The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

The Siphon

Lancaster graduated from college in 1973 and landed a position in the sales department of a well known Wichita company that manufactured camping gear. He hated the outdoors but was naturally manipulative, an expert at affecting sincerity and bright-eyed chumminess of variable intensity. Despite this charm that wowed the socks off clients, he never made much headway with management or co-workers, two species immunized against snake oil and artifice.

Around Halloween of 1989, he accepted a job as a field representative with another Wichita firm called Roache Enterprises. His farewell party was attended by four department associates, a supervisor, and a custodian. The supervisor brought a single layer white cake and somebody spiked the punch with bourbon. His boss projected an old staff picture on the slide panel—Lancaster isolated in the foreground, his expression a surprised snarl, uncomfortably reminiscent of the candid shot of an infamous serial killer who’d been electrocuted by the state of Florida earlier that year. Lancaster was better looking, much smoother, were such a thing possible.

The conference room was brown and yellow, the tables and chairs yellow, bleached by fluorescent strips. Later that institutional light would seep into Lancaster’s dreams. The hum of the lights. The cake, a rib bone scalloped to the marrow. The lights. The hum. He dreamed of the two women he’d loved and left when he was young and reckless, before he’d matured and steadied, before he’d learned to maintain his great control.

He dreamed how their pleas and imprecations were abruptly stilled, how their faces became empty as the buzzing moon.

He would awaken from such nightmares and grope for the special wooden box in its secret place in the dresser. The box represented that window into a brief, agonized segment of his early post college years; the red blur he refused to examine except in moments of dire want. A small lacquered coffer, dead black with a silver clasp. Dead black and cool to the touch, always cool as if stored in refrigerator rather than a drawer. Lancaster needed the box, its contents, needed them with a fevered intensity because they fulfilled the hunger at his core, because the switch that had originally been thrown to motivate and necessitate his acquisition of these trophies clicked off as arbitrarily as it had been clicked on and with it his will to pursue, to physically enact his desires. Thus he’d sift through the box of treasures, move his lips in wordless naming of each precious trinket until his mind quieted. Until the humming of the fly in the mantle of the light ceased. Until the humming of the moon ceased and he could sleep again.



* * *



Roache Enterprises was founded in 1963 during the height of the Cold War when it manufactured guidance control systems for cruise missiles. Modern era Roache retained 170,000 full-time employees around the globe. The company dealt in electronics; plastics; chemical engineering; asphalt; irrigation systems; sugar, rubber, and cotton plantations; data mining; modular housing; and a confounding array of other endeavors. The Roache Brothers were five billionaires who’d retreated to South America compounds and the French Riviera. The public hadn’t seen them—except for annual state of the corporation recorded video addresses—in twenty years. A board of regents ran the show from headquarters in France, India, Scotland, England, and of course, Kansas.

Lancaster spent months abroad, jetting between continents. He’d married once, a union only a mayfly might’ve envied, which had resulted in a daughter, Nancy, now an adult living in Topeka whom he saw on Christmas and sometimes Easter. The rest of his family was scattered: Father dead, mother living in a trailer park in Tennessee, and two sisters in Washington State whom he had no real contact with since college.

Incapable of love, its intricacies and necessities a mystery to him, he was fortunately content with the life of a gentleman bachelor and disappeared into the wider world. His job was generally one of information gathering and occasional diplomacy—a blackmailer or flatterer, depending upon the assignment. Charlatans were kings in the corporate culture of Roache, a culture that was the antithesis of the blue collar aesthetic of his former company. Lancaster excelled in this niche and Roache rewarded him accordingly. He possessed apartments in Delhi and Edinburgh, and standing reservations at luxury hotels in places such as Denmark, Paris, and New York. He’d come a long way since peddling camp stoves and sleeping bags.

The National Security Agency reached out to Lancaster in 1991 while he vacationed at White Sands Beach, Hawaii. He was invited aboard a yacht owned by the friend of the friend of a former client who did business with Roache Enterprises on a piecemeal basis. The yacht-owner was named Harold Hoyte. Hoyte and his wife Blanche, a ripe and sensual ex B-movie actress who’d starred under an assumed name in a couple of Russ Meyer’s films, owned an import business; this provided cover for their activities as senior operatives of the Agency, the bulk of which revolved around recruitment and handling.

They had dinner with two other couples on the deck of the Ramses, followed by wine and pills and hideously affected slow-dancing to Harold Hoyte’s expansive collection of disco. Harold went ashore, ostensibly to locate a couple of fellow revelers who’d gotten lost on the way to the party, and Blanche promptly led Lancaster into the master suite and seduced him to KC and the Sunshine Band on a king-size bed washed in the refracted shimmer of a glitter ball.

Harold Hoyte made a pitch for Lancaster to join the NSA in the wee hours of the morning as they shared the last joint and the dregs of the scotch. Lancaster declined. A double life simply wasn’t his style. He told Hoyte he had a good thing going with Roache and who needed a poisoned umbrella tip jammed in one’s ass, anyway?

Harold Hoyte smiled and said, no harm no foul. If he changed his mind…And an unlabeled video cassette of Lancaster f*cking Mrs. Hoyte with theatrical flourishes soon arrived at the front desk of his hotel. That a duplicate might anonymously find its way to the Roache corporate offices was implicit. Roache was protective of its business associations large and small. They wouldn’t take kindly to Lancaster’s salacious escapades with the wife of a client, considering the ruin such an affair could bring to a lucrative contract were Mr. Hoyte to muster and bluster mock outrage at being cuckolded by a company representative. The Hoytes had caught him in the old honey trap. He didn’t feel too angry—it was their field of expertise. Besides, spying might agree with him.

Three weeks later, he was officially an asset of the NSA. He soon learned several colleagues at Roache Enterprises moonlighted for the government. The company had eyes everywhere the US needed them. It added a new and unpredictable wrinkle to Lancaster’s routine, although the life of an occasional spy didn’t prove particularly thrilling. Certainly it resembled nothing of bestselling potboilers or action flicks. Mostly it came down to taking a few pictures, following strangers for a day or two, and occasionally smuggling a memory stick or something as low-tech as a handwritten code across international borders.

The upside was it motivated him to get into shape and take Judo for a while—weren’t spies supposed to know Judo in case of a scrape? He’d watched the original Manchurian Candidate eight times; the version where Sinatra got into a knockdown drag-out fight with a foreign agent. To be on the safe side, he also bought a .38 automatic and got accurate with it at the range. He went unarmed abroad because of travel restrictions, but carried it almost everywhere while in the States. He continued to carry until his enthusiasm cooled and he stuck the gun in a shoebox and forgot it. Around then he also stopped attending Judo classes.

One night in the wake of 9/11 and the untimely deaths of forty-seven Roache employees who’d staffed an office in the North Tower, he got together for drinks with another asset high up the food chain at corporate. They were drunk when Lancaster asked him what he thought of running errands for the Agency. The exec shook his head, eyes bleary from too many bourbons. “Not what I expected. Pretty f*cking boring, you ask me. I guess I’m kind of taken aback by all the satanists.”



* * *



The Aughts passed.

Following a six month lull of contact with the NSA, Lancaster received a call from his current handler, Tyrone Clack. Clack took over for the Hoytes when they sailed on toward retirement and their golden years back in 2003. All communications occurred via phone—Lancaster had never even seen a photo of the agent. Clack informed him that the Agency was interested in acquiring intelligence on a naturalized citizen named Dr. Lucas Christou. The good doctor, who’d been born in Athens and transplanted to the US during adolescence, was a retired chair of the anthropology department of some tiny school near Kansas City called Ossian University. He’d become reclusive since then, seldom appearing in public, content to withdraw from society to an isolated estate.

Christou had emerged from his hermitage and would be hosting a foreign national named Rawat, a minor industrialist entering the US on business with Roache. All that was required of Lancaster was to take the doctor’s measure, get to know him a bit, soften him up for possible future developments. No further explanation for the agency’s interest was forthcoming and Lancaster didn’t press. None of it titillated him anymore. He’d do as requested and hear nary a peep afterward. A typical, menial task. A mindless task, in fact.

Considering his superstar status as a professional schmoozer, the scheme didn’t prove difficult. He returned to Wichita and manipulated events until a big cheese at corporate asked him pretty please to entertain a small party that had come to town for a tour of a cluster of empty corporate properties outside the city. Strip mall-style office buildings that had been hastily built then left in quasi abandonment.

The guests included the potential client, Mr. Rawat and his American companion Kara, and a bodyguard named Dedrick; the Cooks, a moneyed New York couple who’d previously partnered on land deals with Mr. Rawat; and, of course, Dr. Christou.

All of this was explained by Vicky Diamond, an administrative assistant to the Big Cheese himself. Ms. Diamond was a shark; Lancaster noted this first thing. Youngish, but not really, dark hair, dark eyes, plenty of makeup to confuse the issue, a casual-chic dresser. Lancaster thought she smiled so much because she liked to show her teeth. She handed him dossiers on the principles—Mr. Rawat and the Cooks—and suggested an itinerary. He appreciated how she put her fingerprints on the project without over-committing. Should things progress smoothly, she’d get much of the credit. If the sales pitch tanked, Lancaster would find himself on the hook. He liked her already.



* * *



The group met on Friday morning for breakfast at a French café, followed by a carefully-paced tour of downtown landmarks. Lunch was Italian, then onward to the Museum of Treasures and a foray to quaint Cowtown, which delighted the Cooks and, more importantly, Mr. Rawat, and was at least tolerated by the others.

Lancaster had slipped Cowtown into the schedule simply to tweak Ms. Diamond as he suspected she’d fear the excessive display of Midwest provincialism. Judging from the glare he received, his assessment was on the mark. He’d softened the blow by reserving one of six tables at a tiny, hole in the wall restaurant that served authentic Indian cuisine rivaling anything he’d tasted in Delhi or Mumbai. Mr. Rawat was a cool customer in every sense of the word. Elegant in his advancing years, his black hair shone like a helmet, his aged and hardened flesh gleamed like polished wood. His watch was solid gold. Even the goon Dedrick who lurked in the background, ready to intercept any and all threats, was rather classy via proximity with his long, pale hair and black suit and fancy eyeglasses that slotted him as a burly legal professional rather than a bodyguard.

Mr. Rawat raised a glass of Old Monk to Lancaster and tipped him a slight wink of approval. Dining went into the nine o’clock hour, after which they repaired to the historic and luxurious Copperhill Hotel and made for the lounge, a velvet and mirrored affair with double doors open to the grand ballroom.

Everything was going exactly as Lancaster planned until Dr. Christou and Mr. Rawat began discussing world folklore and demonology with a passion that turned heads at nearby tables. This vein was central to Dr. Christou’s studies. He’d published numerous works over the course of four decades in academia, the most noteworthy a treatise called The Feral Heart, which documented cases of night terrors and the mythology of the living dead in the Balkans and the Greek Isles. Mr. Rawat had come across the book shortly after its publication in 1971 and written a lengthy letter taking the professor to task for his fanciful reportage. This initiated what developed into a lifelong correspondence and apparently adversarial friendship.

Dr. Christou was broad through shoulders and chest. His large head was bald except for a silvery fringe, and his mustache and beard were white streaked with black. He wore a vintage suit and three rings—two on the left hand, one on the right. He drank copiously; Canadian Club. These days a proper Greek drinks scotch, but as a culture-strapped American, a Canadian import will suffice. Lancaster couldn’t help but notice he resembled the bluff and melodramatically distinguished actors who populated Saturday night horror features of yesteryear; a physically imposing relative of Christopher Lee. The doctor said to Mr. Rawat, “I don’t pretend to know the truth, my friend. There are cracks in the world. These cracks are inhabited by…marvels undreamt of in our philosophies.”

“We have known each other for an age,” Mr. Rawat said. “and I am still uncertain where the truth ends and the bullshit begins with you.”

“I think the subject of night terrors is fascinating,” Mrs. Cook said. She and her husband were slightly younger than Mr. Rawat and Dr. Christou, around Lancaster’s age, a year or two shy of senior discounts and social security checks. The couple were gray and heavyset, habitual tans as faded as ancient tattoos. Mr. Cook wore a heavy tweed jacket, and his wife a pattern dress and pearls that were slightly behind modern fashion. She’d drunk her share of gin and tonic.

“Francine majored in literature,” Mr. Cook said, gesturing with his tumbler of Johnnie Walker Blue. “The classics—Henry James, Wilde, Menken, Camus, Conrad. That lot.”

“Actually, I prefer Blackwood and Machen during the proper season. When the leaves are falling and the dark comes early and stays. The Horla, by Maupassant. There’s a fine one regarding sleep paralysis and insanity.”

“A demon that creeps into the bedchamber and squats upon its victim’s chest. That particular legend is prevalent in many cultures,” Dr. Christou said.

“An oldie, but a goodie,” Lancaster said, beginning to feel the weight of his liquor. Ms. Diamond slashed him with a look.

“And thoroughly debunked,” Mr. Rawat said. “Like déjà vu and neardeath experiences. Hallucinations, hypnogogic delusions. Nothing sinister. No sign of the numinous, nor the unholy for that matter.”

“You were so much more fun as a lad,” Dr. Christou said, smiling.

“I come by my skepticism honestly. There was a time I believed supernatural manifestations possible. Lamias, vorvolakas, lycanthropes, the Loch Ness Monster—”

“Rakshasa.”

“Yes, Rakshasa. UFOs, spoon-bending, levitation, spontaneous combustion—”

“Spontaneous erections!”

“What, you don’t believe in Rakshasas?” A sallow, pinch-faced man in a white jacket at the adjoining table leaned forward and partially across Lancaster so the others could hear him. His tie dipped into Lancaster’s mostly empty glass of Redbreast. The man was of indeterminate age and smelled of first-class cigarettes and designer cologne. His skull was oddly pointed and hairless, dull flesh speckled with liver spots. He’d styled his mustache into a Fu Manchu. “Sorry, sorry. How rude of me. I’m Gregor Blaylock. These are my comrades Christine, Rayburn, and Luther. My research team.” The trio of graduate students were handsome and smartly dressed—the men in jackets and turtlenecks, the woman in a tunic and skirt. Both men were lean and sinewy; sweat glittered on their cheeks. The woman wore bright red lipstick. Her dark skin was flawless. She stroked Mr. Blaylock’s shoulder, a pairing of youth and age that was eerily congruous to that of Mr. Rawat and his escort Kara.

Dr. Christou laughed and stood to shake hands. “Gregor! Good to meet in person at last. What great coincidence has brought us together?”

“Oh, you know there are no coincidences, Lucas.”

Ms. Diamond quickly made further introductions as the men pushed the tables together so the newcomers might join the festivities. Lancaster wasn’t certain of the new peoples’ nationalities. Even listening to Mr. Blaylock speak proved fruitless to solving that riddle. Perhaps Asian-heritage and a European education accounted for the man’s exotic features and the flattening of his accent. It was odd, very odd. Evidently, Mr. Blaylock was also an anthropology professor, and another of Dr. Christou’s legion of fans and correspondents, but details weren’t forthcoming, just the gibberish of mutual recollection that left all save its intimates in the fog. He finally gave in and said, “If I may be so bold, where are you from? Originally, that is.”

Mr. Blaylock said, “Why, I was born here. We all were born here.” He inclined his head to include his companions. Something in the curl of his lip, his archness of tone, indicated here didn’t necessarily refer to Kansas or the heartland, but rather the continent, if not the world itself. So Mr. Blaylock was that smug species of academic who delighted in double entendre and puns. A*shole. Lancaster drained his whiskey, masking a sneer.

Ms. Diamond pressed against Lancaster as a spouse might and muttered, “What the hell are you doing?” She maintained her pearly shark smile for the audience.

“It’s a fair question,” Mr. Blaylock said, as if he’d somehow overheard the whisper. “Mr. Lancaster, you’ve been around the block, yeah?”

“I’ve heard the owl hoot,” Lancaster said. “And the Sri Lankan Frogmouth too.”

“I hear you. You Limeys speak your minds. You’re inquisitive. No harm. I approve.”

“Not much harm,” Ms. Diamond said.

“You are exceedingly generous, Mr. Blaylock. But I’m American.”

“Oh, yeah? Odd. You must spend loads of time on the island.”

Dr. Christou said, “Our kind patron heard a Frogmouth hoot. Have you seen a Rakshasa, perhaps?”

“Not in Kansas,” Mr. Blaylock said.

“What’s a Rakshasa?” Mr. Cook said.

“It’s a flesh-eating monster from Indian mythology, dear,” Mrs. Cook said. “There are packs of them roaming about in classical Indian literature, such as the Mahabharata.”

Dr. Christou said, “I’ve not encountered one either, nor do I know anyone with firsthand knowledge. However, in 1968 I visited a village on the Greek island of Aphra and interviewed the locals, including a Catholic priest, who were thoroughly convinced vorvolakes stalked them. The priest showed me a set of photographs taken by a herdsman that were rather convincing.”

“Ha! The ones in The Feral Heart were far from convincing, old friend. Very, very far.”

“Certainly the lighting was poor. Sunset, so the contrast of light and darkness was jarring. Of course, shrinking them down to fit the page also compromised the quality.”

“Was there a creature in the pictures? How exciting,” Mrs. Cook said.

“Eh? You haven’t read his famous book?” Mr. Rawat said.

“In fact, yes. I read books for the words, not the pictures.”

“There were at least four creatures, actually,” Dr. Christou said. “The shepherd spied them emerging from a crypt in the hills at dusk. The man was on a bluff and they glared up at him. Horrifying once you realize what you’re dealing with, I assure you.”

“The goat herder took a picture of something,” Mr. Rawat said. “To settle the matter, the film should be sent to a laboratory and analyzed.”

“Alas, that is impossible,” Mr. Christou said. “I returned them to the priest after they were copied into the book. The village was abandoned in 1970, its inhabitants scattered along the mainland. What became of the herdsman or the film remains a mystery.”

“Rubbish,” Mr. Rawat said. “I’ve studied the photos a million times. Our nameless shepherd captured images of youthful vagabonds. Perhaps grave-robbers at rest, if one is inclined toward drama.”

“No mystery about the missing film,” Mr. Blaylock said. “When the Greek government repatriated the villagers to the mainland I’m sure such materials were confiscated or lost. You mentioned a priest—perhaps the Church spirited away the evidence for secret study. Too convenient?”

“Too conspiratorial, I’d think,” Lancaster said. “Most of the tinfoil hats amongst the clergy were exiled to the fringes by the ‘70s, were they not?”

“You are familiar with the Eastern Church?” Mr. Rawat said, raising an eyebrow.

“There was this girl I met in Athens who’d gone astray from ecclesiastical upbringing in a big way. She gave me the history lesson. The infighting and intrigue, the conspiracies.”

“I bet,” Ms. Diamond said.

“Life is full of little conspiracies,” Dr. Christou said and looked at Mr. Blaylock. “Imagine running into you here of all places. I thought you lived in British Colombia.”

Mr. Cook said, “What were those other critters you mentioned earlier? A vorvo-something?” He sounded bored.

“Vorvolakas,” Mr. Rawat said.

“Vorvo-whatsis?”

“Blood-sucking undead monster from Greek mythology, dear,” Mrs. Cook said. “There are scads of them in the old writings of The Eastern Church.”

“There’s also that Boris Karloff movie,” Mr. Rawat said. He smiled coolly and sipped his rum. “You can watch the whole thing on the internet. I’m certain my esteemed colleague has done so in the name of research.”

Lancaster said, “Val Lewton’s film. Scared me pantless when I was a wee lad. What a great old flick.”

“I like you more and more. Yia mas!” Dr. Christou knocked back yet another Canadian Club.

“Val Lewton,” Mr. Cook said, his glazed eyes brightening. “Now you’re talking. My dad owned a chain of theaters. Lewton was a hell of an auteur, as the kids say.”

“Oh, honey.” Mrs. Cook smiled with benign condescension and patted her husband’s cheek so it jiggled. “Val Lewton? Really? Goodness.”

“Hellenic vampire tradition is quite rich,” Mr. Christou said. “The damned rise from their graves—day or night—and creep through villages, rapping on doors, tapping on windows, imitating the cries of animals and children. It is said one must never answer a door after dark on the first knock.”

Mrs. Cook said, “As I understand it, Grecian vampires are actually more akin to shape changers. Lycanthropes and what have you.”

“Quite right, dear lady! Quite right!” Dr. Christou said. “The Balkan Wars led to a minor usurpation by the Slavic vampire myth of the Greek antecedent. Or, I should say, a co-option, though who ultimately co-opted whom is open to debate. Ah, you would’ve been a much brighter assistant than the clods I was assigned on my expeditions. And lovelier to boot!”

“Oh, hush, Doctor,” Mrs. Cook said, casually patting her hair as she cast about for the waiter. “Seriously, although you’re the expert, doesn’t it seem plausible that these legends—the Rakshasa, the lycanthropes and vampires, the graveyard ghouls, the horrors of Dunsany, Moses, and Lovecraft, are variations on a theme?”

“If by plausible you mean impossible,” Mr. Rawat said.

“Certainly,” Mr. Blaylock said. “And a hundred other beasties from global mythology. Each iteration tailored to the traditions and prejudices of individual cultures. However, as Mr. Rawat so elegantly declared, it’s rubbish.” He smiled slyly. “Except for ghosts. The existence of ghosts is a theory I can get behind.”

There were more rounds of drinks accompanied by tales of werewolves, vampires, and other things that went bump in the night. An orchestra appeared and began to play classics of the 1930s. The Cooks ventured unsteadily onto the dance floor, and gallant Mr. Rawat escorted Ms. Diamond after them—she, ramrod stiff and protesting to no avail. Mr. Rawat’s continental chauvinism doubtless nettled her no end.

Lancaster excused himself to visit the restroom. He pissed in the fancy urinal and washed his hands and dried them on a fancy scented towel. He checked his watch in the lobby, decided to risk a few moments away from the party, and ducked into the stairwell and lighted a cigarette. Moments later Mr. Blaylock and Dr. Christou barged through the door, drinks in hand, Dedrick hot on their heels, a pained expression replacing his customary stoicism. Dr. Christou and Mr. Rawat immediately lighted cigarettes. Both smoked Prima Lux. “Ah, great minds!” the doctor said, grinning at Lancaster, who covered his annoyance with a friendly mock salute.

A few minutes later, cigarettes smoked and drinks drunk, everyone headed back to the table. Lancaster did the gentlemanly deed of holding the door. Dr. Christou hesitated until the others had gone ahead. He said in a low voice, “I confess an abiding fondness for Boris Karloff and Val Lewton. Anyone who holds them dear is first class by my lights.” The doctor leaned slightly closer to Lancaster, scorching him with whiskey breath. “In recent years I’ve become convinced the priest of Aphra was duped by the shepherd. Those cemetery photographs were surely a hoax. Which is a damned shame because I think there truly was an extraordinary event occurring in that village.” He laid his very large hand upon Lancaster’s shoulder. This drunken earnestness would’ve been comical except for the glimmer of a tear in the corner of the aged scholar’s eye. “Please extend my apologies to our fair company. That last drink was a bridge too far. I’m off to my quarters.”

Lancaster wondered if the evening could possibly become more surreal. He watched in bemusement as the big man trundled away and boarded an elevator.

He returned to the ballroom where Ms. Diamond sat alone at the table. She watched the others dance, her mouth sullen. He sat next to her and, feeling expansive from the booze, said, “I have a bottle of twelve yearold scotch back at the Chateau.” His blue eyes usually had an effect on women. He was also decently-muscled from a regimen of racquetball and swimming. He assiduously colored the gray from his expensively-styled hair, and all of this combined to smooth the rough edges of advancing age, to create the illusion of a man in his late forties, the urbane, chiseljawed protagonist of sex-pill commercials rather than a paunchy playboy with stretch marks and pattern baldness sliding into the sunset years. But Ms. Diamond was having none of it.

“I think you also probably have a dozen STDs,” she said. “Half of them exotic and likely incurable by fire.”

“Well, I don’t like to brag,” he said.

The group dispersed, shuffling off to their respective rooms, and Lancaster shook the hands of the men and kissed the hands of the ladies— Kara’s skin tasted of liquor, and Mrs. Cook’s was clammy and scaly and bitter. He glanced at her face, and her eyes were heavy-lidded, her thick mouth upturned with matronly satisfaction at his discomfort.



* * *



Lancaster hailed a cab and made it to his townhouse a few minutes after 2 a.m. Nothing spectacular—two bedrooms, a bathroom with a deep whirlpool tub and granite everything, and a kitchen with wood cabinets and digital appliances. In the living room, lush track lighting, thick carpet and a selection of authentic-looking Monet and Van Gogh knockoffs, a half dozen small marble sculptures imported from Mediterranean antique shops, a gas fireplace and modest entertainment center, and of course, a wet bar tucked opposite bay windows with a view of the river.

He wasn’t in a steady relationship. His previous girlfriend, a Danish stewardess twenty-five years his junior, had recently married a pilot and retired to, ‘make babies’, as she put it in the Dear John email. He dialed the escort service and asked for one of the girls he knew. The receptionist informed him that person was unavailable, so he requested Trina, a moderately attractive brunette who’d stayed over a few months back, and this time he was in luck, his Girl Friday would be along in forty-five minutes. He dropped his coat into an oversized leather chair, hit the remote to dim the lights, a second time to ignite a romantic blaze in the hearth, and once more to summon the ghost of Jeff Healey through speakers concealed behind a pair of African elephant statuettes.

The drink and Ms. Diamond’s dragon lady glare had worked him over. That and the bizarre dinner chatter and the raw emotion flowing from ponderous Dr. Christou. Lancaster brought forth the special box, currently hidden upon a shelf inside a teak cabinet that housed his cigars and collection of foreign coins. Tonight he needed to gaze within the box, to drink it with his eyes, to satiate the nameless desire that welled from his deepest primordial self.

He sat for a while in the thrall of conflicting emotions. The ritual calmed him less than usual. He shut the box and returned it to its cubby. His breath was labored.

Cigarette in one hand, a fresh glass of scotch sweating in the other, he sank into the couch and closed his eyes. The doorbell went ding-dong! and his eyes popped open. The glass was dry and the cigarette had burned perilously near his knuckle. He set the glass on the coffee table and crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. At the door it occurred to him the bell had only rung once, and it bothered him somehow. He peered through the spy-hole and saw nothing but the empty walk, yellow and hazy under the streetlamp light. The doorknob throbbed with a low voltage current that tingled momentarily and vanished.

He opened the door and Trina-the-escort popped up like a jack-inthe-box, still fumbling with a compact that had slipped from her stylish red-lacquer handbag. She wore a slick black dress and had dyed her hair blonde since their last encounter. “Hiya,” she said and caught his tie in the crook of her finger as she stepped past him from the dark into the light. As the door swung closed, a breeze ruffled his hair and he shivered, experiencing the unpleasant sensation that he’d forgotten something important, perhaps years and years ago. His brain was fairly pickled and the girl already slid out of her dress and the strange unease receded.

When they’d finished, Trina kissed his cheek, dragged on their shared cigarette, then briskly toweled herself and ducked into the bathroom. He dialed her a taxi and lay in the shadows listening to the shower, the edge off his drunkenness and succumbing to exhaustion as he recalled the faces of his dinner guests—Dr. Christou’s haunted eyes, Mr. Blaylock’s predatory smile, and Mr. Rawat cool and bland even as he dissected and debated. The others ran together, and uneasiness crept back in as his damp flesh cooled, as the red numerals of the alarm clock flickered in a warning. The girl reappeared, dressed, perfumed, and coifed with a polka dot kerchief. She said she’d let herself out, call her again any time. He drifted away, and—

Ding-dong! He sat up fast, skull heavy. Only three or four minutes had passed, yet he was mostly anesthetized from the alcohol and overwhelming drowsiness. He waited for the next ring, and as he waited a chill seeped into his guts and he thought strange, disjointed thoughts. Why was he so nervous? The vein in his neck pulsed. Trina must’ve forgotten something. He rose and went to the door. As he turned the deadbolt, he experienced the inexplicable urge to flee. It was a feeling as powerful and visceral as a bout of vertigo, the irrational sense that he would be snatched into the darkness, that he would meet one of Dr. Christou’s unknowable marvels lurking in the cracks of the Earth.

Trina stepped back with a small cry when he flung the door open and stood before her, sweat dripping from his torso. A taxi idled on the curb. She regained her composure, although she didn’t come closer. “Forgot my cell,” she said. Dazed, he fetched her phone. She extended her hand as far as possible to snatch the phone. She hustled to the taxi without a goodbye or backward glance.

The canopy of the trees across the street shushed in the breeze, and fields littered with pockets of light swept into the deeper gloom like the crown of a moonlit sea. The starry night was vast and chill, and Lancaster imagined entities concealed within its folds gazing hungrily upon the lights of the city, the warmth of its inhabitants.

Lancaster was not an introspective man, preferring to live an inch beneath his own skin, to run hot and cold as circumstances required. Fear had awakened in him, stirred by God knew what. Imminent mortality? Cancer cells spreading like fire? The Devil staring at him from the pit? Momentarily he had the preposterous fantasy that this primitive terror wasn’t a random bubble surfacing from the nascent tar of his primordial self, but an intrusion, a virus he’d contracted that now worked to unnerve and unman him.

Whatever the source, he was afraid to stand in the tiny rectangle of light that faced the outer darkness. That darkness followed him into sleep. The gnawing fear was with him too. The dark. The hum of the stars.



* * *



Lancaster arranged for a limousine driver named Ms. Valens to pick the party up in front of the hotel after lunch the next day. He suggested a helicopter for speed, but Dr. Christou had an aversion to flying in light aircraft—a train and bus man, was the good doctor. Mr. Rawat and the Cooks were traveling to the airport that evening immediately following the tour of the corporate property, so the chauffeur loaded their luggage, which included Mr. Cook’s pair of golf bags and no less than five suitcases for Mrs. Cook. Lancaster chuckled behind his hand at Ms. Valens’ barely concealed expression of loathing as she struggled to heft everything into the trunk while Ms. Cook tutted and tisked and the muscular Dedrick stood impassively, watching nothing and everything at once.

The two hour drive was along a sparsely-traveled stretch of secondary highway that lanced through mile upon mile of wheat fields and sunflower plantations. The sky spread black and blue with rolling storm clouds, and crows floated like gnats beneath the belly of a dog. Light distorted as it passed through the tinted windows and filled the passenger compartment with an unearthly haze.

Lancaster and Ms. Diamond poured champagne from the limousine bar: A glass to celebrate surviving their hangovers, Lancaster said. Dr. Christou took his with a couple of antacid tablets, and Kara refused, covering her mouth with exaggerated revulsion. The others finished the magnum of Grand Brut with the diffidence of draining a bottle of spring water. Lancaster had seldom witnessed such a tolerance for booze except when playing blackjack with the alkie barflies in Vegas backwaters during his wild and wooly college days. He checked the stock to estimate whether it would last until he got his charges onto the plane. It was going to be close. Ms. Diamond’s eyes widened when she met his and he felt a smidgen of uncharacteristic pity for her distress.

Mr. Rawat took a sheaf of blueprints and maps from his gold-clasped leather briefcase and spread them across his knees. Mr. Cook and Ms. Diamond sat on either side of him. Their faces shone with the hazy light reflected from the paper. Lancaster’s eyeballs ached. The scenery slid past like a ragged stream of photographic frames. He pondered the previous evening’s gathering at the hotel. Mrs. Cook winked and knocked his knee under the table. Mr. Blaylock grinned, minus an eyetooth, and Christine, the voluptuous vamp, stroked Blaylock’s shoulder, her nails denting the exquisite fabric of his dinner jacket. Luther and Rayburn were a blur, unimportant. Mr. Cook drank with the methodical efficiency of a man who’d rather face the scaffold than another day with his wife, and he smiled with the same, superficial cheer as Ms. Diamond did—probably a reflexive counter to deeper, darker impulses. Mr. Rawat debated Dr. Christou with a passion reserved for a lover, while fox-sharp Kara looked on with jaded boredom, and Lancaster wondered how close the men might actually be and perhaps, perhaps the NSA thought to use them against one another, to leverage a clandestine affair, and damn, this trip might actually prove interesting. Lancaster snapped out of it. His sunglasses disguised the fact he’d dozed for a few moments, or so he hoped.

They arrived at the property, several acres of single-story, hi-tech buildings fronted by immaculately trimmed lawns and plum trees. The office sectors were divided by access lanes, the whole complex erected in the middle of nowhere, an island on an ocean of grain. A grounds keeping truck inched along about a quarter of a mile down the frontage road. Workers in orange jackets paced it on the sidewalk, blasting away with leaf blowers.

No sooner had her feet touched the pavement, Ms. Diamond launched into a rehearsed spiel, subtly leading Mr. Rawat, Dedrick, and the Cooks by the collective nose toward the nearest wall of glass. She unlocked a set of doors with a key card and they walked inside. Meanwhile, Kara squinted at the changeable sky and fussed with the brim of her hat while Dr. Christou stood in the shadow of the car, rubbing his skull and muttering. Lancaster called the catering company, gained assurances the team would arrive on schedule. Ms. Diamond had reserved tables at a restaurant in a town several miles away. He knew she’d underestimated the softness of this particular group—such people couldn’t go five or six hours without food and booze, couldn’t go without being waited upon hand and foot; so he’d hired one of the finer outfits in the city to prepare dinner and truck it to the site at approximately the time he figured the tour would be wrapping up.

“Had enough, have you?” Dr. Christou said. “Of our chums, I mean.”

“Ms. Diamond has them in hand. I couldn’t very well abandon you or the lovely Kara, could I?” Lancaster lighted a cigarette. The ‘lovely’ Kara had retreated into the limousine. He suspected she was raiding the olives. Poor dear was emaciated.

“I’d say you are more preoccupied keeping tabs on me than helping your colleague net that big fish pal of mine.”

“You’re happy, Mr. Rawat is happy. Or am I wrong? ” Lancaster said, thinking fast, wondering if the doctor was cagier than he appeared. “I’m here to make certain everyone has as nice a trip as possible.” He gestured at the surrounding plains. “Got my work cut out for me. This is the kind of land only a farmer or Bible salesman could love.”

“I have a theory. It’s the land that makes people crazy, not their superstitions. Consider fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity—then look around. Look at all this emptiness under a baleful fireball. Add a few uneducated peasants to the equation and voila. Petrie dish for lunacy.”

“Amber waves of grain far as the eye can see, and me without a drop of milk…”

The big man nodded, still rubbing his skull. “I knew a fellow in Tangiers during my callow and malleable youth. French Intelligence, retired. He claimed to be retired. A lovely, older man; quite affable, quite accommodating, charmingly effete. He always dressed in a suit and smoked Gauloises brunes. Kept a little black pistol in his dresser at the hotel—a Walther, as I recall. He spoke of enemies from the old days. You remind me a bit of him. ”

“Except I don’t have enemies. As to the, ahem, French connection, my mother claims we are descended from the Huguenots—but isn’t that a socially acceptable variation of the asylum nuts claiming to be Napoleon reincarnate?”

The grounds crew stopped across the way. There were seven of them. They lighted cigarettes and leaned against their truck or sprawled in the grass and drank water from milk jugs. A young Mexican god shaded his eyes with his hand and smiled at Lancaster. The Mexican’s shoulders were broad and dark as burnt copper and his black hair fell in ringlets to his nipples. His chest and stomach rippled with the musculature of a bull. He unsnapped the cap on a jug and poured water over his head, a model pimping it hard in a rock video, and whipped his hair in a circle. Water flew everywhere. His teeth were white, white.

Dr. Christou followed Lancaster’s stare. He sighed and lighted a cigarette of his own. “I always enjoyed a cherry pipe. Had to quit—too de trop for a professor, chewing on a pipe stem. Damnable shame. You understand the power of perception, of course. I’ve accrued a fine, long list of enemies. My work is eccentric enough without piling on cliché. Ah, how I loathe those f*ckers in admin.”

Lancaster laughed, unbalanced by Christou’s sortie and disliking the sensation intensely. He said, “An amazing coincidence, running into your colleague last night.”

“Indeed. Blaylock wasn’t…He wasn’t as I expected him to be. We’ve corresponded for years. I thought…Well, goes to show, doesn’t it? How meager our understanding of the human heart.”

“Only the shadow knows.”

“What a chestnut! Is that how you get through life, Mr. Lancaster? A sense of detachment and an arsenal of wry witticisms?”

“I’m not the best at small talk.”

“Nonsense—that’s why they sent you. You are an expert at small talk, a maestro at manipulating the inconsequential to your design. I’m hardly offended—fascinated, rather.”

The clouds kept rolling and the light changed and changed, darkening from red and orange to purple, and a damp breath moved across the land, but it didn’t rain. The air was supercharged and Lancaster tasted a hint of ozone. “Here comes the dinner wagon,” he said as a van with a corporate logo departed the main road and cruised toward them.

“The irony is, my connections are retired or passed on,” Dr. Christou said. “We’ve gotten old. If revolutionaries live long enough they become the establishment. The reef incorporates all discrete elements.”

“Honestly, doctor, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Right, then. For the record, you’re wasting taxpayer money on me. Any information I’ve got isn’t worth a drachma on the international market. Unless this is about revenge Perhaps someone simply wishes to discredit me, to ruin my life’s work.”

Lancaster wasn’t certain how to respond. Possibly the man was dangerous; perhaps he possessed contacts within some intelligence agency and had obtained Lancaster’s files, maybe he knew the game. He kept his emotions in check, paid out a bit of rope. “Kind of paranoid, yeah? It’s late in the day to achieve much by destroying you, isn’t it, doc?”

“There are those who can be relied upon in their pettiness. You tell whomever it is, this isn’t worth their effort.” Dr. Christou drew on his cigarette butt. He knocked on the limousine window glass, coaxing Kara to emerge. Lancaster keyed the caterers into the central office, superintending their deployment and beachhead in the largest conference room he could find. As the team spread tablecloths and arranged the dinnerware, the overhead lights flickered and hummed and Lancaster stood with his cell flipped open, his brain in neutral.

“This place is spooky,” Kara said, hipshot against the edge of the nearest table. She popped a cocktail shrimp into her mouth. Her little black magpie eyes blinked, blinked. “I hate empty buildings. This place goes for miles. Just a bunch of endless hallways. Almost all the lights are off. It feels like somebody’s going to jump at me from the shadows. I dunno. Silly, huh?”

“Not so much,” Lancaster said, marshaling his strength to play the part. He patted her arm, mostly to comfort himself. He suppressed his anxiety and phoned Ms. Diamond and informed her supper awaited. There was a long, chilly silence before she thanked him and said her group would be along shortly.

The meal was passable by elitist standards: over-done Beef Wellington and too-boney Alaska king salmon. Lancaster’s choice of a vintage Italian wines and two chilled bottles of Chopin mollified the party. He stopped after one drink, his stomach knotted, shoulders bunched with rising tension. His guests were more than happy to drain the liquor—even Kara had overcome her squeamishness to hoist a glass of white wine. Mr. Rawat entered the proceedings wearing a dour expression matched only by Ms. Diamond’s, but after five or six shots of vodka he melted somewhat and began to joke with Dr. Christou. Meanwhile, the Cooks were inscrutable in their lukewarm affability, nibbling at the finger foods and consuming glasses of wine with impressive efficiency.

One of the caterers approached Lancaster with an apologetic nod and asked if he was expecting more company. Lancaster asked why, and the man said someone had buzzed the intercom at the entrance. He’d assumed a member of the party had gotten locked out, or the limo driver… Nobody was at the door. It was getting dark and some of the lights in the parking lot weren’t on, so he wasn’t able to see much. Lancaster didn’t know Ms. Valens’ number; he called the home office and got it from a secretary in human resources, then dialed the driver, intending to ask if she’d happened to see anyone on the grounds near the entrance. The call went straight to voicemail.

“A problem?” Ms. Diamond said as she sidled close, knifing him with one of her fake smiles. “And thank you ever so much for cutting me off at the knees by cancelling our reservations at a first class restaurant in favor of your little picnic stunt.”

“They seem to be happily stuffing their faces,” he said with his own contrived smile of collegiality. “No problem. The caterer thought someone was at the door. I’m checking with Ms. Valens now.” Until that instant he’d toyed with the notion of asking Dedrick to make a parking lot sweep, dissuaded by the fellow’s cold-fish demeanor and the suspicion he wasn’t the type to run errands for anyone other than his master, Mr. Rawat. Lancaster pushed away from the table and turned his back on Ms. Diamond, went into the deep gloom of the hall, trailing his hand for a light switch. The front office was also murky, ankle-high illumination provided by a recessed panel of track lights in the baseboard paneling. The effect was spooky, as Kara said.

The night air lay cool upon his skin, tickled his nostrils with the scents of dust and chaff. A lone sodium lamp shone in an adjoining lot, illuminating itself and not much else. He approached the limo and noticed the chassis slightly shifting upon its shocks, and his eyes adjusted he discerned pants and a jacket discarded near the driver side door, and several empty pocket-sized liquor bottles gleaming in the starlight upon the asphalt. Ms. Valens straddled the young Mexican god as he sprawled across the hood. His giant’s hands were on her ass, her fancy cap turned backward on his head. Lancaster sparked his lighter. They stared at him, drawn by the flame. “Don’t mind me,” he said, and lighted a cigarette. They didn’t.

“What’s going on out there!” Ms. Diamond said. Her voice carried from the entrance where she held the door as if afraid to venture forth. She sounded as melodramatic as an actress in a Quaker dress and bonnet, clutching her throat as she scanned the plains for a sneaking Comanche. “Lancaster, where the devil are you?” she said.

“Coming,” he said, and chuckled. He tapped his watch at Ms. Valens and walked away.

Ms. Diamond awaited him and they stood for a few moments in the unlighted office, listening to the loud voices and laughter from the conference room. She said, “Good thing it’s time to go—the booze is finito. Have you seen Kara? The supermodel.”

“Oh, that one,” he said.

“You haven’t been hitting the vodka hard enough to play the drunk a*shole card. Got to hand it to you, Lancaster, this has turned into a cockup. Those bastards aren’t buying it. Rawat’s not interested in this land. I dunno what the deal is with the Mr. Howell and Lovey. You’re supposed to be the sweet-talker, but your head isn’t in the game. Now that silly bitch has taken a powder. Anyway, she’s mooned over you all day. Sweet little bulimic doe.”

“No need to waste charm since you’re not trying to sell her any swampland. She was binging on hors devours, last I saw. Might be a long ride back to the city.”

“Where the hell has she gotten to.”

“Likely in the john commencing the purging stage of the operation,” he said.

“No, I looked. Would you mind checking down the hall—bet she’s somewhere doing a line or having a crying jag or what the f*ck ever. I’ve got to herd my sheep toward the exit before they start bleating in an insane frenzy of DTs.”

“Sure,” he said, regretting it in the same breath. Kara had uttered a true statement: the halls were dark, dark. She wouldn’t have ventured into them alone, not with her apparently sincere apprehension. He located a central bank of dials in an adjoining passage and fiddled with them until a few domes winked on. Mercifully, each door was locked and he satisfied his obligation to search for the woman with a knock and a half-hearted inquiry—yoo-hoo, in there, lady? No? Moving on, moving on, even as the walls tightened like the throat of a cave burrowing into bedrock. His sweaty hand made it increasingly difficult to grasp door handles. He felt liquor in the wires of his brain, but he hadn’t drunk enough, Ms. Diamond had noted it rightly, so why this haze, this disorientation?

Inside the employee break room, she lay in a fetal position on a table. A water-cooler bubbled in the corner. The refrigerator door was ajar and its white, icicle-chill light shone over her naked legs, white panties, and slip. Her upper body curved away, her face hidden in the sweep of hair. He slapped the wall switch and the overhead light flashed once and went dead. He approached and bent toward her still form.

She shuddered violently and raised herself on one elbow and laughed. Her arm unfolded like a blade. She seized his collar, pulled his face to hers. She kissed him hard with the taste of cold metal and all he could see was the refrigerator shivering in her eye, his own eye shivering in her eye. His eye rolled, rolled. This wasn’t Kara. The dimness had tricked him. “Be glad those lights didn’t come on,” Christine said, sounding different than he’d expected—she hadn’t spoken once during cocktails the previous evening at the hotel as she hung on Mr. Blaylock’s arm. Her voice was hoarse. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you here,” she said. A certain fluidity suggested multitudes beneath her skin. “The service door was open, by the way. That’s how we got in.”

“You killed small animals as a child, didn’t you?” Mr. Blaylock said. He stood before the gaping refrigerator, backlit so his face was partially hidden. Lancaster recognized the man’s voice, his peculiar scent. Mr. Blaylock soothed him. “That’s how it begins. Don’t be afraid. It’s not your turn. Not tonight. Really, you’ve been dead for years, haven’t you?” And to his left, past a doorframe that let yet further into the heart of the complex, more figures crowded. Presumably Mr. Blaylock’s acolytes from the dinner party.

Lancaster pulled free from Christine’s clutches. She spoke gibberish to him, lips and the sound from her lips moving asynchronously. He wheeled and plunged into the hall, blundered without sight or thought toward the conference chamber and the reassurance of a crowd. His mouth hurt on the inside. The caterers were already gone, leaving the room as antiseptic as they’d found it. The guests milled, awkward and surly in the absence of entertainment.

“Finally you appear!” Ms. Diamond said through her teeth. “Don’t believe in answering your phone. Damn it and hellfire, Lancaster! The natives are restless. We need to move on out.”

“Yeah, can we just go already?” Kara pressed tight against Mr. Rawat, wheedling in a daddy’s-little-girl tone. Her white cheeks were blotched pink. Lancaster’s tongue ached and he tried to recall what he’d meant to say, why those two disturbed him. Hadn’t he gone searching for her? The possibility seemed more remote by the second. He pressed a napkin to his lips, stemming the blood-flow, his short term memory erasing itself like a tape under a magnet.

He followed at the tail of the procession toward the parking lot. He glanced over his shoulder. A figure watched him from the darkened hallway. It slipped backward and vanished. Then he was letting the door close, a gate shutting on a sepulcher, and a few moments later he couldn’t recall why the taste of adrenaline mixed with the mouthful of wet copper.



* * *



The limousine and its running lights floated on the black surface of the night road. Farther on, the skyline of the city glowed like a bank of coals. Lancaster thought of his townhouse, the cold comfort of his large television and well-stocked bar, his firm bed, the expert and clinical charms of his high-dollar call girls. A voice whispered to him that he might not ever again step across the threshold. Blood continued to trickle from his tongue and he swallowed frequently.

Ms. Diamond’s knee brushed his own; her hands were primly folded in her lap. She smiled a glassy smile of defeat. Mr. Rawat lolled directly across the way, eyes closed. Kara’s cheek rested against the breast of his jacket. The Cooks reclined a few inches over, nodding placidly with the swaying of the car. Dedrick was in front, riding shotgun, hidden by the opaque glass.

Dr. Christou said to Mrs. Cook, “What do you mean, Francine? The land itself can possess sentience? The Great Father of the Native Americans writ in root and rock?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Cook. “Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Vortexes, dolmens, leylines, sacred monoliths, massive deposits of crystal and other conducting minerals.”

Dr. Christou shrugged. “How do you envision these anomalies affecting the larger environment—human society?”

“The natives amplified them with ceremonies and the construction of corresponding devices. Some acolytes yet perform the ancient rituals in the name of...various entities. Places of power become more powerful.” The dome light was on. Mrs. Cook stared into the mirror of her compact. She patted her nose. “There’s an ancient gridwork across this landscape. A scar. You can’t feel it? How it plucks at you, siphons a tiny bit of your very life force? No, you can’t. My disappointment is…Well, it’s profound, Doctor. Profound indeed.”

“But you can feel it,” Dr. Christou said. He averted his gaze, grimacing, a man who’d gotten the scent of something rancid and might vomit.

“Yes. Yes! Why else would I let hubby-kins drag me to Kansas of all benighted places?”

Mr. Cook sneered. “I don’t give a tinker’s damn for office property, only that its foundation lies upon the rim of a vast, ancient wheel. We, this speck of a vehicle, travel across it like a flea on the back of an elephant.”

“You see, my good doctor, we’ve done our homework. The old races made a number of heroic excavations.” Mrs. Cook had applied a lot of powder. Her face was ghastly pale, except her lips, which resembled red earthworms. “Those excavations are hidden beneath the shifting stones and the sunflowers and the wheat. Yet they endure and exert significant force. A million bones ground to dust, a lake of blood leeched down, down into the earth, coagulated as amber. This good earth buzzes with a black radiation. Honey and milk to certain individuals.”

“Right on,” Mr. Cook said, idly adjusting his silvery ascot. He licked his lips at Mrs. Cook as she snapped shut the compact.

“Besides the Serpent Intaglio, I’m unaware of any geoglyphs in this region. Even if these geoglyphs of yours exist…Comanche, Arapahoe, Kickapoo, Kaw…None of them were terraformers on the scale you suggest.” Dr. Christou was rubbing his skull again. A red splotch grew livid on his brow.

“Not the new tribes,” Mrs. Cook said. “Rather the civilizations that ruled here when this continent was still fused to Asia.”

“Back, back, back,” Mr. Cook said. “Only two continents in those days. Plus the polar caps. A wee bit before our time, admittedly.”

Lancaster surfaced from his own disjointed thoughts and began to process the exchange. Cold bright recollection smashed through his mind, a dousing of ice water, although he only experienced the visceral epiphany in the abstract, unable to comprehend the nature of its import. He said with practiced and patently false calmness, “Mr. Rawat, how did you come to learn of the Roache property? Someone brought it to your attention. Your investors, or someone in your employ? You have a department devoted to mergers and acquisitions.”

Ms. Diamond casually dug an elbow into Lancaster’s ribs. Mr. Rawat opened one eye. “Byron and Francine. They prepared a prospectus.”

“Byron and I were vacationing in Portugal,” Mrs. Cook said. “The three of us happened to stay at the same hotel. One thing led to another, and another…”

“We became fast friends,” Mr. Rawat said.

“Bosom buddies,” Mr. Cook said, staring directly and unblinkingly at Lancaster. What had Ms. Diamond called him? Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island. Yeah, there was an uncanny resemblance here in the shifty gloom.

Lancaster glanced from the Cooks to Dr. Christou. “Last night, who started that conversation about monsters?” He knew even before anyone answered that his assumption Mr. Rawat or Dr. Christou chose the topic was in error. They’d merely carried it along. He remembered kissing Mrs. Cook’s hand the previous evening, its repellent flavor of sweet, rotting fruit and underlying acridness. She’d been inside his mind before that, though, been inside all of their heads, that was her power. Even now her likeness floated in his waking mind, whispering to him how it was, how it would be. A river of blood, the sucking of living marrow—

Mrs. Cook’s bright smile widened. “Monsters fascinate me to no end.” She leaned forward and grasped Dr. Christou’s thigh as if propositioning a would-be lover. “We’ve read all of your books, Doctor.”

“We’ve come a long way for this,” Mr. Cook said. “There are some friends we’d like to introduce to you.”

Dr. Christou’s face slackened. He made an inarticulate sound from the back of his throat. Finally, he mastered himself and said to Lancaster, “Do you understand what’s happening? My god, Lancaster. Tell me you understand.”

Lancaster hesitated and Mrs. Cook cackled, head thrown back, throat muscles bunching.

Mr. Cook glanced out the window, then at his watch. “Oh, my. They’re waiting. I almost dared not hope…On with the show.” He loosened his tie.

The limo slowed and halted at a lonely four-way crossroads overseen by a traffic light dangling from a wire. The light burned red. A sedan was parked at an odd angle in the approaching right-hand lane, hazards flashing. A man and a woman dressed in evening clothes stood nearby, blank and stolid, awaiting rescue, perhaps. Lancaster squinted; the couple seemed familiar. As the limo began to roll forward through the intersection, Ms. Diamond said, “My god.” She pressed the intercom button and ordered Ms. Valens to pull over.

“Wait, don’t do it,” Dr. Christou said with the affect of a man heavily medicated; a man who’d chosen to give warning in afterthought when it was far too late.

“It’s them.” Ms. Diamond was already on her way out of the car and briskly walking toward the other motorists. Her heels clacked on the asphalt.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Rawat said, annoyed.

“Who are those people?” Kara said. Her face was sleepy and swollen.

Mr. Cook reached up and killed the dome light. From the shadows he said, “Victoria’s parents. They burned alive in a car crash. 1985. She has lived alone for so long.”

“Uh-uh,” Kara said. “That’s Casey Jean Laufenburg and her brother Lloyd. I went to high school with those guys.”

“Did they burn in a car accident too?” Dr. Christou said.

“Worse. Casey Jean’s in retail. It’s awful.” She gazed at Mr. Rawat imploringly. “Can we please keep going? Why do we have to stop?” She sounded fully awake and afraid.

“Don’t you want to say hello to your chums?” Mr. Cook said. “And you, doctor. Aren’t you just positively consumed with fascination? This is how it happens. A lonely road at night. You come across someone familiar…an old friend, a brother, a sister, the priest from the neighborhood.”

Mrs. Cook said, “It could be anyone, whomever is flitting around your brain. Here’s the darkness, the haunted byway. Here in your twilight, you get to be part of the legend.”

“That’s enough booze for you, Ma’am,” Lancaster said with forced cheer. Mrs. Cook released Dr. Christou and grasped Lancaster’s forearm in a soft, almost effortless fashion that nonetheless reduced his resistance to that of a bug with a leg stuck on a fly strip. She opened herself and let him see. He was bodiless, weightless, sucked like smoke through a pipe stem toward a massive New England style house. He was drawn inside the house—marble tiles, sweeping staircases, bookcases, paintings—and into the master bedroom, the wardrobe, so cavernous and dim. An older couple were bound together in barbed wire. They dangled from a ceiling hook, their corpses liver-gray and bloodless, unspun hair dragging against the carpet. Eyes glazed, jaws slack. The real Cooks had never even made it out of their home.

The image collapsed and disintegrated and Lancaster reconstituted in the present, Mrs. Cook’s, fingers clamped on his arm. He wrenched free and flopped back into his seat, strength drained. He said to Dr. Christou, “I think we’ve been poisoned.” Someone had spiked the liquor, dosed the food with hallucinogens to soften the group, to break them down. Lancaster had read about this, the government experiments on Vietnam soldiers, the spritzing of subways with LSD in the 1970s. Mind control was the name of the game. “Doctor, this may be…” Lancaster shook his head to clear it, trying to decide exactly why an oppositional force would want to drug them. “It’s a kidnapping.” The motive seemed shockingly obvious—ransom. This carload of rich people tooling along the countryside could represent a payday for a suitably prepared criminal. He pressed the intercom and said, “There’s a situation. Something’s happening.”

The glass whisked down and Dedrick swiveled in his seat. “Yes?”

“I believe we’re under attack. Please get Ms. Diamond. Drag her if necessary. Ms. Valens, the minute they’re in the vehicle get us the hell out of here.”

“Excuse me” Mr. Rawat said, his reserve cracked, a raw nerve of terror exposed in his rapid blinking. Doubtless he’d seen his share of violence back in the homeland and was acutely aware of his vulnerability. “Mr. Lancaster, what do you mean we’re under attack? Dedrick?”

Dedrick’s stony countenance didn’t alter. “Sir, please wait.” He made no further comment while exiting the limo and striding toward Ms. Diamond and friends. His right hand was thrust inside his jacket. Mr. Rawat appeared shocked and Kara retrieved a baggie from her purse. She dryswallowed a handful of parti-colored pills. Surprisingly, in the face of fear she kept quiet.

Lancaster squirmed around until he managed to get a view from the rear window of what was happening outside. He simultaneously opened his cell phone and dialed the Roache security department and requested a detail be dispatched to the location at once. He considered alerting his handler Clack of the situation, except in his experience communication with the NSA office was routed through multiple filters and ultimately reached an answering machine instead of a human being ninety percent of the time. It seemed a bad sign that the Cooks were unconcerned that he’d summoned the cavalry. Something great and terrible was descending upon this merry company of travelers. He said, “Who are you working for?”

“The Russians,” Mr. Cook said.

“The Bulgarians,” Mrs. Cook said. “The Scythians, the Picts, the Ostrogoths, the wicker-crowned God Kings of Ultima Thule. The Martians.”

“Mrs. Cook and I serve the whims of marvelous entities, foolish man,” Mr. Cook said. “The ones inhabiting the cracks in the earth, as the doctor is so fond of opining.”

That sounded like some kind of terrorist group to Lancaster. “Why here? Why not at the office where there’d be privacy?”

The Cooks exchanged blandly malevolent glances.

Dr. Christou mumbled, “Because we are near a place of power. A blood sacrifice requires a sacred foundation.”

“Or a profane foundation,” Mrs. Cook said.

“Like sex magic, the journey is half the fun.” Mr. Cook’s grin shone in the gloom.

“Really, you don’t want to know the who, how, and why,” Mrs. Cook said. “Alas, you will, and soon. We procure and thus persist.”

“Yes, we persist. Until the heat death of the universe.”

“Procure,” Dr. Christou said in a monotone. His flesh seemed to be in the process of deliquescing. Blood beaded on his forehead, squeezed in fattening droplets from the pores and rolled down his cheeks. Blood leaked from the corners of his eyes. Blood trickled from his sleeve cuffs and dripped in his lap. “Procure, what do you procure?”

Lancaster recoiled from the doctor. He had visions of anthrax, a vial of the Ebola virus, or one of a million other plagues synthesized in military labs the world over, and one of those plagues secreted in a handbag, a golf bag, wherever, now dosed into the food, the water, the wine, this virulent nastiness eating Dr. Christou alive. On a more fundamental level, he understood Christou’s affliction wasn’t any plague, manmade or otherwise, but the manifestation of something far worse.

“My goodness, doctor, they are eager for your humor to draw it at this distance,” Mr. Cook said, gleeful as a child who’d won a prize. He pretended to pout. “I was promised a taste. Gluttons!”

“Go on, sweetie,” Mrs. Cook said. “There is more than enough to spare.”

Mr. Rawat said, “My friend, my friend, you’re hurt!” He extended his hand, hesitated upon thinking better of the gesture.

The Cooks laughed, synchronized. A quantity of Dr. Christou’s blood was drawn in gravity-defying rivulets from where it pooled on the seat, first to the floorboard, then vertically against the window where it formed globules and rotated as if suspended in zero gravity. Mr. Cook craned his neck and sucked the globules into the corner of his mouth. “If ambrosia tastes so sweet upon a mortal tongue, how our patrons must crave it as that which sustains them!”

There was a thunderclap outside and a flash of fire. Ms. Diamond ran toward them. Her left high heel sheared and she did a swan dive onto the road. Dedrick also sprinted for the limo, moving with the grace and agility of a linebacker. He hurdled the fallen woman and blasted another round by twisting and aiming from under his armpit. Lancaster couldn’t see the gun, but it had an impressive muzzle flash.

The mystery couple pursued on hands and knees, clothes shredded to reveal slick, cancerous flesh illuminated in the red glare of the traffic light. Their true forms unfolded and extended. The pair approached in a segmented, wormlike motion, and the reason why was due to their joining at hip and shoulder. Their faces had collapsed into seething pits; blowtorch nozzles seen front on, except spouting jets of pure black flame. In that moment Lancaster realized what had been leeching Dr. Christou from afar and he became nauseated.

As this disfigured conglomeration encroached upon Ms. Diamond, she convulsed in a pantomime of making a snow angel against the pavement. A heavy, wine-dark vapor trail boiled from her, and was siphoned into the funnel maws of the monstrous couple. She withered and charred. The others crawled atop and covered her completely.

The passenger compartment filled with the sour odor of feces. Mr. Rawat screamed and when Kara realized what was happening outside she screamed too. The gun cracked twice more, then Dedrick was in the front seat and bellowing for Ms. Valens to drive, drive, drive! and the chauffeur floored it while Dedrick’s door was still open.

Lancaster didn’t have the wits to react to the knife that appeared in Mr. Cook’s hand. He gaped dumfounded while Mr. Cook nonchalantly reached out over his seatback and grasped Ms. Valens’s hair and sliced her throat neat as could be. However, Dedrick continued to prove quite the man of action. He reached across Ms. Valens’s soon to be corpse and took the wheel and kept the vehicle pointed down the centerline as he poked his large bore magnum pistol through the partition and fired. The bullet entered Mr. Cook’s temple and punched a paper mâché hole out the opposite side of his head. The report stunned and deafened Lancaster who raised his arms defensively against the splash. A chunk of bone and hair caromed from the ceiling, splatted against Dr. Christou’s jacket breast and clung like a displaced toupee. Now blood was everywhere—fizzing from Dr. Christou, misting the window in gruesome condensation, spurting from the chauffer’s carotid artery, gushing from Mr. Cook’s dashed skull, filling Lancaster’s mouth, his nostrils, everywhere, everywhere.

Mrs. Cook ended Dedrick’s heroics. She grasped the barrel and jerked and the gun exploded again, shattering the rear window. She made her other hand into a claw and gently raked drab, blue-painted nails across his face. One of his eyes burst and deflated, and the meat of his cheeks and jaw came unstitched as if kissed by a serrated saw blade and his face more or less peeled away like a decal. The man dropped the gun and pitched backward and out of view.

More blood. More blood. More screaming. It was chaos. The limousine left the road, bounced into the ditch and plowed a ragged line through a wheat field. The occupants were violently tossed about, except for Mrs. Cook who sat serene as a padishah on her palanquin.

The car ground to a halt. The passenger door opposite Lancaster opened and Mr. Blaylock stood there in an evening suit. He said to Mrs. Cook, “Chop chop, my dear. Dark is wasting.” He bowed and was gone.

Mr. Cook’s dagger had flown from his hand and lodged in the plush fabric of the seat between Lancaster and Dr. Christou. Lancaster caught his balance and snatched the knife, and it was heavy and cruelly curved and fit his hand most murderously. He stabbed it like an ice pick just beneath Mrs. Cook’s breast. the blade crunched through muscle and bone and slid in to the hilt where it stuck tight. He tried to climb through the broken rear window. She cackled and clutched his ankle and yanked him to her as a mother retrieving her belligerent child. She kissed him and life drained from his limbs and he was paralyzed, yet completely aware. Completely aware for the hours that followed in the dark and desolate wheat field.



* * *



When it was over.

It would never be over. Lancaster knew that most intimately. But when it was over for the moment, he walked to the lights on the road, pushed through the rough stalks, occasionally staggering as his shoe caught on a furrow. Police car lights. Fire truck lights. The blue-white spotlights of low-cruising helicopters. The swinging and crisscrossing flashlight beams of the cops trolling the ditches. Roache had pulled out the stops.

He walked deep into the dragnet before somebody noticed that a civilian, pale as death in a blood-soaked suit, wandered amongst them.

The police whisked him directly to a hospital. Physically he was adequate—bumps and bruises and missing the tip of his tongue. Rather hale, all considered. The shrink who interviewed him wasn’t convinced of Lancaster’s mental stability and prescribed pills and a return visit. The police questioning didn’t prove particularly grueling; nothing like the cop shows. Even Roache was eerily sympathetic. Company reps debriefed him regarding the car accident and promptly deposited a merit bonus in his bank account and arranged a vacation in the Bahamas. He didn’t protest, didn’t say much beyond responses to direct questions and these were flat, unaffected and ambiguous. He shuffled off to the islands, blank.

Following an afternoon that was one long stream of poolside martinis and blazing sun, Lancaster stumbled back to his hotel room and saw a man lounging in the overstuffed armchair by the bed.

“Hi, I’m Agent Clack, National Security Agency. We’ve chatted a few times on the phone.” Agent Clack propped his feet on the coffee table. He smoked a cigarette. Gauloises.

The irony wasn’t lost on Lancaster. “What are you, a college sophomore?” He walked to the bar and poured a vodka, pausing to gesture if his guest wanted one.

Agent Clack waved him off. Indeed, a young man—thirty tops. Pretty enough to model for a men’s catalogue, he styled his wiry black hair into an impressive afro. He dressed the part of a tourist; a flower print shirt, cheap camera slung around his neck, khaki shorts and open toe sandals. Lithe and well-built as a dancer, danger oozed from him, aw, shucks demeanor notwithstanding. “They like ’em young at HQ. But I assure you, my qualifications are impeccable. Had to snuff three dudes to get the job, kinda like James Bond. Jack Bauer is a p-ssy compared to yours truly. You’re in good hands. Enough about me. How you holding up?”

“Am I being charged?”

“You responsible for the massacre? My bosses don’t think so. Neither do I. We’re looking for answers, is all.”

Lancaster shrugged and drank his vodka. “Did you find them?” He looked through the window when he asked, staring past the brilliant canopy of umbrella-shaded tables in the courtyard to the blue water that went on and on. “I told the cops where. The best I could remember. It was dark.”

“Yeah, we found the victims. Still hunting the murderers. They seem to have evaporated.” Agent Clack took a computer memory stick from his shirt pocket. “There are hundreds of pics on here. Satellite, aerial, plenty of close-ups of the action, well, the aftermath, in the field. It’s classified, but…Wanna see?”

“I was there.”

“Right, right. Still, things look a lot different from space. It’s kinda weird, though, that you were taken from the isolated Roache property. I mean, the remote offices were an ideal setup for a prolonged torturemurder gig.”

Lancaster thought of the disc of blackened earth he and the rest had been dragged to, a clearing the diameter of a small baseball diamond in the heart of the farmland, thought of what lay some yards beneath the topsoil, the subsoil, and the bedrock; an ossified ridge that curled in a grand arc, the spine of a baby Ouroboros, a gap between jaws and tail. He still smelled the blood and piss, the electric tang of pitiless starlight, the nauseating stench of his own terror. He said, “That dead ground, nothing has ever grown there. I imagine the Indians avoided it during their hunts, that the white farmers tilled around it and called it cursed. It’s older than old, agent. A ground for bloodletting. Places like it are everywhere.”

“I don’t give a shit about Stone Age crop circles. Who was behind the kidnapping. What was the motive. I’ll let you in on a secret—we got nothing, man. No claims or demands from terrorist groups, no chatter, nada. That isn’t how this goes. We always hear something.”

“Motive? There’s no motive. The ineffable simply is.”

“The ineffable,” Agent Clack said.

“The Cooks are in league with…”

“With who?” Agent Clack raised a brow.

“Evil.”

“Get outta here.”

“Abominations that creep along the byways of the world.”

“The big E, huh? Er, yeah, sure thing. I’m more into the concept lowercase e, the kind that lurks in the hearts of men. Anyhow, it wasn’t the Cooks you were entertaining. The real Cooks were murdered in their home several days before the incident in Kansas. But you knew that.”

“Yes. I was shown.”

Agent Clack blew a smoke ring. “And these other individuals. Gregor Blaylock and his entourage. The grad students…”

“Let me guess. Victims of a gruesome demise, identities stolen to perpetrate an elaborate charade.” Lancaster smiled; a brittle twitch.

“Not quite that dramatic. Guy’s nonexistent. So are his assistants. Our records show he, someone, corresponded with Christou over the years, but it’s a sham. There’s a real live prof named Greg Blaylock and my guess is whoever this other guy is, he simply assumed that identity as needed. It’s a popular con, black market brokers fixing illegals up with American citizens’ social security cards. Could be a dozen people using the same serial number, sharing parallel identities. Not too hard. Blaylock and Christou hadn’t actually met in person before that night. So.”

“Blaylock’s a cultist, a servitor. He was on the killing ground as a master of ceremonies. He…Blaylock coupled with Mrs. Cook while the nightmares fed on my companions, one by one.” Lancaster poured again, swallowed it quickly. Poured another, contemplated the glass as if it were a crystal ball. “Everybody was after Christou. The monsters liked his books. What about you and your cronies? Was he a revolutionary? Bomb an embassy back in the ‘60s?”

“That’s eyes only spy stuff, grandpa. I’ll tell you this: the geezer mixed with politically active people during his career. The kind of dudes on no fly lists. He was once a consultant for the intelligence services of our competitors. Quid pro quo. Those bodies we examined…That was beyond, man. Way, way beyond. All the blood and organs removed. Mutilation. Looked like the victims were burned, but the autopsies said, no. A brutal, sadistic, and apparently well-plotted crime. Yet the hostiles let you walk. There’s a mystery my superiors are eager to get solved. Help me, man. Would ya, could ya shed some light on the subject?”

A sort of hysterical joy bubbled into Lancaster’s throat. Yes, yes! To solve the ineffable mystery would be quite the trick. Certainly, Agent Clack despite his innocent face and schoolboy charm was cold and brutal, had surely seen and done the worst. Yet Lancaster easily imagined the younger man’s horrified comprehension as the most vile and forbidden knowledge entered his bloodstream, began to corrode his shrieking brain with its acid. His lips curled. “Mrs. Cook called, a horrible sound unlike anything I’d ever heard, and three of the…things that attacked Ms. Diamond in the road shambled from the darkness and dragged us away, far from the limo and into the fields. Mr. Rawat, Kara, and their bodyguard were alive when they were dumped into the center of the clearing. The bodyguard, Dedrick...despite his horrible wounds. All of them were alive, Agent Clack. Very much alive. Dr. Christou too, although I could hardly recognize him beneath the mask of blood he wore. The blood was caked an inch thick and the fresh stuff oozed around the edges.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that. I still don’t understand how we missed you out there. The wheat is only four feet tall.” Agent Clack sounded more fascinated than sorry.

“I don’t know how it was done. But it was. Black magic, worse.”

“So, what happened? Exactly.”

Lancaster hesitated for a long moment. “Eyes only, agent. My eyes only.”

“Now, now, codger. You don’t wanna f*ck with the man with the shiny laminated picture I.D..”

“The others were drained. Drained, Agent Clack.”

Agent Clack dropped his cigarette butt on the carpet and ground it to bits under his heel. He lighted another and smoked it, expression obscured by the blue haze. Finally, he said, “Alrighty, then. The investigation is ongoing. You’ll talk, sooner or later. I’ve got time to kill.”

“There are unspeakable truths.” Lancaster closed his eyes for a long moment. “It pleased them to spare me in the name of a venerable cliché. Cliché’s contain all truth, of course. The purpose of my survival was to bear witness, to carry the tale. The thrill of spreading terror, of lurking in the night as bogeymen of legend, titillates them. They are beasts, horrid undreamt of marvels.”

“Gotta love those undreamt of marvels.”

“You couldn’t understand. After their masters fed, Blaylock and Mrs. Cook made Christou and the others join bloody hands and dance. The corpses danced. In a circle, jostling like marionettes. And Blaylock and Mrs. Cook laughed and plucked the strings.”

Agent Clack nodded and dragged on his cigarette then rose and regarded Lancaster with a kindly expression. “Sure. You take care. My people will be in touch with your people and all that jazz.”

“Oh, we won’t meet again, Agent Clack. Christou is dead, ending that particular game. Gregor Blaylock and the rest are vanished into the woodwork. I’ve told the story and am thus expendable. Very soon. Very soon I’ll be reclaimed.”

“Don’t worry, we’re watching you. Anybody comes sniffing around, we’ll nab ’em.”

“I suppose I’m comforted.”

“By the way,” Agent Clack said. “Is anyone else staying here with you? When I came in to wait, swore someone was in the bedroom, watching from the door. Thought it was you…Couldn’t find anybody. Maybe they slipped away through the window, eh? Call me paranoid. We spooks are always worried about the baddies getting the drop on us.”

“It wasn’t me,” Lancaster said. He turned and glanced at the bedroom doorway, the dimness within.

“Hah, didn’t really think so. More oddness at the end of an odd day.”

“Well, agent, whatever it was, I hope you don’t see it again. Especially one of these nights when you’re alone.”

Agent Clack continued to gaze at the older man for several beats. He slipped the memory stick into his pocket and walked out. He didn’t bother to close the door. The gap filled with white light that slowly downshifted to black.



* * *



He finished his vacation and returned to the States and cashed in his chips at Roache. No hassle, not even an exit interview. Despite the suddenness of Lancaster’s departure, some of his colleagues scrambled to throw together an impromptu retirement party. He almost escaped before one of the secretaries lassoed him as he was sneaking out the back door.

He was ushered into a Digital Age conference room with a huge table and comfortable chairs and a bay window overlooking downtown. The room shone in the streaming sunlight, every surface glowed and bloomed. His co-workers bore cheap gifts and there was a white layer cake and a bowl of punch. The dozen or so of them sang For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow off-key. What dominated Lancaster’s mind was the burble and boil of the water cooler, the drone of the inset lights. How the white frosting gleamed like an incisor. He caught his reflection in the shiny brass of a wall plate and beheld himself shrunken, emaciated, a leering devil. He averted his gaze, stared instead into the glare of the lowering sun. After the punch went dry and the songs were sung and the hand-shakes and empty pleasantries done with, he fled without looking back.



* * *



No one called, no one rang, and eventually Lancaster grew content in his final isolation. He allowed his apartment lease to lapse and went into the country and rented a room in a chintzy motel on the side of a lesstraveled road. He stocked his closet with crates of liquor and cartons of cigarettes, and by day drank more or less continually in the yard of the motel beneath the gloomy shade of a big tree. By night he drank alone in the tavern and listened to an endless loop of rock-a-billy from the jukebox, the mutter and hum of provincial conversation among the locals. Cigarette smoke lay as heavy as that belched from a crematory stack. The bathroom reeked of piss. He always wore one of the seven nicer suits he’d kept from his collection. A suit for each day of the week. He thought of the lacquered black box stashed beneath his flimsy motel bed. His killing jar of the mind. So far he’d resisted the pleasure, the comfort, of handling its contents. Cold turkey was best, he thought.

He waited. Waited, lulled by the buzz of the neon advertisement in the taproom glass. Waited, idly observing barflies—gin-blossom noses, broken teeth, haggard and wasted flesh. A few women patronized the tavern, mostly soft, mostly ruined. Soft bellies, breasts, necks, bad mascara. Soft and sliding. Their soft necks stirred ancient feelings, but these subsided as he, in all meaningful ways, subsided.

Inevitably, one of the more vital female denizens joined him at his table in the murkiest corner of the room. They talked of inconsequentialities and danced the verbal dance. Her makeup could’ve been worse. Despite his weeks of self-imposed silence the old charm came readily. The deepseated switch clicked on and sprang the lock of the cage of the sleeping beast.

Lancaster allowed her to lead him into the cool evening and toward the rear of the building. He pressed her against the wall, empty parking lot at his back, empty fields, empty sky, and he took her, breathed in the tint of her frazzled peroxide-brittle hair, her boozy sweat, listened to the faint chime of her jewelry as he f*cked her. She didn’t make much noise, seemed to lose interest in him as their coupling progressed. He placed his hand on her throat, thumb lightly slotted between the joints of her windpipe. Her pulse beat, beat. Her face was pale, washed in the buzzing glow of a single security light at the corner of the eaves a moth battened against the mesh and cast raccoon shadows around the woman’s eyes, masked her, dehumanized her, which suited his purpose. Except as his grip tightened his stomach rolled over, his insides realigning with the lateral pull of an intensifying gravitational force, as if he’d swallowed a hook and someone were reeling it in, toying with him.

They separated and Lancaster hesitated, slack and spent, pants unzipped. The woman smoothed her skirt, lighted a cigarette. She walked away as he stood hand to mouth, guts straining against their belt of muscle and suet. The pull receded, faded. He shook himself and retreated to the motel, his squalid burrow. The thermostat was damaged, its needle stuck too far to the right, and the room was sauna-hot, dim as a pit. He sat naked but for his briefs.

He picked up the phone on the second ring. Mr. Blaylock spoke through miles and miles of static. “You are a wild, strange fellow, Mr. Lancaster. Leave the world as a perfect mystery. Confound your watchdogs, your friends, the lovers who never knew you. All that’s left is to disappear.” Mr. Blaylock broke the connection.

The muted television drifted in and out of focus. Ice cracked as it melted in Lancaster’s glass. The cherry glow of his cigarette flickered against the ceiling like firelight upon the ceiling of a cave. His cigarette slipped from his fingers and burned yet another hole in the carpet. He slept.

A single knock woke him. He waited for another until it became apparent none was forthcoming. He retrieved the box and placed it on the table, arrayed each item with a final reverent caress. Photographs, newspaper clippings, an earring, a charm bracelet. Something for those investigators to marvel at, to be amazed and horrified by what they’d never known regarding his secret nature. Then he went to door, passed through and stood on the concrete steps. The tavern across the way was closed and black and the night’s own blackness was interrupted by a scatter of stars, a veil of muddy light streaming from the manager’s office.

The universe dilated within him, above him. Something like joy stirred in Lancaster’s being, a sublime ecstasy born of terror. His heart felt as if it might burst, might leap from his chest. His cheeks were wet. Drops of blood glittered on his bare arms, the backs of his hands, his thighs, his feet. Black as the blackest pearls come undone from a string, the droplets lifted from him, drifted from him like a slow motion comet tail, and floated toward the road, the fields. For the first time in an age he heard nothing but the night sounds of crickets, his own breath. His skull was quiet.

First at a trot, then an ungainly lope, Lancaster followed his blood into the great, hungry darkness.