit pay, shit hours, no benefits, an' no supervision, who you gonna get? Buncha kiddie-porn-watchin', methamphetamine-cookin', probation-dodgin', dead-beat, crackhead, stripper-for-a-girlfriend, no-count ma'fuckahs, is what."

"And you can work with that?"

"Fuck no. Three weeks from now? I'll be onna South Side of Chicago, with my moms and sister. That's where I'm from. When I make forty in April, I'm 'a be with my moms for sure. 'Til then, I collect my pay, and any one of them fuckheads tries somethin'?" She patted her huge purse.

"You'll Tase their ass."

"Damn straight. Paid three hundred twenty-five dollars for this shit. Now, come on, follow me."

He had the shirt on now. Together they took the mops and buckets and began walking across a quad towards the four modules out back.

"Arright, listen up. Way it's gonna work is, you keep your mouth shut and stay with me. We got to clean Module One. People ask, just say you fillin' in as a swing. Dr. Dindren's in Module Two. Hirotachi in charge of that module, but she always take a meal break around five o'clock. That's when I'll take you over there, an' you can talk to your friend."

"Sounds good."

"Yeah, but hear this: I'm only workin' a half shift today, so at seven I got to leave. You stay longer than that, you on your own."

"Understood. If I'm still here after that, I'll let myself out."

"Yeah, but night shift come on at eleven. You got to be gone by then."

"Sure, I'll do my best, so long as I finish up with Dindren by-"

He looked down. She had grabbed his arm. And not gently.

"Listen what I tell you, boy. You got to be gone by shift change. Got to." Her eyes were wide, dark, and deep. Dead serious. "Them fucked-up niggahs workin' midnights? They don't play. I'm tellin' you now: you stay after eleven, I can't account for your ass. Arright?"

"Arright."

They crossed the rest of the quad together in silence. Then she dug out a ring of keys and fit one into the door of the nearest building.

A click.

Together they stepped into Module One.

Matt didn't know what exactly he'd expected, but it wasn't this.

He was in a central living area, set up with a worn sectional couch facing an old TV that was deeper than it was wide. The room had avocado shag carpeting and card tables set up in the corners. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. Butts littered the carpet, along with hundreds of puzzle pieces, soft drink cans, deflated balloons, napkins, craft junk, pieces of popcorn, and scattered pills. A radio in the corner was playing top forty, and the vintage TV was turned to Maury Povich, with the volume cranked. Matt saw three therapy aides, all wearing the same maroon golf shirt. Two were smoking and watching TV, talking back to the screen. The third, deafened with earbuds, was texting.

And then there were the residents: six of them. An older woman was rocking back and forth on her chair, eyes closed, making a loud quacking noise. A laughing bald guy was drawing mazes on a wall in permanent marker. Two flabby men in sweatpants were arguing over a teddy bear at the top of their lungs. A way-too-skinny blond teenage girl was sobbing in a corner. And then, against the far wall, standing on a table, was a man built like an NFL linebacker. He couldn't have weighed less than three hundred pounds. He had a crew cut, deeply crossed eyes, and a protruding lower jaw. He stood on the table ramrod straight, unmoving, unblinking, his huge arms engulfed in yellow and red flame tattoos. Dark-complected, he wore a shirt that said "Ojibwe Pride". He stared straight ahead in cross-eyed, jut-jawed silence.

Apart from him, it was utter chaos.

"Jesus Christ," Matt said, and got an elbow in the ribs from Maloria. Matt's skin crawled as he looked around. He had no problem being around disabled people. But the filth of the room, the deafening wall of noise, the half dozen types of madness on display, and the fact that the residents were going untreated-totally ignored by the therapy aides, who clearly didn't give a shit-gave him a twist in his gut. The place felt wrong. Sick.

Maloria hissed at him to start working, so he pulled a garbage bag off his rolling yellow bucket and began picking at the carpet of trash. He watched as Maloria took the stuffed animal from the fighting men, barked at the texting aide to "take off those ma'fuckin' earbuds," turned down the TV, and took the weeping teen by her bony arm and let her through an entryway to the left that led to a corridor marked "Women's Dorm." On the right was a corridor leading to the men's.

But as soon as she was gone, the yelled-at aide put the earbuds back in, and another cranked the volume on Maury back up. The two flabby men started to argue over a Rubik's Cube. The quacking woman kept quacking. The maze man kept laughing. And the massive, piranha-jawed Ojibwe kept standing on the table in tattooed, cross-eyed silence.

"Jesus Christ," Matt said again, and reached for more trash.

# # # # # #

His two hours in Module One passed with excruciating slowness, mainly because nothing changed but the TV talk shows. While wiping crusted food off the tables, Matt noticed a weekly calendar pinned to a bulletin board. It stated that in this module, the two hours between three and five o'clock should be spent on cooperative games, adaptive therapy, and cognitive exercises. Instead, it was filled with gangster rap and the televised blare of thrown chairs, insults, and skeezy wife-swapping discussions.

Nice to see our tax dollars at work, Matt thought.

In all that time, the Ojibwe never moved a muscle.

# # # # # #

By five o'clock, Matt had a throbbing headache, and his nerves felt raw and jangly. He was just picking up a final cigarette butt when he noticed movement to his left.

"Excuse me? Sir?"

He turned his head. The too-skinny teen was standing tentatively in the entryway to the women's dorm, her arms crossed tightly over her flat chest. Her hair was a pixieish shock of blond so pale that it was almost white, and her kohled eyes were smudged with tears.

"Sir," she said in a quavering voice, "have you seen Maloria?"

"I thought she was back with you," Matt said.

"She was, but now…" The girl looked nervously at the aides behind him, then stepped in closer, whispering. "Look, you seem like an okay guy, all right? I need… I need some help. I don't belong here."

"Sure," Matt said, feeling bad for the kid. "Sure."

"No, really. These people are all crazy! But I'm not. My folks put me here because they couldn't deal with my wild talents."

"Your…"

"Wild talents. Like, I can move things with thoughts? And disrupt electrical systems."

"Okay," Matt said.

"I can." The girl's eyes hardened stubbornly. She looked past him. "See that glass of water? On the table? Watch this…" She lowered her chin and glared at it.

Matt turned to watch the glass. Having seen an aide slowly sipping from it, he strongly doubted that it held water. But he watched it do nothing for a few seconds before looking back at the girl.

Her chin was trembling, her eyes bright with tears. "It works better on electrical systems," she said.

"Sure," Matt said. "Look, why don't you find Maloria?"

"That's what I was trying to do, but…" The girl's voice dried up, and her eyes got big. Matt turned to see the earbudded aide stand up suddenly, glance around with hooded eyes, then saunter towards the girl, thumbs hooked into the front of his pants.

Immediately the girl spun away-right into Maloria, who'd come up behind her.

Seeing Maloria, the aide did an about-face, scratched the back of his head casually, and flopped back onto the couch.

With a parting glare, Maloria took the girl back to the dorm.

Matt massaged the bridge of his nose. His headache was getting worse.

Maloria returned a minute later, still staring down the aide, who pretended not to notice. She crossed to Matt, tapped him on the shoulder. "C'mon, now. I take you to Dindren."

He gathered his bucket and mop and followed her outside and across the quad towards the Admin Building.

"I thought we were going to Module Two."

"We are, but first we gotta stop in the Control Room, make sure that Hirotachi's on break."

"Control Room…?"

"You know-like where the monitors at for all the surveillance cameras, right? Control Room."

"Oh. Right." Matt hadn't even noticed the cameras. He changed the topic. "I talked a minute to that girl," he said, "the blonde…"

"Yeah, Annica. She crazy as the rest. Once I take you to Control, I gotta go back quick, else the aides'll be fuckin' with her."

"I got that. But what happens to her when you leave and the night shift takes over?"

"That ain't my problem."

# # # # # #

To get into Admin, Maloria led him through a back door that led to the facility's kitchen.

"All kinda nasty get cooked up in here," Maloria said as Matt looked around.

The kitchen had clearly seen better days. In his brief transit, Matt counted at least four thumb-sized roaches exploring the stove and cabinets. He also noticed that while there was no smoke alarm in sight, the kitchen was well equipped with cutlery: four large wooden grids held dozens of serrated steak knives and cleavers, as well as two huge butcher's knives that were at least twelve inches long.

What the hell? Matt didn't know much about mental health, but he doubted that the residents were getting sirloin every night. So why was the kitchen outfitted like an Outback Steakhouse?

Even weirder, from a ceiling rack hung a row of headless spatulas and meat forks with missing tines, as well as an unconnected extension cord and an odd set of cuffs.

Curious, Matt reached out and touched the cuffs as he walked by. They seemed to be wooden wrist braces, five inches thick, covered in leather buckles. Each one had a deep groove cut into the wood, but their purpose wasn't clear.

"What're these?" he asked Maloria.

"Unless you the Board of Health," she said, not looking back, "keep ya damn hands to yourself."

With that, she shoved through two swinging double doors, leading Matt out of the kitchen and into a large hallway. "Hold on." Maloria stopped suddenly, peering ahead at a half-open door marked "Control." "Gotta see if someone's in there, first. Shouldn't be, since it's my post tonight, but you never know where them skanks is hookin' up." She took him by the elbow. "So here: you go clean the FA's office while I find out what up." And she hurriedly pushed Matt through a door marked "Facility Administrator."

It was an office that probably counted as fancy in this place: a window looking out onto the quad, a heavy oak desk (with a blotter, no less), a leather chair, a brass lamp, some cherry bookshelves full of books on mental health and team leadership techniques.

That is, it would have looked fancy if the chair hadn't been knocked over and papers strewn all over the floor. Behind the chair, a large cork bulletin board covered in lists and photographs had been knocked off its left screw and hung diagonally from the right.

Apparently, the only things that hadn't been trashed were three tribal masks hung on the wall opposite the door. They looked Ojibwe to Matt. Two were deer masks and had long, tapering snouts and antlers. The third was a triangle of tanned leather, with a single eye slit in the center, and at the bottom tip, a serrated cluster of shark's teeth. The mask gave Matt a queasy feeling. He forced himself to look away from it, to focus on the surrounding mess.

Matt gathered up a handful of papers and laid them on the desk. Under the papers were pieces of shattered glass and a broken picture frame. He picked that up, too. In it was a photo of a smiling, bookish man with bifocals and a silver beard, flanked on either side by two girls of about ten and thirteen, giving bracey smiles.

Matt dropped the broken glass into a garbage bag and set the picture on the stacked papers he'd put on the desk-then took it off again. The top sheet had caught his eye. He picked it up, held it under the light.

It was a form marked Incident Report. It had been dated five days earlier in bright blue ink, and under Reporter a hand had written in hasty, scrawled cursive, Thomas Sterns, FA. Under Incident, it said

At approximately 12:15 AM on March 1, 2011, this writer was working late in preparation for the annual audit when he became aware of a loud commotion outside. Looking through the window in his office, he saw what seemed to be three therapy aides roughly escorting an unidentified, protesting individual past the quad towards the meditation path. This writer immediately proceeded to the back entrance, only to find it blocked by Therapy Aides Holtz and Pfister, who-in this writer's view-intentionally delayed his exit by pretending to be "fixing" the door, and repeatedly demonstrated insubordination by refusing to let him pass. After several minutes of argument, this writer was finally allowed to go outside, whereupon he proceeded to the meditation path but found no trace of the individuals previously sighted.

No clarification was gained from talking to the lead workers, one of whom (Aide II Mendez) this writer found sleeping. It should be mentioned that Module One was in complete disarray, and the common room of Module Two was filled with the stench of decomposing meat, although Aide II Hirotashi insisted that there was no spoiled food in the refrigerator.

This writer believes that poor morale, lack of supervision, total absence of accountability, along with the unexplained departure of Dr. Kingsley and Head Nurse Reich, have had a deleterious effect upon the operations of this facility to the point where the residents are actually becoming endangered. This writer is requesting that the instant matter be fully investigated, and further recommends that Aides Holtz and Pfister be disciplined for insubo

The report left off there, halfway down the page. A four-inch line of blue ink extended from the o in insubordination to the edge of the page.

Matt reread it from the beginning, and then set it carefully down on the desk, beneath the broken picture frame.

Moving behind the desk, Matt righted the tipped-over leather chair. He got ahold of the fallen end of the cork bulletin board and slid it up the wall to reattach the left-hand hook to its screw.

Again, he stopped.

Stared.

Revealed on the drywall behind the hanging board was a black smear. It was roughly the shape of the Nike swoosh, and the thin end tapered off into a long spatter. The thick end had several thin silver strands embedded in it. Matt leaned closer, pinched one, pulled it free of the black crust. Held it up to the light.

A silver hair.

Matt looked back to the photo on the desk. The smiling, bookish graybeard with his two bracey daughters.

What the hell is going on here?

CHAPTER THREE

"C'mon, you!"

Matt jumped about a foot when Maloria stuck her head in the doorway and waved him out. He followed her quickly.

"So where's the FA nowadays?" Matt asked as he trailed her down the hall.

"Quit like the rest of 'em, I guess. Jus' get fed up an' don't come back, like I'm 'a 'bout to do in three weeks, when I make forty."

"But did he, like, give a resignation letter, or farewell speech, or anything?"

She snorted. "Nah, he just never come back one day, no call, no nothin'. Just like them two." She gestured towards two framed photos on the wall. One said "Dr. Kingsley-Chief Health Officer," and showed a dignified black man with a white mustache. The other said "RN Janice Reich-Nurse Manager," and showed a stressed-looking woman in her fifties with short blond hair.

Matt couldn't believe what he had just heard. "Wait a minute. You're saying all three have just vanished?"

"Mm-hmm."

"But… someone's got to be in charge. Hasn't someone been sent down to replace them by the… the head office in Olympia or wherever?"

Again she snorted. "What with two furloughs a week, we can't get no one to pick up the goddamn phone, last I hear."

"You've got to be kidding! A place like this can't run itself-"

She shushed him and held up a finger, then eased past an open door, and he followed.

"See?" she said. "Control Room, like I said."

It looked more like a file room to Matt, with two walls covered with metal cabinets labeled "Videotapes" and "Treatment Plans / Overflow." But the other two walls were braced by a console that had a dozen palm-sized monitors that showed different, slightly distorted, black-and-white views of the Admin Building's entryway, the quad, and the modules' common rooms, dorms, isolation cells, and hallways. The room also had an old television/VCR set on a metal rolling rack.

"There go Hirotashi, eatin' her plate a' nasty."

One of the grainy monitors showed Toad-Face pulling a steaming cardboard plate out of a microwave and sitting at an oval table.

"Won't she be able to see me go into the men's dorm, from whatever break room she's in?"

"Huh-uh." Maloria led him out of the Control Room. "They ain't no men's dorm in Module Two." She rolled her eyes at him, gave a fat-lipped smirk. "And Dr. Dindren wouldn't be in it, if they were."

This made no sense to Matt. "There's no men's dorm?"

"Nope. Module Two only got isolation cells, on account of it a forensic unit."

Thought about that. "'Forensic.' Meaning…"

"Meaning For Fucked-Up Ma'fuckahs Only. Understand? It only for residents so jacked, they a danger to theyself or others."

"Aha." Not good. "And why… why, if there was a men's dorm, wouldn't Dindren…?"

Maloria didn't bother to turn as she waddled out into the quad, but he could hear the cackle in her voice. "Boy, I let you find that out for yahself."

With this in mind, Matt wasn't totally surprised (at first) by what he found behind the door marked "Isolation Cell 7."

There had been no great trick to getting into the forensic unit; Maloria had let them in through the front door with a key from her key chain, as in Module One, and navigated him past two aides who were playing poker. But there the resemblance to Module One had ended. Whereas the architect of Module One had unsuccessfully attempted to make the unit look like a college dorm, the architect of Module Two had unsuccessfully attempted to make the unit not look like a prison. Partial faux-wood paneling didn't conceal that the walls were fireproofed cinder block. Cheerful sayings taped to the wall ("Spring Has Sprung!") couldn't erase the fact that the overhead lights were protected by metal cages or that the only utensil available was the spork. Brown paint couldn't hide the fact that all the doors were metal, not wood, or that every fifty feet the hallway was bracketed by a retractable steel riot gate.

No, it was all too clear what Module Two was, Matt thought as they walked quickly down the hall. It was-as Maloria had said-a place to keep seriously fucked-up motherfuckers.

# # # # # #

So Dindren was in the right place.

Matt stared at him carefully as he stood with his back to the door, which was open a crack. When Maloria had led him to a steel portal that looked no different from the previous six, peeked in the slit, and whispered, "He up," Matt had felt a wave of relief.

That wave was swiftly ebbing.

"Dr. Dindren," he said. "Nice to meet you. My name is Matt."

"Oh, please let's dispense with the niceties," came a husky whisper in the toffiest of British accents. "My friends all call me Jonna."

Matt doubted this very much. He blinked hard, taking in the creature before him. If Dindren had any friends, they had missed their cue to come rescue him long ago.

Dindren looked like shit. Where was the solemn, nearsighted professional whose face had graced the page that Matt had torn from the library book? Gone was the trim black beard (though the shadow of it still lingered); gone, the Coke-bottle glasses; gone, the suit, the tie, the steepling fingers with the manicured nails.

Dindren's fingers now shook too much to steeple. They clutched each other like abandoned twins in a fairy tale, fighting off hypothermia. They were raw and chafed, with nails chewed to the quick.

What else? Well, Dindren had traded in his suit and tie for soiled pink scrubs with a repeating daisy pattern. His thick, wheat-colored hair was no longer gelled into a banker's part; it was lank and oily and fell to his shoulders, and had been razor cut in a rough approximation of the style Jennifer Aniston had popularized more than a decade earlier. Also like Jennifer Aniston, he had breasts, and (like her nemesis), lush, bee-stung lips. Unlike Jennifer Anniston (or her nemesis), he had an Adam's apple, a five-day shadow, thin gray teeth that leaned inward, and one eye so consumed with pinkeye that the pupil seemed to be floating in a sea of blood.

And he shook all over.

"Charmed," he said, producing a hand, "I'm sure."

Matt took his hand and shook it (cool, damp, and as limp as a sock), making a mental note to get some antibacterial soap at the first opportunity. Afterwards, as casually as he could, he wiped his palm on his pants leg.

Dindren noticed, but the insult only fed his drag act. Sitting on his mattress, ankles crossed demurely, he wrapped his arms around his shins and gently propped his chin on his kneecap at a winsome angle.

"And to what do I owe the pleasure?"

That red peeper made Matt's skin crawl. And-what the fuck? Was Dindren male or female? He couldn't tell. Shifted nervously from foot to foot, saying, "Ah, you don't know me-that is, we haven't met before-but I had written ahead to the administration to arrange a visit with a former patient of yours, Jesse Weston? It was really important that I meet with him. But when I arrived-this afternoon, actually-I was told that he'd been transferred. So I asked Maloria if she'd arrange it so I could… ah… speak with you."

At the mention of Weston's name, Dindren's unbloodied eye went all hazy. When Matt had finished, Dindren pursed his thick, chapped lips. "Jesse, Jesse," he said, rocking gently.

And that was about it.

"They said he'd gone away sometime in the last few weeks," Matt prompted.

A slow nod. "'Gone away.' Yes." Cheeks sucked inward in a wry pout. "You could say that, couldn't you?"

"I guess what I'd like to know is, where exactly did he go away to? Is he near here? Or out of state?"

"Hmm. You could say he returned to his former state."

"His former…" Matt tried to remember where Weston was from.

"Never you mind." Dindren's bloodred orb rolled Matt's way and settled on him with a barely suppressed tremble. "I'd like to help, but I try not to discuss my patients' pathologies with strangers." His jittery hands clasped together and pressed against his cheek like a 1920s pinup. "You wouldn't happen to have any Necco Wafers, would you?"

"Um, not… on me." Matt's head throbbed. He'd come all this way for this?

"I like the chocolate ones the best."

"Who doesn't? Look, Doc…" Matt hunkered down in a crouch in front of him, his knees cracking loudly. "I don't have much time."

"Would you like some of mine? I have quite a bit to spare."

"No. What I really need are some answers."

"What I really need are Necco Wafers."

Matt felt his face prickle with heat. The guy was clearly messing with him. But could he help it? He was ill, after all. Matt held out two hands in mock surrender, gave him an encouraging smile. "Whatta you say we drop the Necco thing, okay?"

Dindren's lips peeled back to reveal the gray, leaning teeth. Huskily: "Whatta you say we make out?"

Before he could tell them not to, Matt's hands snapped forward and grabbed Dindren by the shoulders of his pink daisy scrubs and gave him a shake, trying desperately to break through to him. "Help me, goddammit! Help me or I'll-"

Dindren jerked back, sprawling. His scrubs fell open at the shoulder, where Matt's hands had pulled the laces free.

Matt stopped, sunk heavily onto one knee, staring. Unable to take his eyes off Dindren's left breast. Silenced not only by his shame of exposing it, and the surprise that it was actually real, but by disbelief at the sight of the raw half-moons that covered it.

"Are those…" He couldn't process what he was seeing. "Are those bite marks?"

Dindren, panting, pushed himself upright. Eyes bright, he roughly pulled the flap of his scrubs back up and attempted to conceal the fresh red crescents.

"See anything you like?"

Matt fought off a wave of nausea-barely. "What… What the hell is going on in this place?"

"Little of this. Little of that." Dindren was shaking harder, grinning in a tight gray rictus. Whispered: "Let's just say that-to paraphrase the Immortal Bard-'something is rotten in the state of Carthage.'"

Matt vaguely remembered the line-or something like it-from Hamlet, which he'd had to read in high school. But what caught his attention was the word rotten. He made the connection.

"Rotting Jack."

The words electrified Dindren, who scrambled backward in a panicky crab walk to the padded wall. He flattened against it, eyes wide. "What did you say?"

"Rotting Jack. Jesse Weston's profile in the Encyclopedia of Psychopathology described how Weston had suffered from a delusion: he believed there was a guy named Rotting Jack that only he could see, and whose touch could cause lesions and madness."

"Yes."

"And you said just a minute ago that Weston had returned to his 'former state.' Meaning, after years of treatment, the delusion returned."

"Yes."

"And let me guess-that's when the administrators starting disappearing, and you went off the deep end, and the night shift began using the residents as chew toys."

Dindren's jaw worked. For the first time, the mask of saucy dissipation began to slip, revealing a look of active interest in Matt, an interest bordering on hope.

"What do you know," he said slowly-and without any hint of a British accent-"about Rotting Jack?"

So Matt told him his own story, told him about Mr. Dark, the leering, ghostly presence he'd glimpsed in dreams while his wife, Janey, had died of cancer. Told him about how he'd been trapped beneath an avalanche for three months and how afterwards he'd felt the phantom's presence more acutely. How afterwards, he'd been able to actually see and smell evil and madness in the faces of his friends, in the form of physical decay and rot. Told him about the massacre his best friend had caused at the sawmill, and what he'd had to do to stop it… and how he'd wandered since then, pursuing-and being pursued by-the mysterious Mr. Dark.

There was a long pause when he'd finished. Rocking back and forth, Dindren ran his tongue along the upper ridge of his gray, leaning teeth. Stared down at the trash on the isolation-room floor, the Twix wrapper, the bent lollipop stick.

"I see," he said finally. "And so you're-what?-in self-imposed exile until you discover the truth about his nature-and yours?"

"You might say that. But if you were able to diagnose Jesse Weston, it sounds like you could save me the effort, if you wanted to."

Dindren stopped rocking. But he didn't look up. "What are you asking?"

"I'm asking if you think I've got what Jesse Weston had."

As still as a statue. "In a word," he said quietly, "yes."

Matt's heart started to pound, even though he'd come to the same conclusion.

"So my next question is, I guess, am I…" He had trouble even forming the words. "That is, was Jesse Weston actually crazy?"

A sly half smile. "And by extension…"

"Yeah. By extension, am I? And is Mr. Dark-or Rotting Jack-real?" A long pause, while Dindren continued to study the floor. "Or don't you know?"

"Oh, I know." He lifted his half-bloody gaze to Matt. "After years of studying Jesse? I know. But it's going to cost you."

"I don't have any Necco Wafers."

"Understood."

"Or much cash."

"I have no use for money."

"So what do you want?"

A pause. Dindren's smile became brittle. His eyes widened, became bright with emotion. Leaning towards Matt, he peeled back his chapped, bee-stung lips and silently mouthed GET… ME… OUT… OF… HERE.

Matt looked at him, feeling bad, genuinely bad for the mess in front of him. But what could he do? He tried to picture himself on the run through the woods with this guy in tow-this guy, who wasn't even a real guy anymore, and who was in no shape to travel, and probably had more mental problems than he could count.

"Sorry," Matt said. "But I can promise you this: that when I get to Olympia, I'll report this place for what it is and get you the help you need."

The vulnerable light in Dindren's eyes extinguished. Its place was taken immediately by a leer of dissipated raunch.

"'The help I need?' I'll tell you what I need, and you won't find it in Olympia."

"And that would be…"

Dindren batted his crusty lashes at him. "Like all girls, I just wanna have fun."

"Right… And I just wanna get information."

"You don't know what you want. But I do. After years of studying Jesse and similar cases in medical records, in folklore, in primitive mythologies? I do. I filled his case file to bursting with theories, facts, and information. And I'll share it with you, too. But first…" And here Dindren scootched closer, batting his bedroom eyes, and bit his lower lip. "You're going to have to put your fist… in my mouth."

Matt stared at him. "My…?"

"Fist. In. My. Mouth." Giving Matt a nice gray grin.

Matt was at a loss. Then he wasn't. "Hell no. Hell no." He stood up. "Why would you even ask for that?"

"Why?" Dindren frowned a little, as if it hadn't occurred to him that it needed explaining. "Well, ah-it's Matt, isn't it? Well, Matt… do you know what the biggest thrill is, for a doctor? The biggest kick, the biggest payoff? It's not the money or prestige. It's the moment that the patient makes the decision to hand himself over, bodily, to your care. That's the moment that he proves that he trusts you. It's positively sacramental, that moment. I miss it. I want to feel it again: that trust." His eyes narrowed sleepily. "Also, I like the taste."

Matt backed away. I don't trust you for shit, he thought. But what he said was, "I think I should go."

"I know." Sadly, drowsily. "But you'll be back… If you want to know whether it would work."

"'Work'?"

As if to a small child: "Yes. What you're considering doing: I can tell you whether it would actually get rid of Mr. Dark."

Matt took another step back. "And what do you think I'm considering doing?"

"Why, killing yourself, of course."

CHAPTER FOUR

Matt shoved out the door, banging loudly into the chair that Maloria had been dozing in.

"I'm awake," she said automatically, jerking upright, disoriented.

"Sorry that took so long. C'mon, let's get out of here."

"Arright, hold up." Getting stiffly out of the chair. "You find out what you was looking for?"

"No. But at least now I know where it is. Let's go back to the Control Room."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

He turned. Maloria had one eyebrow arched, and her fat hands on her fatter hips. Not a good sign. "What's up?"

"What's up?" Her head started a dangerously cobra-like side-to-side sway. "What's up is that I ain't yo' full-time Sherpa. I said I'd take you to Dindren, and I did. So now we square. 'Cause I got responsibilities, you know? I gotta get back to Module One, make sure them no-count ma'fuckah's ain't doggin' that white chick's shit."

Matt paused. She had a point.

He had an idea. "You've got a master key, right-one that opens the Admin and Control Room doors?"

"Uh-huh. Which I need, and you ain't gonna get."

"I'll give you one hundred bucks for it."

"Lucky for you, I got a spare." She held it up. "An' I'm always misplacin' this one, on account of my thyroid actin' up."

Matt reached for it, and she pulled it away.

"Only my thyroid don't kick in for less than two hundred, if you know what I mean."

Matt gave her a low-lidded look. "One fifty."

"I feel an attack comin' on right now." She pried it free of the ring, dropped in his hand. But not before pausing to say, "And BTW? My thyroid don't take checks."

# # # # # #

Maloria escorted him out of Module Two, and they parted company at the quad. Using her key, he let himself back into Admin via the kitchen (six roaches, a lot fewer knives, and the weird wood-and-leather cuffs still hung inexplicably from the rack).

Back in the Control Room, there was good news and bad news. The good news was that, as Matt had suspected, the file cabinet marked "Treatment Plans / Overflow" was not-as it should have been-locked. In fact, it had no lock.

Nice, Matt thought, pulling out a metal drawer and scanning ahead for the Ws.

The bad news was that not only were the treatment plans in an unlocked file cabinet, but someone had long ago stopped bothering to file them alphabetically. Even worse, not only were there Joneses filed under S and Millers under Q, but pieces of Jones' file were in Miller's folder, and pieces of Miller's were in Jones'.

It was a mess.

It was such a mess that three hours passed before Matt felt like he had found most of Jesse Weston's file. Even then, just when he had decided to quit looking, he would find a psych profile or incident report or med plan with Weston's name on it, and he'd decide to search a little further.

There was only one interruption. About two hours into his search, right after he had found a big chunk of Weston's drug records, the door had creaked open behind him and he'd turned to behold a member of the Wu-Tang Clan.

Or so it seemed. Matt supposed that the guy was probably an aide, just one whose official uniform consisted of a black hoodie with a red Chinese-dragon print, and a do-rag covered in dollar signs. He had a yin-yang symbol tattooed to his neck, a Black Belt magazine in one hand, and a bag of Famous Amos cookies in the other. Clearly looking for a place to kill a few hours.

"'Sup," the aide said.

"Hi. I'm Matt." Matt held out his hand. The aide stared at it blankly, like he had no idea what Matt wanted him to do with it. Matt cleared his throat. "I'm the swing. And you're, uh…?"

The aide glowered at him. "Darak."

"Right. Maloria asked me to organize these files."

Darak quirked one corner of his lips and gave a bored shrug. "Fine with me," he said, and made as if to come in and kick back.

"Actually, Maloria mentioned that you might show up. She said that if you did, I was supposed to tell you to go clean the men's washroom in Module One."

Darak stared at him with eyes as dull and hard as ball bearings. A muscle in his jaw twitched, and just for a second, Matt thought there'd be trouble.

But Darak just slapped the Black Belt magazine against his thigh, gave a tight smile, and said, "Well, ain't that a bitch." And left.

Matt let out a relieved breath and dumped the file into his rucksack.

He hadn't read most of the files he found-there would be time for that later. For now, he skimmed them to see if Weston's name was on them, and if it was, it went in his bag. There wasn't time for anything else.

He made an exception, however, for a partial case file with "Dindren" typed at the top. Instead of being in the Ds, he'd found it in the Xs. Flipping through it, he found multiple references to persecution complex, paranoia, "gender disorder," and pica. He riffled the pages, looking for a definition of pica. Towards the middle he found it described as a pathological desire to put nonfood items in one's mouth. Towards the end he found out which "nonfood items" Dindren had gobbled.

It turned out that Dindren's pica had changed over time. It had begun, several months ago, with eating erasers, paper clips, and plastic straws. Eventually he had graduated to paint and safety scissors, and soon after that to lightbulb glass and feces. And as recently as last month, his diet had expanded again, this time to include the thumb, index finger, and nose of Jesse Weston.

Goddamn. Matt's stomach felt queasy. Towards the end of Dindren's file, inexplicably, were several documents that belonged in Jesse Weston's psychopathy profile. The most recent one was from ten days before Matt's arrival. It was a hastily written incident report. Besides the signature (which was illegible), all it said was

3/22/11 2:20 AM-Herd a yell form forensic 9 & came in. Found residant on floor real bad shape

No employee-of-the-month award for that report, Matt thought, adding it to his findings. He'd look at the rest of the reports later.

But then, just as he was about to zip up his file-filled rucksack and head out of this godforsaken place, his eye fell on a cardboard box beneath the control panel.

It was filled with videotapes.

Matt looked down at the incident report again, found the date: March 22. Then got up and went over to the box. Pulled it out. Sure enough, all of the tapes had dates on them. He dug through them, and there at the bottom of the box was "Forensic 3/22/11-3rd Shift."

Matt picked it out and was about to put it in his rucksack, then stopped.

When was the next time he was going to have access to an actual VCR? At the hotels he was staying at, he was lucky if the toilet flushed.

Matt walked over to the TV/VCR on the rolling metal rack and pushed the tape in, wondering if the incident had been taped over or if it would be too hard to find.

He didn't have to wait long.

As soon as he put the tape in, the crackling snow of the monitor was replaced by a grainy, low-resolution shot of a small room. The camera was obviously set in an upper corner, near the ceiling. Its range was not wide, but it still managed to capture a piece of the ceiling, all of the gray, carpeted floor, and three of the four padded walls. In the middle of the left wall was a closed metal door. At the foot of the center wall was a mattress with a crumpled sheet on it. And in the middle of the right wall was Jesse, acting nuts.

A thick, dark horizontal band of static rose slowly from the bottom of the screen to the top. When it passed, the monitor showed a bearded Jesse in pajama bottoms and white T-shirt, standing against a wall on his tiptoes, like a ballerina en pointe. He was pressing the tops of his fists against the underside of his jaw. His eyes were clenched shut. He had white bandages plastered over his nose and his right hand, where Dindren had munched him, apparently. It was hard to read his expression from the downward angle, but he didn't look happy. His mouth was moving, but no sounds came out.

Was he talking or singing to himself? Matt couldn't tell. He adjusted the volume, but all he heard was the soft roar of static.

On the monitor, Jesse sank to his heels, then stood on his tiptoes again. Then did it again. And again. His eyes never opened. His mouth worked silently.

What am I seeing? Matt wondered. Is he having some kind of fit-or just goofing around? Maybe having a bad reaction to his meds?

Matt hit the "rewind" button.

The fat horizontal line of static appeared again, this time scrolling quickly from the top of the screen to the bottom. When it was gone, Matt watched as Jesse dropped quickly into a sitting position and flung out his arms, flattening them against the wall Jesus-like. Now his mouth was mashed shut, but his eyes were wide open: and not just normal wide open, but crazy wide open, like the eyes of Rasputin or Charles Manson or the bald wack job that shot that senator in Arizona.

As the rewinding continued, Jesse quickly began scooting on his butt-arms still stretched cruciform-down the right-hand wall to the corner, then halfway across the central wall, until he was sitting on the mattress with the crumpled sheet. There he stopped. Mouth still clenched shut, bug eyes still watching the left wall, where there was nothing to see but a closed door.

Insane, Matt thought, and the word gave him a chill. If this was what Rotting Jack had done to Jesse Weston, how long would it be before Mr. Dark had the same effect on-

He saw something.

"What the hell?"

On the grainy screen, the door in the left wall had quickly swung open, then shut. Now that it was shut, Jesse slumped suddenly into a sleeping position on the mattress.

Matt's heart started to pound. What had he just seen?

He hit "pause," then "fast forward."

Jesse sleeping on the mattress. The door in the left wall swinging open. The door swinging closed. When it closed, Jesse jerking upright, eyes widening, hands flattening against the wall.

… the fuck?

Matt's mind raced. Maybe the door was unlocked, had just opened on its own, and then an air current shut it. Or maybe-much more likely-someone in the hall was trying to freak out Jesse.

He rewound it again, and this time hit "play."

When the door swung open in real time, he watched carefully to see if he could glimpse someone opening it. But the angle of the camera didn't allow it to see out into the hall.

Must be someone out there, Matt thought. Unlock the door and kick it open-that'd be easy enough-they'd probably yelled at Jesse, or taunted him, then…

Then how did they close the door, once it was open?

Rewind. Play.

This time, Matt watched to see if he could see a string attached to the door. He stepped closer, so that his eyes were just ten inches from the monitor.

Jesse sleeping.

Door swings open quickly, forcefully. No accident.

Matt stared. He couldn't see a string. That didn't mean there wasn't one.

Then the door, all the way open, swings all the way shut.

Jesse jerks awake, disoriented, sits up, looks towards the closed door.

Then-and only then-do Jesse's eyes flip open.

Then-and only then-does his mouth clamp shut.

Then-and only then-do his arms flatten against the wall.

Matt's heart thudded in his chest as he watched Jesse, in real time, press himself against the wall, chin lifted, eyes locked on nothing, and begin backpedaling with his feet, shoving himself into the corner, around it, and halfway down the right-hand wall.

There he stopped, his big eyes got bigger, and his hands clutched in fists at his throat.

Then he stood quickly, eyes shut, mouth wide open.

This was the point in the tape where Matt had started viewing. Only now he could tell that Jesse wasn't talking. He was screaming.

Tiptoes, heels. Tiptoes, heels. Tiptoes, heels.

What was Jesse doing?

Tiptoes… Tiptoes…

Suddenly, Jesse's toes left the floor.

Matt gasped, eyes glued, as Jesse slid up the wall.

Stayed there… three feet above the floor. Still clutching his throat. Still screaming.

Then he slid-fast-horizontally, into the corner, where he crashed into the center wall.

Matt backed up, holding his hands out in front of him, as if to ward off the sight of Jesse sliding up, faster now, to crash into the ceiling, then roll onto it, his back and arms and legs spread-eagled against it, and then and only then did the TV's sound kick in, just for a second, blaring way too loud Jesse's scream of terror-

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"… as he slid across the ceiling on his back, straight into the camera-

The screen went black.

"Oh… my… God."

Matt's panic increased as he suddenly smelled something overpowering, like a body left out in the heat for a week.

Sudden knowledge: he wasn't alone in the room. He was sure of it.

Matt spun around, his heart pounding triple time.

No one there.

At least, no one he could see. But where was that awful smell coming from? Mr. Dark? Or just a whiff of his own sweat?

He turned back to the TV/VCR. He banged the "eject" button, pulled out the video gingerly, like it was radioactive, and dropped it into his rucksack. His knees felt weak. How the hell was he supposed to deal with something that could do that? He didn't have a chance. Had no idea what he was dealing with.

His heart was lunging in his chest; his hands shook as bad as Dindren's.

Dindren…

Ten seconds later he had shoved his rucksack in a closet, grabbed a mop, and was out the door making a beeline for Module Two.

CHAPTER FIVE

Dindren looked up as Matt entered his cell, and licked his chapped lips. "In the interest of full disclosure: I can't promise you that I don't have any blood-borne pathogens."

"Cut it out." Matt shut the door behind him.

"Also, as a courtesy, if you could use an aloe-based exfoliant on your right hand, it'll go better for both of us in the long run."

"Listen to me, Doc." Matt knelt in front of Dindren and gripped him by his rickety arm. "I'm not gonna stick my fist in your mouth, so forget that shit. But I will do my best to spring you from this place-if you can help me understand what I'm up against."

Dindren stared at him, searching Matt's eyes for sincerity. Found it. His queer act fell away, and the bee-stung lips, gray teeth, and bloody eye rearranged themselves in an approximation of cautious attention.

"Proceed," he said quietly.

"All right. You've heard my story. And you treated someone like me for years. So give it to me straight: these things I've seen-Mr. Dark and his rotting touch-are they real? Or am I…" He took a shaky breath. "Am I nuts?"

Dindren pursed his chapped lips and closed his eyes. "You might be nuts, Matt." He opened them. "But not for seeing Mr. Dark. He's real-as is Rotting Jack. Whether they are identical-that I don't know. But it's safe to say, if nothing else, that they are different manifestations of the same creature."

"Yeah. Yeah." Matt's skin crawled at the thought of what he'd just seen. "But… what is it?"

"I'm not sure of that, either. But I have a theory. Both you and Jesse spent a long time underground. And both of you returned with something-a parasite-that you picked up on your journey. Something that feeds on suffering; that hungers for sorrow, loss, despair, and death. And this isn't new: if memory serves, there have been references to such a creature in myth and folklore throughout history. Many cultures told stories of a night hunter that drove its prey mad before devouring it. The Greeks called it Pan. The Irish had the banshee. The Ojibwe, windigo. I suspect that whatever you call it, it is the spirit of hunger you've awakened; the god, if you will, of starvation. And it seems to have a never-ending thirst for chaos, madness, bloodshed, and massacre. A spirit that literally feeds off of carnage."

It seemed plausible to Matt. But then, this was coming from a guy who had been willing to suck his fist just a minute before. He shook his head. "Look, assuming you're right… why me?"

Dindren shrugged. "Usually, a spirit like this needs an invitation to take up residence."

Matt let out a cough of disgust. "I can guarantee you that I never invited Mr. Dark to set up shop in my neighborhood."

"Maybe you did but don't remember."

Matt shrugged. "Whatever. That's not the real issue anyway. The real issue is"-and here he leaned towards Dindren, palms up-"how do I kill the Spirit of Starvation?"

"Good question. Jesse certainly never figured that out. But then, he was stuck in here." Dindren clacked his gray teeth together thoughtfully. "But… if it truly does feed off bloodshed and carnage, then if you could prevent the destruction of innocent lives-deprive it of its prey, in other words-it might be possible to starve it to death."

The very idea of shriveling his parasitic ghost into nothingness appealed to Matt. But: consider the source. Dindren was clearly crazy. Still, if there were any way to exorcise Mr. Dark… He shook his head at the enormity of the thought. "But how? How do I stop it? How do I find out where it's going to strike next?"

Dindren blinked. "I thought that would be obvious. Just look around. It has attached itself to you. It will go where you go."

Matt felt a creeping prickle along the back of his neck.

"Are you saying that my presence is what unleashes it on people? By me just being around them?" Matt looked away, gritting his jaw. If it were true, where did that leave him? Alone. Forever. With no hope of ever settling down again, or spending time with the people he loved.

He balled his hands into fists. "I guess that leads us to the million-dollar question."

Dindren raised an eyebrow. Going to make him say it.

Matt took a deep breath.

"If this-spirit, creature, whatever you call it-really has attached itself to me, and is going to follow me wherever I go, wouldn't the problem be solved if I just offed myself?"

"Well, that depends." Dindren seemed in no hurry to complete the thought.

"On…?"

"On whether you are the spirit's host-or its locus."

Matt stared at him. "Um, in English?"

"Right: if this spirit is inhabiting you physically-like a parasite in a host-and has no way of inhabiting another, then your suicide would indeed solve the problem."

"Great."

"But… if it has the ability to move on to another person, and you are simply its preferred locus, or location-like a vulture's favorite tree-then killing yourself will accomplish nothing. Another way to look at it is that the spirit is either serving you-because it's a part of you-or serving itself."

Matt nodded, relieved. "Makes sense. So: how do I find out which?"

Dindren gave a little shrug. "You could always ask."

"Ask?" Matt couldn't believe his ears. "That's your advice? That I fucking ask it who it serves?"

"In a word, yes."

"Why the hell would it answer? How would I know if it told the truth?"

"Because that's the way these things work. The Otherworld, Matt, has rules like ours. Under special circumstances, its citizens are required to answer truthfully."

Matt gave him a skeptical look. "So there's, like, some user's manual for the supernatural?"

"In this matter there is, if you know where to look. Are you familiar with the legend of the Holy Grail?"

"Not really. Should I be?"

"Of course." Dindren pressed his hands together, fingertip to fingertip. "The story goes like this. There's a king. And the king is dead. Only he isn't. He's been cursed, and he can't fully live, and he can't fully die. All he can do is lead a ghostly half-life. And as long as he's under the curse, his land will remain barren and desolate: full of famine, madness, and death." He paused meaningfully. "Ring a bell?"

He'd caught Matt's attention. "Go on."

"So a hero comes to the dead king's castle. Sits down to dinner with the king. Then, in the course of the meal, he sees a strange procession: a youth walks past him holding a spear that's dripping blood. Another comes with a huge candelabra. And then, the last: a beautiful woman. And in her hand, glowing with power and light… a chalice shining with holy, divine, sacred"-he closed his eyes and lifted his shaking hands, as if he himself held such a chalice-"life."

Matt swallowed hard, weirdly affected by the tale. "The Grail."

"Right you are. And when he sees this, the young hero is full of wonder and wants to ask its purpose. But he doesn't. When he wakes the next day, the castle and everything in it has vanished. He soon learns that because he didn't ask the right question-didn't ask what the Grail was, and who it served-because he remained silent, the king remains suspended in a living death, and the land cursed. The hero lost his chance to heal the land quickly, and so he must dedicate the rest of his life to doing it the hard way."

Dindren settled back, and with a meaningful look, crossed his thin, bruised arms.

Matt's jaw dropped. "That's it? That's the end? That makes no sense! Why didn't he ask the question when he had the chance?"

A shrug. "It could be he followed bad advice or dozed off. It could be he didn't want to reveal his ignorance. Or it could be… that he was afraid of the answer."

Matt considered this. It could be the key to the entire mystery. It could also be complete and utter bullshit. But what did he have to lose? He shrugged. "Okay, I get it. The next time I meet up with Mr. Dark, I'll ask him who he serves. No big deal."

"Actually, it is a big deal," Dindren said, searching him with shadowed eyes. "In the Grail legend and others like it, the hero is only given one chance to solve the problem by asking the right question. There's no second shot."

Matt shrugged. "Well, I can guarantee you I'll ask question if I get the chance. Even though I'm more like the dead guy than the hero."

Dindren gave a slanty, gray-toothed grin. "Actually, you're both. That happens sometimes. You're the dead man. But you're definitely the hero as well."

"Huh," Matt said, unconvinced. "But can you prove it?"

"Actually, I can. On your way here, you saw a stag."

Matt's smirk faded. "What did you say?"

"I said you saw a stag. And you did, didn't you?"

"How…" Matt swallowed. "How did you know?"

"Because the hero always sees a stag at the beginning. That's how these stories begin."

Matt felt lightheaded. "A lucky guess. These woods are full of deer."

Dindren nodded. "Of course they are. Believe what you want. Just be sure-when the next opportunity arises-to ask the right question." His bloody eye narrowed. "You will not get a second chance."

Click.

"What the-what the hell is going on here?"

Matt spun around. Hirotachi was standing in the doorway, holding a tray of meds.

"Uh, hi." Matt stood, pointed to the mop leaning against the wall. "I'm the swing? Just thought I'd clean up a little…"

"Swing? You're no fucking swing. You're that asshole who lied about Maloria's flat tire!"

"You're right. Shall we dance?" In a heartbeat, Matt had crossed the floor to her, grabbed her by her wrist, and flung her deep into the room, where she flopped, squawking, onto the mattress. To Dindren: "Time to hit the road, Doc."

"I completely concur."

They quickly stepped out of the room, and Dindren flipped the latch that locked the door. "She'll hit the 'call' button," he said worriedly.

And she did. But by the time they reached the front desk, it was unoccupied, and the red flashing light and accompanying buzz went unattended. Through the window of the break room door, Matt could see the backs of two aides watching a TV that showed Sasha Grey sucking on some guy's left nut.

"Looks like Hirotachi's in for a long night," Matt said.

"Not as long as Sasha's."

CHAPTER SIX

Together they blew out the door, into the darkness. Matt led Dindren back to the Admin Building.

"Must we?" the doctor asked, stopping short of the door.

"My rucksack's in the Control Room. Won't take a minute."

Dindren, shivering, stepped back into the shadows. "I'll wait for you here, then."

"Suit yourself."

Matt went through the kitchen (nine roaches, half the knives gone, weird cuffs still there) and down the hall, back to the Control Room. The smell of old meat in there was worse. It burned in his nostrils and made his heart beat faster. Time to get gone, he thought as he pulled his bag from the closet-and noticed immediately that it had been opened in his absence.

He crouched, looked through it quickly. He was missing some cash, a Leatherman knife, and his disposable cell phone.

Wonderful.

Matt ripped the zipper shut and was about to leave when he saw a flash of movement.

He turned, his chest tight.

Let out a breath. It was just one of the monitors, the one showing the front entryway to the Admin Building. The door had opened, and several employees were walking in for the shift change.

He looked at his watch, forcing his mind to focus. 11:02 p.m. He was officially noncompliant with Maloria's warning to be gone before the night shift.

Ah, well. As long as he had his uniform and mop, they wouldn't know any better than day shift had that… that…

Matt stopped breathing.

Leaned close to the monitor, eyes wide.

"Oh… crap."

The front entryway had filled with eight or nine men. They crowded around the front desk, signing in on the clipboard. The were big guys, bull necked, muscle-bound. A different breed from second shift. But that wasn't what made his breath catch in his throat.

It was their faces.

The grainy display may have had shit resolution, but it was still clear enough that he could see the dead flesh scrolling off the cheeks of the first aide to strut from the desk to the back hallway. And the second had a jagged hole where his nose should have been. The third had corroded skin hanging in tatters from his lower jaw. The fourth had no lower jaw. The fifth was awful. The sixth was worse. The seventh was indescribable.

"Fuck me."

Every single member of the night shift showed a hefty helping of Mr. Dark's rotting touch.

What had Maloria said?

Them fucked-up niggahs workin' midnights? They don't play.

He believed it.

And he believed he had to get out. Now.

Palms sweating, Matt hefted his rucksack, slung it over his shoulder, and spun around right into Darak's fist.

"Jesus." Matt staggered back into the console, clutching his eye.

"Think that was funny, motherfucker? Sendin' me all over the fuckin' place?" Darak, a black blur in his Wu-Tang outfit and dollar-sign do-rag, closed in quickly, using a bowlegged karate stance. "How funny you gonna find this?" He swiveled backward, and Matt ducked just in time to avoid having his head taken off by a completely respectable roundhouse kick. He could feel the wind of it ruffle his hair as it flew past.

Matt wasn't in the mood for a cage match, so he tried to shove past Darak and bolt for the door.

He almost made it. Almost.

Instead, Darak grabbed him by the collar from behind, said, "Oh, no you don't, bitch," and flung him into the "Treatment Plans / Overflow" file cabinet.

The back of Matt's head hit the metal cabinet with a hollow boom. He hit so hard that when he bounced off, the metal drawer slid out on its rollers.

"Guess you felt that," Darak laughed, closing in again in a low crouch as Matt backed up, head ringing, his shoulder brushing the open metal drawer. "And I got more where that came from. Guess you didn't know I'm a black belt, huh? Well, I am." Darak gripped the lip of the open metal drawer, leveraging himself for another kick. "Pay attention, bitch: I'm about to demonstrate the Flying Dragon, which goes a little like-AAAH!"

His threat morphed into a high-pitched scream as Matt shouldered the metal drawer closed on his hand. Darak spun around towards the cabinet, trying to pry his hand free, and that's when Matt punched him in the side of the neck. Darak gagged. Matt grabbed the back of his head and drove his face into the file cabinet. When he rebounded with a wail, Matt used his momentum to swing him by the hair across the small space, trip him with an outstretched leg, and drive his fall into the surveillance console.

Darak crashed into the low steel shelf with a deep groan. He slid to his knees, leaving a trail of blood across the control panel.

Matt grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him to his feet. He was about to reintroduce Darak's face to the console when a blur of movement caught his eye.

Shit, he thought. What now?

It was the monitor showing the hallway to the women's dorm in Module One. The grainy, black-and-white relay from the security camera showed two male aides dragging a young girl out of the women's dorm. He recognized her: it was Annica, the not-so-telekinetic blonde with the smeared makeup. She was fighting their grip, but it was no use. Together they dragged her across the hall and into the women's washroom. A third aide sauntered behind them casually, and then stood in the open doorway, arms crossed, on guard.

"Goddammit." Matt dragged Darak over to the closet. Darak's eyes rolled his way, and he made a feeble attempt to claw Matt's face. Matt rewarded his efforts with a brief but meaningful head butt, then said, "Pay attention, Darak: I'm about to demonstrate the Flying Foot, which goes a little like this." He buried his steel-toed Carhartt in Darak's crotch and shoved him into the closet.

"Namaste," he said, "you fuckhead."

CHAPTER SEVEN

"About time," Dindren hissed as Matt came barreling out of Admin. "What'd you do in there, take a nap? I think I may have caught hypothermia standing out here in the- Hey, where are you going?"

"Module One," Matt said. "Girl needs help."

"Well, this girl isn't going into any modules," Dindren panted, struggling to keep up. "The night shift is here. I'm making for the meditation path. It leads into the amphitheater in the woods, and away from this hellhole. If you have any sense, you'll do the same."

"Meet you there in three minutes," Matt said, running up the steps to Module One.

"I doubt it," Dindren said, his voice rising with a wild elation as he ran for the foggy shadows at the end of the quad, his pink, daisy-print scrubs flapping behind him, "but thanks anyway. And remember: ask the question, or forever hold your peace!"

# # # # # #

Matt let himself into Module One, forced himself to slow down, and cautiously crossed the entryway to the common room. No aides. The TV was blaring a nasty Adult Swim cartoon, which was being watched by two slack-jawed male residents that Matt had never seen before. The guy who had drawn a maze on the wall earlier was still there, only now he was kneeling in front of it, banging his forehead into the center of the design again and again, making a mewing sound. No sign of the huge Ojibwe with the flame tattoos. On the table he'd been standing on were an empty pizza box and a spilled bottle of meds.

Nice.

Over the blare of the TV Matt heard a muffled shriek, and then another. They came from the hall leading to the women's dorm. He crossed the common room quickly, unnoticed, grabbing the mop Maloria had left behind that afternoon.

A few seconds later he was walking down the dimly lit linoleum corridor he'd seen on the Control Room monitor. As he got closer, he saw that the third aide was still standing in the washroom entryway, but instead of watching the hallway, he had turned inward to check out the action.

"That's it," he laughed as the girl's shrieks rose in pitch, "take that shit off."

Matt came behind him, moving fast. He knew he couldn't waste much time with the lookout, so he restricted himself to kicking him as hard as he could in the side of his knee. The guy went down like a bag of sand. A loud bag of sand.

His yell of pain was lost in the TV's blare as Matt entered the women's bathroom. It had a tiled shower area and five open stalls, one of which had a toilet with a nasty overflow problem. The other two aides had dragged Annica into the communal shower area, under a sputtering spigot. Her torn-off T-shirt lay on the floor. The only things she still had on were a pink sports bra and flannel pajama bottoms, and those were half off. An aide who looked like a plus-size Captain Morgan-complete with piratical goatee and gold earring-had her wrists pinned to the tile wall, while his weaselly pal gripped her raised ankle with one hand while the other pried her pajama pants down to midthigh, revealing star-spangled boy shorts beneath.

She was hysterical. Captain Morgan was alternately shushing her and laughing, and Weasel was saying, "It's all good, girl, it's all good." Matt saw that if he took them both on at once, she might get hurt-and he might not do so great, either.

So he didn't attack.

Instead, on impulse, he walked over to the stall with the backed-up toilet and began mopping up floaters. Whistling as he did.

"What…" The commotion let up a little. "Who the-who the fuck is that? See who the fuck that is!"

Matt kept mopping.

"Hey! Hey!"

Matt looked up. Weasel was standing in the stall entryway, his hands on either wall, glaring. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"This." Matt swung the mop so that a brown arc of crap splattered Weasel square in the face. After a split second of shocked silence, Weasel let out a strangled wail of disbelief and flattened his palms against his eyes. Which was a huge mistake, because it let Matt ram almost the entire mop head into his mouth and drive him across the room and into the hard tile wall with a satisfying ka-thunk.

"Oh, you fucker, it is so on," yelled Captain Morgan behind him. Matt knew Captain Morgan was shoving the girl aside to charge him. He knew Captain was much bigger than Weasel, and that being wacked with a mop wouldn't mean much to him. So when he jerked the mop head out of Weasel's mouth, Matt made sure to shift his grip, raise the other end high, and bring it down on Weasel's head twice as hard as he really needed to.

With a great crack, the blow KO'd Weasel.

But more important, it split the mop handle.

Hearing Captain's roar behind him, Matt again adjusted his grip, pivoted, and gave a fast thrust-just as Captain crashed into him. The two hit the floor hard; Captain crushed the breath out of Matt, flattening him like a steamroller. Matt's ribs creaked; he groaned, twisted, and rolled the big man off him.

Matt staggered to his feet, gasping for breath, shaky, his chest aching. Whatever he's gonna do next, Matt thought, struggling to stay upright, I'm not ready for it.

But as it turned out, he was. Because Captain's next move was to stare stupidly at the jagged end of the mop handle that pinned his right hand to his chest like a 4-H blue ribbon.

The guy let out an astonished whoop, and then an even louder one, and on and on until pretty soon he sounded like a love-struck gibbon.

"I coulda handled that myself, you know."

Brushing himself off, Matt turned to face the blonde. She'd pulled her pajama bottoms up and had retrieved the torn wet top, which she clutched to her chest. Her kohl-smeared eyes were wide with fear and defiance.

"Right. Well, I appreciate you letting me have a piece of the action."

Annica bit her lip. "I do have psionic powers, you know. I do. I was just about to unleash them."

Sure, he thought, if by "psionic power" you mean bladder. But he didn't say it.

"Look," he said. "This is no place for you, okay? So I want you to follow me, real close." And with that, he stepped around the shish kebab that had been the Captain and walked past the flattened Weasel.

"Oh my God, he's got a knife!" the blonde cried.

In the entryway, Matt saw that the lookout was upright again, kneeling on his one good leg, dragging the damaged one behind him. He clutched a butterfly knife in his hand. His face was a mask of pain and fury.

"Stay behind me," he said to the girl. "C'mon. Here we go."

He walked to the entryway. He didn't even slow down when the lookout took a wild swipe: just raised his right boot, and when the knife stuck in the sole, he pinned it and the guy's hand to the floor. Pivoted, and drove the steel toe of his left boot into the lookout's good knee.

The guy's ACL, when it tore, sounded like stomped-on bubble wrap. He immediately flung himself to the floor, wailing and flipping like a holy roller.

"After you," he said politely, taking Annica's hand and guiding her past the wailing aide. Her hand was small and warm in his, and he held it tightly as he led her down the hall, through the common room, and out into the fog.

# # # # # #

Hooh-ooh, ooh-HOOH.

Hooh-ooh, ooh-HOOH.

"What's that?" Annica pressed close to him as they jogged across the quad's wet grass, heading for the dark line of trees at its north end.

"Just an owl. Don't be scared-everything'll be okay. We're gonna head out the back way, up the meditation path."

"I'm not scared," she said. "One of my wild talents is precognition. You ever heard of precognition? It means I can tell the future. And I can tell the meditation path will be totally deserted at this time of night. So, yeah: I'm fully aware that it's gonna be okay."

He looked down at her. She'd wept away most of the kohl, and without it she looked a lot younger than he'd thought. Fifteen, maybe? Fourteen?

"You believe me, right?" she asked.

"Of course," he lied.

But as the two of them tramped through the tall, wet grass, he wasn't at all sure that her confidence in him wasn't just as misplaced.

In the washroom he'd been possessed with a weird certainty: he had to come to her aid; there'd been no question in his mind about it, and once he'd committed to doing so, the solution to every problem after that had appeared to him clearly, larger than life, in three dimensions. It was like how George Brett described his tunnel vision during his hitting streak with the 1980 Kansas City Royals: every pitch looked like a beach ball rolling towards him in slow motion.

Matt wondered if his confidence in the washroom, his quick thinking, were at all related to his accident. He'd been in a few bar fights in the past, mainly with drunks-some friends, some not-who'd been too dumb to know when to quit, and he'd done okay. He'd even done some light boxing at the gym-just sparring, messing around. But he'd never felt so alive, so hyperaware, as in the moments after he'd seen the girl being dragged down the hall on the monitor. Maybe it's my function, he thought. What I'm meant to do. Why I came back.

Or not. Because out in the chilly, vaporous fog, his certainty, his confidence, was quickly ebbing away. Should they-like Dindren-escape through the meditation path, or double back to the parking lot, and so avoid the woods, but risk running into the night shift?

He didn't know. They were probably screwed either way.

Fuck it: head into the woods. Especially since, as they passed the Admin Building, he saw a dark shape in the FA's window, staring out at them. Matt stared back. Something was odd about the shape of its head. Wearing a hat? Who the hell knew. But it turned to watch them pass.

Not good.

"C'mon," he said, picking up the pace.

"Cold out here," she said, rubbing her arms as she ran. And then: "Where are you taking me?"

"Away."

Hooh-ooh, ooh-HOOH.

Hooh-ooh, ooh-HOOH.

# # # # # #

Soon enough they reached the flagstone path that led into the woods. There was a concrete birdbath on one side of the trail, and from it hung a poster-board sign, which said in puffy letters,

Carthage MHC Proudly Presents

Forest Friends:

Willy Willow and Betty Birch Meet the Head Tree!

Bottom of the Netflix queue for that one, Matt thought as he pulled the girl into the woods. The path grew soft with pine needles, and with less fog to reflect the light, it became darker. Here and there pale shrouds of moonlight shafted between the trunks, leaving jagged shadows on the forest floor.

"I think someone's following us," the girl said in a strangled voice.

Matt looked over his shoulder. For a split second he saw two coin-sized glimmers, like the reflecting eyes of a cat, then one, then none.

Had they passed behind a tree?

Had they been there at all?

Off to his right he heard a knocking sound, like a woodpecker at work. But did they do that at night? He hadn't thought so.

"Oh my God…" Her voice was so high he almost couldn't hear it. He looked where she was looking. To the left, moving behind a deadfall, was someone moving on all fours. Or something.

"About that precognition…," he said.

"It's not as well developed as my disruption of electrical systems," she whispered.

He had several responses to that. He didn't say any of them.

Footsteps behind them, fast and light. Matt sped up, dragging the girl by the hand. They rounded a boulder covered in black moss and came to a small clearing containing an amphitheater of cut stone. But between them and the amphitheater was something unexpected: a glowing oak. Someone had strung white Christmas lights all along its thick trunk and low-hanging branches.

The girl began to scream uncontrollably.

Matt almost joined her.

The oak: it wasn't Willy Willow or Betty Birch. It was definitely the Head Tree.

Why?

Because it was hung with heads.

Every bough seemed to have one. Matt recognized the silver-bearded facility administrator, eyes rolled back into his skull, slack jawed, black tongued, bloody chinned. And the dark-skinned CMO with the white mustache, now a lot less dignified than in his portrait in Admin. And the head nurse, her brow still furrowed, her mouth a dismayed slash, her neck hanging in strips from her jaw like the tentacles of a jellyfish. And there were a dozen more dangling from the tree's glowing limbs, garish ornaments for a holiday in hell.

A pattering sound: one of the heads was new, was still dripping.

Matt spotted it, recognized the one dark eye, the slanting teeth, the bee-stung lips…

"Dindren," Matt whispered.

Above him, a flapping sound.

Looked up.

Wings outspread… glowing eyes…

No time!

Impact.

Darkness.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Matt blinked painfully.

Drew a breath.

Tried to put his hands on his face-and couldn't.

Opened his eyes against the fluorescent glare.

He was in a white room, strapped to a white bed.

Only it wasn't a bed. But it did have a pillow.

And straps.

Five straps, to be exact. Two pinned his ankles, two pinned his wrists, and one was wrapped around his waist. Next to the thing he was on was a large steel console on rollers. It was covered in dials and switches. Behind it was a woman.

"Well, well," growled the short, toad-faced wreck. "Looks like Lover Boy's joined the land of the living-just in time to leave it."

"Hirotachi," he croaked. His throat was dry. Head ached. Had he ever been this thirsty before? Impossible. "Where is…" He tried to remember her name. Then he had it: Annica.

Toad-Face grinned. "Your little girlfriend? She's out back, all set for the show."

"Show?"

"Oh yeah. Don't worry, you won't miss it. But since it's not the witching hour yet, and since you seem to have some seriously antisocial tendencies, we thought we'd give you a little treatment-on the house. Maloria? Let's get this show on the road."

Matt stared in disbelief as the fat lady he'd spent the afternoon with waddled up to the console and-avoiding all eye contact-picked up a handful of red and yellow wires and a roll of tape. Her lips were clamped in a tight line as she walked to the side of the bed, squeezed some gel out of a bottle with a farting sound, and spread it on his head.

"Maloria?!" he said.

She just kept spreading the gel. It was cold and slick.

"Maloria, what are you doing? Maloria?!"

"Save your strength," Hirotachi chuckled. "She's a little more obedient when the night shift's on duty. Aren'tcha, Fatty?"

No answer. Maloria's big eyes had narrowed to slits, and her lower lip covered her upper as she attached the wires to his forehead with duct tape. She backed away quickly.

Matt looked back to Hirotachi. "Whatever you think you're-"

The words died in his throat, along with every thought in his head, as a current of electricity shot through his body, making his back arch and his teeth snap together.

It ended. He collapsed back against the table with a gasp.

"Well, whaddaya know?" Hirotachi said, patting the console. "It still works! This is an old, old system. We've got a newer one, but it's pretty painless. I like the vintage systems myself. Reminds me of the old days, you know? Gives me a real"-again she flipped a switch-"charge."

More juice this time: held cruciform, he lunged upwards, going nowhere, teeth clamped, fingernails digging into his palms, vision shot with fire in alternating patterns of

RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK

A cool, wet breeze.

The smell of lotus.

And the light: soft and forgiving, the kind that falls from a sickle moon in spring.

Beneath his feet, the creak of the wooden bridge that spanned the pond at its narrowest point. The stars above the water were reflected in its shallow depths, and between their reflections were pale water lilies and hyacinth, whose fragrance made the air lush and thick with promise.

He was standing next to his wife, Janey. They stood on the bridge, watching the moonlight make a path of light on the water. Nearby, he could hear the sounds of the band playing at Janey's sister's wedding. The party had been going for two hours when he'd realized that he'd lost track of his wife in the crowds of sweating, laughing, drinking relatives, and on an impulse he'd walked to their favorite spot, guessing that she might have wanted to get away for a few minutes. He'd guessed right.

"Hey, you," he said, running his hand along her bare back. She was wearing a beautiful backless green silk number that had cost a fortune. It'd been worth every penny when he saw her standing next to her sister at the altar, hair up, eyes wet with emotion, looking so radiant and alive.

She let out a murmur at his touch and leaned into him. He moved his hand up to the base of her neck and inhaled the soap-and-sandalwood scent of her auburn hair. He loved her scent.

"I just needed to get away for a bit. Get some fresh air."

"Me, too."

"I saw that my uncle Robin cornered you by the punchbowl. Please tell me he didn't…?"

"Try to drag me into that goofy pyramid scheme he's got, the one with the tax referrals? Oh yes."

She squeezed his hand and groaned. "I'm so sorry about that."

"No prob. Although I did have to drag your aunt Myrna onto the dance floor just to get away from him."

"I bet she was thrilled."

"Certainly was. Especially when we realized that the song was 'Sexual Healing.'"

Laughing. "Oh my God. You've got to be kidding."

He held up a hand, laughing, too. "Cross my heart and hope to…" He didn't finish the phrase.

Her smile trembled, and her eyes got a bit brighter. She turned back to the moonlight on the water. "I'm so glad my sister finally found someone. Someone worthy of her."

"Me, too."

She leaned back, pressed her head against his collarbone. "It makes such a difference, to be with someone who's right for you. Who'll stand by you when things… when things get…"

Her shoulders started to shake.

He gently took her in his arms and turned her to face him. "Hey," he said quietly. "Hey. Look at me."

She did, a tear streak below each eye. The moon illuminated those, too.

"You and I are going to beat this thing," he said, and she nodded. "We're gonna be toasting your sister on her fortieth anniversary!" She nodded again, fiercely, but still not meeting his eyes. "You don't have my permission to bail, do you understand? Not with your aunt Myrna waiting in the wings."

At this she laughed-a big laugh, full of relief. She stood on tiptoe, put her arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek. "I love you," she whispered.

"I love you, too," he said. He ran his hands up her waist, feeling the green silk slide between his fingers. His hands traveled over her ribs, to the swell of her small, firm breasts. She let him.

Her arms tightened around his neck, and he leaned down so that she could press her forehead against his. "What are we going to do?" she said in a frightened whisper.

"You've got the surgery next Tuesday. After that, your only job is to get better."

"But what if… what if the MRI shows that it's in my bones?"

"Shhh. No use borrowing trouble." The phrase was old-fashioned, was his mother's, but it did its job, and she relaxed a little.

"I know. I'm such a freak. I'm just wound up so tight."

"No kidding. So what can we do about that?" His hand drifted carefully down her abdomen and gently played across the cleft between her legs. It would work, or it wouldn't.

She made a soft sound, and after just a moment, imperceptibly parted her legs. He took it for an invitation and made the most of it. He could feel the heat of her through the silk.

A moment later, her breathing became raw. "If you don't stop, you're going to spoil my nice new dress."

"There is a third option," he said, quickly taking hold of the green silk hem and lifting it. When he slipped his hand beneath, he found a surprise waiting for him.

"Oh, my God," he said. "You went commando to your sister's wedding?"

She bit her lip and widened her eyes flirtatiously. "Couldn't help it. Forgive me?"

"Only if you forgive me for this." He gently pushed her back against the bridge railing and sank to his knees in front of her.

"Matt, are you crazy? Not here-there's people everywhere!"

"Won't take long," he said, and closing his eyes, pressed his mouth to her warm crux, tasting her soft nest, easing his tongue into the familiar, fragrant groove.

He heard her gasp as he went to work, felt her fingers clutch his hair, tasted her salty acquiescence. She opened beneath his insistent touch like the night-blooming flowers of the pond, and her scent mingled with theirs until it overpowered him. She let out a small, familiar cry as he drew her into his mouth. Like sucking on an orchid, he thought for the thousandth time.

When she released, he drank her like he always did, until he had drained away her fear, her anxiety, and her will to do anything other than stroke his head and whisper, "I love you, Matt… I love you so much."

He nodded wordlessly, wrapping his arms around her, knowing it was the truth, knowing that he felt the same way and that nothing that was to come would ever change that.

RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK

Matt came crashing back to the reality of the padded table, the blinding fluorescents, the ache in his jaw, the fire in his veins.

And the smell of singed hair and urine.

"Well, look at that," Hirotachi croaked. "Looks like someone messed himself real bad. Do we need a dia-dee, Matthew?"

Matt glanced down and saw that his jeans were stained at the crotch. He couldn't have cared less. The shock treatment had recovered a memory he'd nearly forgotten-recovered it so completely, in such perfect detail, that he couldn't get his mind around the fact that it was gone, that she was gone, and that he was here in this godforsaken hell with this witch, instead of being on a bridge, in the moonlight, with-.

Hirotachi flipped the switch on and off quickly.

Matt grunted, went rigid as lightning coursed through his veins, then collapsed, gasping, in a pool of sweat.

Hirotachi cackled. "God, but I used to love seeing 'em stiffen up like that," she said. "Those were the days."

Matt turned his head to see Maloria looking at him wide-eyed. She looked down immediately.

"I think he had enough a' that," Maloria said softly, keeping her eyes on the floor.

"Oh, you do, do ya? Shows what you know, you fat black bitch."

Maloria's eyes flashed up, hot with defiance.

Hirotachi peeled back her lips to reveal a row of small, nicotine-yellow nubs. "Problem?"

Maloria looked down again, lips clamped shut, muscle twitching at her jaw.

"Shoe's on the other foot when the night shift's here, ain't it?"

"Just sayin', what you're doin' is like to kill him. Then he can't be took to the Ring at all, and who'll be in trouble then?"

Ring? Matt thought. What in hell's the Ring?

"Don't you worry your fat head about that. He's still got plenty of spunk left in him. See?"

And she flipped the switch again.

RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK

Again they stood together, Matt and Janey, staring at moonlight on water.

Only this time, there was no warm spring air, no band playing in the distance, no scent of lotus. Instead, the breeze was the dry by-product of the hospital's industrial air-circulation system, and the only scent was the chemical tang of lemon-scented disinfectant.

He had woken up at two a.m. to find that she'd left the room. When he stepped out, he'd found her standing in the hallway in front of a window overlooking a landscaped industrial park between the hospital and its parking structure. Snow covered the neatly spaced prairie grasses that bordered a small, frozen pond.

He put a hand on her shoulder blade.

"Hey, you."

She didn't startle. Just leaned back a little in that way he'd always found so assuring.

He cleared his throat. "Want to take a walk? I know a vending machine around the corner where we can score Funyuns for a song."

She shook her head.

He let it go. Stopped trying to be clever. Gently stroked the back of her neck.

"It's so beautiful," she said, staring out the window.

"Yeah." He looked at the snow-covered industrial park doubtfully, wondering if he was seeing what she was. "You mean the snow?"

"All of it," she said. "All of it." And began to cry.

He put his arms around her, placed his cheek against hers, and held her as she shook silently. Behind them, an orderly rattled past with a trayful of meds. Ignored the weeping couple. Nothing he hadn't seen before.

They stood there a long time, cheek to cheek, staring out at the frozen pond, the parking structure, the cold eye of the moon.

He was just about to suggest that they go back and try to sleep again when she cleared her throat and shook her head. "I just can't believe it. It doesn't make sense."

"What?" Although he knew.

"I just can't believe that, at some point-some point soon-I'll be gone. That I won't just be asleep, or unconscious-I won't be. I know it's true, but I just can't… get my head around it."

"It's not true," he said fiercely.

"Hon…" She touched his cheek. "It is."

"No, it isn't. No matter what happens to your body, you'll live on."

"Where?" She gave a weak, knowing smile. "You mean, like, heaven?" Neither one of them was religious, or ever had been.

"No, not heaven," he said. "You'll be with me." He knew what he meant. But could he say it in a way that would make her understand? He had to. "You'll be with me, Janey. You will. In my heart. I'll take you with me wherever I go. What I see, you'll see. What I do, you'll do. I'll never let you go. Never." He hugged her fiercely. "You've got to believe me. You've got to."

"I do, Matt." She touched his face with her fingertips. His eyes were too blurred with tears to see her expression. But the words she said were enough, and she said them again, taking him back to the time he'd first stood with her in front of hundreds of friends and family, in heart-pounding terror and elation, and heard her say that life-changing phrase: "I do, Matt-I do."

RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK

"Whoo! Now, that was a doozy!" Hirotachi crowed, her froggish face stretched upwards in grotesque delight.

Matt collapsed back onto the table. Sweat soaked his shirt. Every cell in his body felt scorched. Tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes, pooling in his ears.

"You definitely gonna kill him, you keep that shit up." Maloria had backed against a wall, her lower lip protruding as she said it.

"Nahhhh," Hirotachi purred, drawing it out, "you'd be amazed at how much a grown buck like this can take. What's he had, two sessions? Can't do crap with two. But three… three's the charm."

She flipped the switch.

RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK

Darkness.

A heavy weight, pressing down upon him, crushing the breath out of his chest. And cold, cold, cold!

Ice packed into his ears, his eyes, his mouth.

The Christmas-tree smell of smashed pine.

Can't move his left hand. Right hand throbbing. Right knee jammed against his chin. Teeth feel loose.

Can't draw a breath!

Unable to breathe, he starts to hyperventilate.

Red sparks flash before his eyes in the darkness.

Far above him, a muffled roar.

Far above him, impossibly, the weight increases. Like being crushed into a cold marble floor by a giant's icy heel.

His ribs creak. His lungs rattle as he fights to draw a breath and fails.

Realizes he's going to die. His only thought: Like this?

His breathing gets so shallow, it's just the slightest flexing of a single nostril.

He stops hearing the muffled roar.

He stops seeing the red sparks.

He stops feeling the smashed hand, the loose teeth.

He's blacking out.

But as Matt's five senses fade, another sense becomes apparent to him. One he's never noticed before. It's almost like sonar: somehow he can feel the space beyond his body: its shape, density, distance. Like his mind has been somehow freed of the confines of his compressed skull.

He can feel the jagged, dark weight of a shattered boulder to his right.

He can feel the long, soft, rotting trunk of a felled tree lying diagonally behind him.

Above, he can feel the chaotic tangle of torn brush.

Below, shelves of ice lying atop one another like shattered mirrors.

Help me.

He doesn't say the words. He doesn't even think them. He's beyond that now. But even so, the impulse behind those words, the raw need they express, pulses out of him like the cry of a bat. And like the cry of a bat it bounces off the jagged teeth of the boulder, the soft line of the fallen trunk, the crown of brush above, the broken ice-glass below.

Help me.

Help me.

Help me.

The pulse goes farther, faster, as his other senses fade. It travels all the way up to the surface, where snow swirls in a helix and the pale orb of the sun hangs above it like the ghost of heat. The pulse travels all the way down, far below the panes of ice, through endless strata of stone and earth and ice.

And it is there, miles below him, that the pulse finds purchase. Where, for the first time, it is not reflected, but absorbed. Reaches something far below that wakens, takes notice. That stirs. Uncoils. Grows attentive.

He can't feel its shape… or weight… or nature. Only that it is very old, very dense: is somehow compact-somehow folded in upon itself many, many times over. And it's very far down. So far down that if it were left alone, it would almost certainly stay put. Stay buried. Maybe forever.

Help me.

That final pulse hits home. The thing far below responds, begins to ascend. Sluggishly at first, then gathering force. He can feel it slowly spiraling upwards, its shape shifting like the shadow of a cloud.

It draws nearer to him, eager now, homing in like a flock to a tree, a swarm to a hive. Clearly, he's drawing it to him. But is he drawing it intentionally, like a fly fisherman luring a trout? Or unintentionally, like a bucket of chum drawing a hammerhead?

He can't tell.

But he can sense it draw closer, closer, until it's close enough to make a pass, then another. Feints away, then closes in.

Now it is in the ice with him.

Now it is on him.

Now it is in him.

A gasp-and Matt can breathe again. His lungs expand, contract. Not much, but enough.

The red sparks dance before his eyes again.

Again he feels his right hand, but it's a little less painful, and his teeth are a little less loose.

He draws another breath, but strangely, it's a double breath.

His heart pounds, but with a double beat.

His brain forms a single thought: Alive!

And promptly falls into a deep, dreamless sleep, to the sound of faint, echoing laughter.

RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK

"Stop it, stop it," Maloria was yelling. "We was just told to hold him here. Now they ready for him, and you gonna fry his ass 'til he can't take a step? I ain't answerin' for that!"

Though Matt's mind was foggy with pain, and his vision blurred, he could see Hirotachi's face grow strangely blank. "Listen to me, nigger." She pointed a finger at Maloria, whose mouth had fallen open. "For the last time, shut your South-Side-of-Chicago, ghetto-ass piehole. I run this shift. And if I wanna fry this boy like a day-old wonton at China Buffet? I'm gonna do it. So: Back. The Fuck. Off."

Jaw locked, Maloria bent over, pretending to rummage through her purse.

Hirotachi turned back to Matt. "You like Emeril, Lover Boy? I do. Watch his cooking show every day. And he's the one that taught me what I'm about to teach you: that to make a good impression, you've got to kick it up a notch."

She turned a knob on the console all the way to the right.

Took the switch in hand.

And then Matt watched in amazement as Hirotachi-as if to demonstrate what he was in for-snapped upright, hands clenched pharaonically across her chest. She clacked her teeth together, stared bug-eyed at him, and made a hissing sound.

Then teetered from foot to foot… and toppled forward, trailing a line of wires that extended from the center of her back to the yellow plastic gun in Maloria's hand.

"Paid three hundred twenty-five dollars for this shit, bitch-and WORTH EVERY PENNY."

CHAPTER NINE

It took Maloria only a few seconds to unbuckle the straps that held Matt in five-point restraint. He needed her help to stand, and even then it took a few tries. His legs were jelly.

"Boy, I wouldn't a' helped 'em out, but they so crazy-"

He waved her off.

"Gotta… gotta call the police," he croaked. His throat felt like sandpaper.

"Yeah, I'm all about that. Only I left my cell phone in my car, down the driveway. And Admin's crawlin' with night shift."

"I'll go with you." He took a few experimental steps. Stayed upright. "But we've got to bring the girl with us."

"Annica. Huh-uh." She shook her head, eyes big, pulling him towards the door. "Too late for her. She already at the Ring."

He stopped, pulled away. "The Ring? What the hell is that?"

"It's that stone circle they got, where they put on they plays, up the meditation path. C'mon!" She left the room, waving him to follow.

He did, his joints aching with every step. "But what's going on there tonight? What are they going to do to her?"

"No idea, and I don't intend to find out." They were in a dimly lit hallway. She opened a door marked "Emergency Only" and led him up a short set of concrete steps to another door, which she pushed open.

Together they stepped out into the foggy night.

Matt looked around. They had come out of the lower level of Module Two. To their left, the meditation path led into the woods. Through the fog, Matt could see the faint glow of lights among the pines.

To their right was the Admin Building, and beyond it, the driveway leading to the highway: deliverance.

"We'll go round the loading-dock way," she said, starting forward. "Where we met before. Just stay close together, and- Hey! Where you goin'?"

But it was obvious where he was going. He was going to the Ring.

"Get back here! You crazy!"

"Go get your phone, Maloria," he said without breaking stride. "Call for help."

"You ain't gonna need help, boy! You go up that path, all you gonna need is a pine box! Don't you understand yet? They is crazy ma'fuckahs!"

"So am I," he said. And meant it.

# # # # # #

He left her. Found the path. Passed the birdbath. Felt the long, wet, unmowed grass give way to pine needles. Smelled the pines. Felt his heart thump in his chest.

He didn't want to go into the woods. When Maloria had pulled him towards Admin, he'd wanted to follow. But he couldn't.

Matt had mostly forgotten those moments with Janey on the bridge and in the hospital, until Hirotachi had shocked him. They were too painful to think about, so he hadn't. But now, for the first time in months, he had. And not just thought about them: relived them. He had seen Janey's face. Heard her voice. So real… it was like, for a few moments, she had been with him. He couldn't shake that feeling. Didn't even want to. But part of feeling close to her, feeling like she was standing just at his elbow, meant that he couldn't follow Maloria and leave the blonde with the night shift. What would Janey say about that? He knew what she would say. And if it was true-even a little true-that he still carried her with him, how could he face her-or even the idea of her-if he left a young girl in the hands of these monsters?

He couldn't. That was all there was to it.

He went up the path as fast as he could.

But even as Matt got closer to the amphitheater, things started to go south.

His plan-what little he had of one-was to creep up, unnoticed, and spy on whatever was going on at the end of the meditation path. Take them by surprise, if there was any threat to the girl.

But that wasn't how it fell out. To begin with, as soon as he hit the path, he glanced over his shoulder and saw two figures following him. He sped up, forcing his wobbly legs to carry him more quickly over the damp needles and pinecones. But from the corner of his eye he saw shadows pacing him, parallel to the path: on both sides of the path. Sometimes they'd pass through a shaft of moonlight, and he'd see something glinting in their hands. Whatever it was, they all seemed to have it.

By the time Matt got to the boulder covered in black moss, they began to converge behind him, driving him around the corner, past the glowing horror of the Head Tree and its many obscene ornaments.

Until at last, heart thundering, he stood at the lip of the stone amphitheater.

Jesus Christ, he thought. What have I gotten myself into?

# # # # # #

The amphitheater wasn't big. Built into the hollow of a hill, it consisted of eight levels of stone-slab seats arranged concentrically around a sandy pit dotted with pinecones. Besides being lit by the ghostly light of the Head Tree, there were four halogen lights on poles focused on the center of the pit. About a dozen men and women sat on the bottom ring of stone slabs, completely encircling it. All of them had faces ravaged by rot and disease. It looked like a leper convention. Smelled like one, too.

But from this evil throng, three individuals stood out.

On the far side of the pit-which couldn't have been more than twenty feet in diameter-was a sort of stone throne. It was built into the top level of seats. In it sat a thin figure in a black robe. He had dark, curly hair, and his face was covered with bandages.

At his feet knelt the blonde.

Her hair fell over her downcast face; he couldn't see her eyes. But he could see how she shook. He could see that her hands were bound behind her back, and there was a bad gash on her shoulder. Once again, she'd been stripped to her bra.

The third figure was the most arresting of all. In the center of the pit was a stool. Sitting on it, motionless, backlit by the glare of the halogens, was the giant, tattooed Ojibwe.

Not good, Matt thought.

And that was before he noticed that the Ojibwe's wrists were wrapped in the weird wood-and-leather cuffs he'd seen hanging in the kitchen.

Not good at all.

A rustle of black robes; a raised hand.

"Matt Cahill… come on down!"

The muffled words, delivered in the jolly cadence of The Price Is Right's Bob Barker, came from the bandaged face of the man on the throne.

Matt had no intention of complying until he heard a soft pattering behind him and turned to see a half dozen more aides closing in on him. Now he could see clearly what they held, what had been glinting in the moonlight: knives. Not pocket knives, either, but the long, thin steak knives that he recognized from the wooden racks in the kitchen.

They backed him into the ring.

Once there, he turned quickly and started towards Annica.

But halfway across the pit he stopped in his tracks as every one of the rotting assembly drew out a similar knife with a soft rasp.

Matt slowly turned three hundred and sixty degrees. There was nowhere to go. The encircling stone seats were fully occupied, elbow to elbow, by the rot-faced aides. And every single one of them was pointing a gleaming eight-inch blade towards his heart.

"Matt Cahill," came the muffled voice of the man on the throne. "We've been waiting for you." He gave a low chuckle.

"Likewise. And seeing as we're doing introductions," Matt said, taking a step towards the man on the throne, "it's nice to finally meet you, Jesse Weston."

Silence.

The bandaged, black-robed figure stood up. There was no sound but the soft hum of the halogens. There was no other movement but the play of light on steel.

"Jesse Weston is dead," the voice hissed. "My name is Rotting Jack."

CHAPTER TEN

Matt swallowed. He knew if he backed down now, it'd be all over. "Well, I don't mean to argue the point, but I saw a video of Jesse Weston sliding around the ceiling of Module Two like an air-hockey puck. And no offense? But you're a dead ringer for the guy. And if you took off those bandages, so I could see your face…"

"My face," came the muffled reply, "isn't under these bandages."

"Isn't…?" Matt didn't know what to make of that.

"No." The figure took hold of the lapels of his black robe and pulled them apart. "This is my face."

Matt stared, his mouth open. Jesse Weston had taken a knife to his bare chest. Dark scars showed where he had cut two large circles around each nipple, making them look like giant eyes. And beneath his navel a long, jagged set of jack-o'-lantern teeth had been carved into his belly. The effect looked like what a die-hard Packers fan might do to attract the attention of a game-day news camera. If that die-hard Packers fan worshipped an insane owl god.

Matt licked his lips. "You know, they have programs for people who cut. You just gotta ask."

"Rotting Jack does not ask, Matt Cahill. Rotting Jack commands. His servants fulfill his every desire. And right now, what he desires"-Weston brought his hands together in a loud clap-"is blood."

Immediately, three aides sitting behind the Ojibwe stood up and crossed to the silent giant. Two knelt on either side of him and lifted up his huge, tattooed arms. Then they pulled from their belts the two big butcher knives that Matt had seen in the kitchen. They slid the knife handles into the deep grooves built into the Ojibwe's leather cuffs, then tightened and buckled the straps. When they lowered his hands and stepped back, both of the Ojibwe's arms tapered off into twelve inches of tempered steel.

This, thought Matt, is going to be very bad.

The two aides backed up, leaving the third standing directly behind the motionless giant. He was holding something, too. He lifted it up, and there was a general murmur of excitement from the knife-wielding audience.

Matt couldn't tell what it was at first; it looked to be a triangular swatch of leather about eighteen inches by twelve, bound tightly to a wooden frame. Then he saw the single eye slit halfway up, and how, on the bottom, the tapered end was fringed with large, serrated shark's teeth.

It was the mask that he'd seen hanging from the FA's office wall.

As the two aides who'd attached the knives quickly returned to their seats, the third gingerly pulled back the elastic band behind the mask and laid it against the base of the Ojibwe's skull. Then-bracing himself for a quick retreat-he slid the shark-toothed, triangular mask over the big guy's face.

The effect was instantaneous.

As soon as the mask slid over his cross-eyed, jut-jawed features, the giant sprang off the stool as if electrified. The crowd roared as he swung his head searchingly to the right, then to the left, then looked straight ahead-caught sight of Matt-and shot forward.

Matt had seen a documentary once about alligators, and how their stumpy legs made them deceptively fast because, even though they could go only ten miles per hour, they didn't accelerate-they began at ten miles per hour. So if you weren't already retreating at top speed before they attacked, you probably weren't going to get the chance to do so.

In this, the Ojibwe resembled the alligator. His legs and arms were fantastically thick, but he didn't huff slowly into action like other big men Matt had known. Instead, he bounded for Matt with a roar, legs pumping, arms swinging, and the knives eagerly carving the air between them.

Matt turned to flee and saw a row of rot-faced aides behind him brandishing a dozen steak knives. He turned back just in time to leap away from a downwards blow that would have split him to the clavicle. But as he tried to shift his weight, the Ojibwe closed in, slinging the same arm in a furious backhand swipe. Matt misjudged the distance and lifted his hand just in time to avoid having the right side of his face sheered off.

But at a price: the huge butcher knife cracked into the bone of his forearm, releasing a spray of blood and making him careen backward across the pit.

The crowd screamed with bloodlust as Matt gasped, gripping his forearm, trying to staunch the blood. The pain was incredible. But before he knew it, before he could even get his bearings, the tattooed giant had lunged again.

Pounding across the sand, the giant gave a weird, high roar from behind his triangular mask. His flame-red arms pumped back and forth like pistons on an engine gone berserk.

Again, the ring of blades prevented Matt's escape. In the two seconds before the monster reached him, he formulated a thought: If I jump aside again, the same thing will happen… so I'll do the opposite of what I just did.

Instead of jumping away, he stood his ground.

Instead of standing, he fell into a crouch.

When the giant was almost upon him, Matt faked a lunge at him.

Sure enough, the Ojibwe swung his right blade a second too early. Matt leaned back as the massive knife sheared the air between them.

When Matt stepped to the side, the giant did exactly as he had before: swung his right arm in an immediate backhand swing.

Only this time, Matt was ready for him. With both of his hands extended, he caught the Ojibwe's arm at the wrist. The blow drove Matt backward, but he went with the swing's momentum, added to it, and-feeling the giant lose his balance-slung him with all his might into the ring of knives.

A second later, the night shift's jeers turned into screams of panic as the Ojibwe crashed into the front row, swinging away. An aide with no jaw to speak of lifted up a hand in defense, and the blade caught it midpalm, sending five fingers flying overhead in a red mist.

But the Ojibwe was unstoppable. He flipped over, shoved away from the crowd, and regained his feet. In doing so, he braced a blade four inches deep into an aide's sternum. When he pushed his massive girth back into the ring, the aide toppled facefirst into the pit, vomiting blood.

The Ojibwe shot forward again, howling and weaving his red blades before him in a web of death.

Matt didn't wait: taking a big step, he dug the toe of his boot into the soft sand of the pit and then kicked upwards. A heap of sand and pine needles flew against the Ojibwe's triangular, sawtoothed mask.

The giant screeched, staggered. Some of it must have gotten into the narrow eye slit, because his charge became a stumble; he crossed one arm defensively across his face while the other made a wild, diagonal swipe that Matt dodged easily.

Behind the Ojibwe now, Matt drove his heel into the giant's ass, propelling him again into the screaming crowd of watchers.

Blinded, the giant had no idea whom he'd fallen against. So he dug both blades hilt deep into the chest of a leperous aide and slung him upwards.

Back in the pit, Matt stepped aside to avoid the falling corpse, which crashed to earth in two pieces that were approximately the same size. He watched as the giant swung blindly, driving his right-arm butcher knife into the stone seating so fiercely that the blade snapped off at the handle.

The Ojibwe shook his head; his vision seemed to clear. He turned, saw Matt-and barreled forward.

Feeling almost confidant, Matt fell into a crouch-only to hear an unexpected ripping sound, and feel, in the following instant, a searing pain tear across his shoulder blades.

He whirled around. An aide with a face crawling with maggots quickly retreated into the audience, his blade red with Matt's blood.

A roar behind him.

Matt twisted back-and felt his back scream in pain. Saw that the Ojibwe was upon him; knew that it was too late to fake or dodge or kick. So instead he did the only thing he could remember from his days of high school football: he tucked his head, hunched his shoulders, and threw himself at the Ojibwe's knees.

The giant swung his arms-and had his right blade still been attached, Matt would have been skewered. But as it was, he received only an agonizing punch in his sliced back as he crashed into the giant's shins.

Matt's vision exploded in sparks. It was like tackling two fire hydrants. He could have sworn that he broke both shoulders. But somehow his tackle did the trick, and the giant came crashing down with him.

Matt knew that the next second would determine who walked out of this ring alive, so-ignoring his bruises, his sliced wrist, his cut shoulders-he rolled over, got up, and dove onto the back of the Ojibwe, who was already rising on his knees. With his right arm around the giant's neck, Matt snagged with his left hand the buckle that bound the remaining blade to its cuff and in a single motion slipped it open. When the Ojibwe swung wildly, trying to slice Matt's head off, the remaining butcher knife flew free of the cuff and buried itself in the crotch of an unlucky member of the night shift.

Then-right when Matt was entertaining the idea of choking the big guy into unconsciousness-the giant let out another high, hollow roar and buried his elbow deep into Matt's gut.

Matt released him, staggered backward. Gasped for air.

In a second, the Ojibwe was on his feet, had turned, had reached Matt and slung both arms around his waist in a bear hug.

He lifted Matt off his feet and began to squeeze.

Matt gasped. His head was ten feet in the air. He felt paralyzed from the waist down. His hands were free but seemed unable to do anything but brace themselves against the giant's shoulders as the big man's trunk-like arms crushed him like twin anacondas.

His ribs creaked. Unable to draw a breath, Matt felt his vision dim with black fireworks. Straight ahead, he could see-but not hear-the cheering, fist-pumping night shift, the snarling laugh of Jesse Weston, the blonde's tear-stained cheeks.

I'm going to die, Matt thought as the blood roared in his ears. And for some reason, he had a sudden image of Janey saying the same thing while staring out the hospital window, and of himself telling her, You'll be with me, Janey… What I see, you'll see. What I do, you'll do. I'll never let you go. Never.

And the thought occurred to him: If I die, Janey-what's left of her-dies with me.

And that was not an option.

Breathless, he looked down at the beast that was crushing the life out of him. Looked into the freakish triangular mask, with its single eye slit and long, jagged shark's teeth encrusting its tapered edge.

Had an idea.

Grabbed the top of the mask with both hands and pulled it towards himself.

The elastic band stretched, stretched… and snapped.

Immediately, the top of the mask jerked away from the Ojibwe's face, towards Matt, and the narrow, jagged-toothed end of the triangle tipped over the giant's chin, until the shark's teeth came to rest against his Adam's apple.

With the last of his strength, Matt drew back his arm as far as it would go, and then slammed the heal of his palm against the top of the mask, driving the triangular tip-with its cluster of shark's teeth-deep into the Ojibwe's neck.

The huge arms released him, and Matt collapsed into the sand. Gulping air, he watched as the giant doubled over and grabbed the mask. The Ojibwe gave a high, panicky whine and ripped the mask out of his neck, flinging it over the heads of the night shift.

A huge jet of black blood sprayed from his open throat, and then another. He staggered in a circle, gagging, clutching his neck, tripped over his own feet, and came crashing down into the sand of the pit.

The giant gave a last, pitiful croak; his limbs trembled as a black pool spread beneath him. His crossed eyes rolled in confusion and pain, and his piranha's jaw worked soundlessly.

Watching him expire, Matt felt certain that the giant had had no idea what he was doing, that he was nothing more than a puppet. And Matt had no doubt who had been pulling the strings.

He got to his feet. Looked deep into the furious eyes of Jesse Weston.

Said, "Next."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The night shift hissed like a snake pit. Four or five had been butchered by the Ojibwe, but that still left about a dozen, and they had spaced themselves around him in a perfect ring again, knives extended.

Weston seemed too enraged to speak.

Oh, what the hell, Matt thought. "You said you wanted blood, Jesse?" He gestured towards the fallen giant, to the dismembered pieces of the night shift that darkened the sands. "Why don't you come down into the ring with me? We got all you want, right here."

"I think not," Weston said in a quaking, oily voice. "I think I'll let my subjects pin you, skin you, and spread salt on what's left. But not until I've quenched my thirst with the blood of your little friend."

Weston grabbed the kneeling girl by her blond hair and jerked her head backward so that she was looking at Matt, upside down. Her kohl-smudged eyes were blank with trauma yet seemed to reach out to him across the distance.

"No!" Matt took a step towards her, but the night shift clustered in front of him, knives glinting in the moonlight.

The man in the black robe knelt next to the girl. "See these bandages, Matt? Dindren's work. He bit me twice. But once I gave myself over to Rotting Jack? I was able to revenge myself on the doc many, many times over. He showed you my bite marks, right? He was proud of them, in the end. It's an honor, after all, to quench the thirst of a god."

Matt couldn't believe his ears. "Did you say 'god'?"

"Of course." Weston's bandages crackled as he grinned at Matt. "That's what happens when you give in to them. I gave in to mine. Just like you-if you hadn't come here-would have eventually given in to yours."

Mine? Yours? Matt's mind raced. Was Weston saying that Rotting Jack was different from Mr. Dark? How could he possibly know that?

Weston lowered his bandaged face to within inches of Annica's upraised chest. His eyes flicked outwards to Matt.

"You really don't know what you're missing," he said, casually putting his hand on her pink sports bra. "Because, to tell the truth, the act of biting another human being is surprisingly habit-forming. Especially"-and here he ripped the bra off, exposing her small white breasts-"the tits."

And he bit her.

As the first streak of blood ran from his mouth, Matt charged the wall of knives arrayed before him. But the instant before they would have run him through, two things happened.

First, the girl's pupils rolled back into her skull, so that only the whites showed.

Second, the four halogen lights simultaneously dimmed, then exploded in a fountain of white sparks.

Chaos: the night shift cried out and bolted every which way, trying to escape the fiery rain that poured out of the halogens in burst after burst.

Matt didn't waste a second. He crashed into the scattering group, flattened a fleeing aide, and ripped a ten-inch carving knife out of his hand. Then he bounded up the stone seats towards the girl.

Weston was crouched above her, his mouth red with her blood, grinning.

"Now you see the power of-"

"Oh, shut up," Matt said, and slung the blade with such force that it cut through Weston's entire neck and most of his vertebrae. Weston's bandaged head flipped off like the top of a Pez container and remained connected to his torso by only a small strip of flesh. He collapsed backward, jetting gore.

Matt stuck the knife in his belt and turned his attention to the blonde. Her pupils had reappeared, but they were blank, disconnected. Matt slid one arm beneath the damp flesh of her bare back and another beneath her knees. He lifted her up. She weighed almost nothing.

Matt looked down into the small stone amphitheater. A cloud had covered the moon, and the only light came from the pulsing bursts of sparks from the halogens, which were getting smaller and farther apart with every passing second. When the sparks died out, the entire scene became pitch-dark. When they spurted again, like a slowing heartbeat, he could see the empty ring of seats, the bloodied pit, the bodies and limbs strewn within it. And shapes between the trees, moving, shifting, reassembling. He looked at his feet and saw Weston's beheaded body. The black robe had fallen open, revealing the huge circular scars around his nipples and the jagged, jack-o'-lantern mouth cut below the navel. Then the sparks faded again, and darkness fell.

When the halogens showered fire into the arena a final time, the upper ring was empty, and Matt was gone.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The moon stayed hidden, and Matt traveled in darkness. He moved as quickly as he could, following what he hoped was a broad curve that would skirt the Carthage grounds but lead eventually to the highway. Annica was in his arms, her bony chest covered with the flannel shirt he'd had wrapped around his waist. Her head rested against his collarbone.

"I told you."

He almost missed the words. They were whispered. It was the first time in ten minutes that the girl had spoken.

"I told you what I could do."

Matt swallowed, thinking back to their first conversation in Module One. Wild talents and all that. "Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, you did."

A pause.

"I'm such a freak." Annica's voice was strained, miserable.

"Not compared to me." That was the God's truth.

Another pause. Longer. Then:

"My boob hurts."

"I'm not surprised." Matt decided not to mention that his wrist, back, ribs-and pretty much everything else-was killing him. "Listen, I need your help." He wanted to get her mind off of what had just happened. "I'm trying to find the highway, okay? But my hearing's not so great. Too many rock concerts when I was a kid. Total silence, for other people? Sounds like cicada season to me." Now he was rambling. "Anyway, can you help me listen for the highway?"

"Yeah, I guess." She put her head against his shoulder. In a small voice, she said, "Thank you."

Matt didn't respond.

"Thank you," she said again. "For not letting him… eat me."

A lump in his throat. "The road," he said. "Listen for the road." And then, after a long pause, "You're welcome."

# # # # # #

Matt walked on. The only sound he could hear was the soft whisper of pine boughs as they passed through the old-growth forest.

"Anything?" he asked.

"Mmm… Maybe to the right, a little? I'm hearing a sound like…" She stiffened in his arms.

"What is it?" he said.

"Matt," she whispered. "Someone's following us."

He stopped.

They stood dead still.

"There," she hissed.

She was right. He'd heard it. A crackle behind them.

Matt stepped behind a large pine trunk and gently set her on her feet. He drew the long carving knife from his belt. He put his hand on her bare shoulder and pressed her back against the tree. They stood in silence like that, neither one moving a muscle.

Another soft rustle in the undergrowth. Closer this time

And closer still.

The tree they were standing against had a split trunk. As the rustling came nearer, the blonde soundlessly turned her face towards the gap, to see what was coming.

Matt did the same.

They saw branches moving. Heard the crackle of twigs. They could half glimpse a shape in the fog, but it was darkness on darkness and meant nothing to them.

Just then, the moon slid free of the clouds, and a few slants of pale light filtered through the branches nearest them.

When she saw what it was, the girl sucked in a harsh breath.

Matt's hand snapped around her mouth the second before she could scream. To spare her the sight, he pressed her face into his chest. He could feel her hot breath against his palm, could feel her screaming silently into it.

He wanted to do the same, but he was frozen in place, watching the thing materialize out of the fog. She had understood what it was before he had. He hadn't recognized it without its black robe. Or its head.

But then, as the fog parted, he had seen the wide eyes carved into the torso, above the jagged, jack-o'-lantern mouth, and he knew it for what it was…

Rotting Jack.

It came even with their tree, moving slowly, the feet taking measured steps, a hand rising mechanically to push a dead limb aside. With it came the stench of a shallow grave, of a slaughterhouse in July.

It moved two steps past their tree and paused.

Matt stared into the upside-down eyes of Jesse Weston. They, like the rest of his bandaged head, hung from the truncated neck by a strip of skin no thicker than a Fruit Roll-Up.

Matt saw the frozen madness in those eyes. It's an honor, after all, to quench the thirst of a god. Jesse had given in to the beast, and it had eaten him alive. It would do the same to Matt if he let it. Looking into Weston's eyes was like looking into a mirror-a mirror of what could happen to him.

Those dead eyes drew Matt's gaze hypnotically, like a cobra transfixing its prey. Staring into them, Matt could almost imagine Weston's oily voice pressing through those upside-down gray lips, saying, To tell the truth, the act of biting another human being is surprisingly habit-forming…

The remembered words had a weird effect on Matt: he was suddenly aware of how much bigger he was than Annica, of how he held her face effortlessly in his hands. He swallowed, feeling the peach fuzz along her delicate jaw. Something in Weston's twisted death gaze seemed to advise him that no one would ever, ever know if Matt chose to lay the blonde down among the pine needles, climb on top of her, and bite and screw her to his heart's content, like a mantis devouring its mate.

But Matt knew that he was who he chose to be. And who he chose to be was not that.

A light breeze blew through the fog, dispersing it for a moment and making the boughs lift and fall.

Rotting Jack took a step forward, away from the split pine, and Weston's head swayed like the lifeless appendage it was. The spell, if that's what it had been, was broken.

Matt blinked, his eyes watering at the stench.

Rotting Jack took another step, and another, pausing only to turn its torso this way and that, as if the carved face were capable of sight.

Then the moon began to slide back behind its cloud, and the headless corpse shambled into a darkness made of equal parts fog and shadow. But long after it vanished, Matt could hear the rustle of its relentless, dead feet softly crushing the ivy, needles, and pine cones that covered the forest floor.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was the flashing blue and red lights that finally led them to the highway. Annica saw them first and pointed them out to Matt. Even then he had trouble focusing; his entire body ached, and his mind was going gray with fatigue. He stumbled twice, trying to hurry. In the end she took him by the arm to support him as they climbed over tree stumps and underbrush and finally came to the road.

The car had state trooper markings, and a trooper-wearing the Smokey the Bear hat-was on the other side of the highway, with a flashlight in hand, talking into a mobile phone. He was looking at a car that was upside down in a ditch, surrounded by smashed ferns. The macadam was littered with pieces of glass and red plastic. It was unclear what had caused the wreck.

"Wait here," Matt said. Halfway across the highway he started to get a tight feeling in his stomach. He saw that the flipped car was a red Toyota Corolla.

"Maloria? Maloria!" He ran painfully to the edge of the road, fell into a crouch. But it was too dark: he couldn't see if there was anyone trapped in the driver's seat. "The driver-is she still in there?"

"Sir," the trooper said, "I'm afraid she's gone to her reward."

"Oh my God," Matt said. "What happened?"

"Eyewitness testimony has it that she was leaving Carthage MHC at top speed with a flat tire in shreds, sparks flying off the rim. Apparently she was followed by an unidentified vehicle that drove her off the road."

Kneeling in the grass, Matt put a hand over his eyes. He couldn't believe it. After everything else: this. And he was the one who had sent her back to the parking lot, alone…

"Where was she taken?"

"Well, I don't rightly know, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was to that big Kanye West concert in the sky where all good little South Siders go."

Matt turned.

The trooper tipped his flashlight up, gruesomely highlighting his pointed chin, hook nose, emaciated cheeks, and deep-set eyes.

Mr. Dark grinned at him. "How's tricks, Matt?"

Matt rose quickly. Without even thinking, he whipped the carving knife from his belt and flung it.

The second before it hit him, Mr. Dark split into two Mr. Darks, and the knife sailed harmlessly between them.

"Asexual reproduction, Matt. Highly underrated."

"Get the fuck out of here."

"What'sa matter, handsome? Three's a crowd?"

Three. Matt flashed a look back to Annica. She was still standing there, arms crossed against her chest. He couldn't see her expression in the fog.

Mr. Dark's four eyes followed his. "Nice little morsel you've got there." He slid the flashlight farther under his chin, so that everything disappeared but his cruel, clown-slit mouth and the hook of his nose. He looked like the skull of Mr. Punch. "Tell you what," he whispered. "I know a nice little culvert near here. Lots of atmosphere. Whatta ya say we show her a night on the town, then split her fifty-fifty? Heads for me, tails for you." He gave Matt a whoremaster's grin. "Deal?"

"The only deal I'll make with you is this," Matt said. "Listen carefully: if you divide yourself into a cop and a construction worker and an Indian chief, and do the YMCA? I will give you fifty dollars, cash."

Mr. Dark's red eyes got redder.

"You're pretty funny for a dead man, Matt."

"And you're pretty skinny for a windigo, or whatever the fuck you are." Matt took in Mr. Dark's hollow cheeks and his tight, white skin. Remembered Dindren saying, The Otherworld, Matt, has rules like ours. Under special circumstances, its citizens are required to answer truthfully.

Mr. Dark stared at him, the twin fires in his eyes glittering patiently. Like he's waiting for me to ask him something, Matt realized. But what?

The answer came to him immediately. Matt had to know if he was Mr. Dark's locus or his host. Had to. Dindren may have been batshit crazy, but if there was even one chance in a million that he was right, and there was a way to stop this carnage from happening, Matt had to take that chance-whatever the cost.

So… What was the question Dindren said should have been posed to the Grail? The one he'd have only one chance to ask?

Matt racked his brains. Jesus, of all the things to forget.

"I'm waiting." Mr. Dark's tongue flickered out. It was flat, black, and pointed. Matt glimpsed the back of his throat, which was lined with row upon row of sharp teeth, like a great white's.

Christ.

Suddenly it came to him, the Grail question: Whom do you serve?

He licked his lips.

"Got a question?" Mr. Dark asked.

"As a matter of fact, I do." Matt took a breath. "Who…?"

Matt paused a moment. Was he the locus or the host? A lot was riding on the answer. If locus, then he'd be condemned to a lifetime of wandering alone, trying to avert havoc in order to starve a parasitic demon that he couldn't ever hope to understand. If host…

"Who…?" he said.

If host, he'd have to kill himself. As soon as possible. Go find that carving knife, put it to his throat, and lose everything he knew, or would know, of the world. Including Janey. Because beat-up and crazy and frightened as he was, he was all that was left of her.

Feeling weaker now. The impossibility of not being weighing down his tongue.

"Who…?"

Mr. Dark raised a skeptical eyebrow. Lifted his hand and mimed knocking. In a deep purr: "Knock, knock, Matty-boy?" When Matt didn't answer, Mr. Dark answered for him, in a high, childish voice: "Who's there, Mr. Dark?"

One more chance. Matt, shaking, forced it out. "Who…?"

Mr. Dark, with a wide-eyed, exaggerated wink: "Who who?"

Hoo-ooh, OOH-HOOH!

Hoo-ooh, OOH-HOOH!

Matt looked up. High above him: an owl in a tree, with glowing red eyes. It spread its black wings and took flight.

Matt looked back down. Mr. Dark was gone.

He turned slowly in a circle, staring into the foggy dark.

Nothing.

Dindren's words came to mind: Ask the right question… You will not get a second chance.

Matt's jaw tightened as he stared into the black void around him, and the highway that ran endlessly through it.

"All right, you fucker," he said. "We do it the hard way."

# # # # # #

"Who were you talking to?" Annica asked when he crossed back over the highway.

"You mean the trooper?"

"What trooper?"

He looked at her, then looked away. "Do me a favor, kid: just stick out your thumb."

# # # # # #

An eighteen-wheeler filled with Borden milk squealed to a stop five minutes later. The driver was delighted to see Annica waving him down. He was less delighted to see Matt trudge up behind her, looking like something that had crawled out of a crypt. But when Annica made it clear that they were a package deal, he finally relented.

"Wet as hell tonight," he pointed out grumpily as Matt followed the blonde up onto the big vinyl seats and slammed the door.

Matt grunted as he scanned the driver quickly. He looked like a skinny Santa: blue eyes, white beard, wire-rim glasses. The comparison ended with his sinewy frame and Jimmy Page T-shirt, which said "Ramble On." But no lesions, wounds, swellings. He smelled of Old Spice, wore no sunglasses: behind wire-rims, his blue eyes were guileless-and unbeetled.

Matt settled in, reached for the seat belt.

The big engine rumbled as the driver threw it into gear and leaned on the pedal.

"How far you goin', missy?" he asked the girl.

"As far as he does," she said, nodding towards Matt. "I'm with him."

"Huh-uh," Matt said. "We're dropping her off at the next town."

Annica leaned close to him, touched his arm. "We make a good team, Matt," she said in a voice almost inaudible over the rumble of the engine. "Freaks like us, with no one else in the world…"

Matt pressed his forehead against the window. The cool glass felt good against his hot brow. After a night of battles, this was one too many. He'd find somewhere safe to leave her, someone sane to take her in. He may have failed to unlock the secret of Mr. Dark's nature, but he could at least do that much.

A silence followed, filled with nothing but the hum of eighteen wheels on wet macadam. Then the skinny Santa spoke up. "S'pose it's not too much to ask how ya bloodied yourself up like that?"

Matt sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fight over a girl," he said.

"Same old story," the driver snorted, shaking his head. "Girl comes along on a Friday night, and everybody thinks he's a hero."

"Buddy," Matt said quietly, "you don't know how right you are." And he stared through the window at his reflection and, beyond it, amid a break in the ghostly black pines, the unblinking eyes of a white stag.

Lee Goldberg

***

Content

Lee Goldberg
Ring of Knives

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lee Goldberg