“Strange?” Horace asked.

“Very strange,” she admitted, gazing at the termination of prints.

Thirty-three steps in, and thirty-three steps back. Then... It was as though the person who’d delivered the envelope had appeared and then vanished into thin air.

Between the footprints and the prospect of finding the Gray Cottage, Hazel hoped for enough mental diversion to forget about her almost-sex session with Sonia. It worked...for a while anyway. She passed on Horace’s offer for a ride, electing instead to walk back to town on the paved road. Dense pine and oak lined both sides of the way, breaking up only periodically to show small crackerbox houses stuck back at the ends of short driveways. As she walked, the day’s heat and humidity glazed her. Not even sure where I’m going. Several persons either sitting on front porches or fussing with shrubs waved casually at her. What did Sonia call this place? Hooterville? Ma and pa in rocking chairs, bumpkin women hanging clothes on the line. But she had to stop at the next house she came to: a county sheriff’s car sat parked there while the officer himself had his hands full keeping a quarreling couple apart.

“Just you calm daown now, the both of ya’s,” he warned. Meanwhile a fortyish man in a sleeveless T-shirt and beer belly raged red-faced at a mop-haired woman who sported an even bigger beer belly. “Been married to huh durn neer twenty years, payin’ the bills, workin’ my tail off!” He pronounced “workin’” as wuckin’. “Naow I sees she’s gettin on with another man!”

Hazel walked by, only ten feet from the conflict, trying to act like she was not listening. Here we go. Backwoods love gone sour. The good old Domestic Dispute...

“I en’t never cheated on yew, Cal, and it’s dag shitty to say so,” the jowly woman wailed back, fists waving. “And after all I done for yew?”

“Shee-it, woman!”

Hazel smirked. By the looks of the dowdy, overweight woman and her red nose, it would take a secret suitor with very low standards to be a party in infidelity. Take what you can get, honey...

“Now, come on, Emma!” barked the sheriff. He held the woman off as though she were a pit bull. “Cal reely ketch you with another man? Admit it if’n he did—”

“He did nothin’ of the sort ‘cos there en’t no other man!” the woman cracked.

“If there en’t no other man!” the husband bellowed back, “then who done gave yew that ring!”

Hazel glanced at the woman’s piggish hand at the same time the sheriff did. Glittering on her finger was a roughly cut deep-scarlet ring.

Hazel wasn’t sure but she wondered, Wasn’t Mr. Pickman wearing a ring just like that?

Not that it mattered. Hazel stepped up her pace; she’d had enough listening to angry rednecks. As she headed away, she heard the woman yell, “I done told yew! I faound it! Warn’t no man give it to me!”

Hazel was glad the confrontation was behind her.

Another half-mile and she was on Main Street. Intermittent passersby nodded to her, yet one woman frowned when her husband gave Hazel’s legs a good look. I guess I’m just killing time, she supposed, looking into some windows. Every time she thought she was feeling better, though, stray images began to hector her. I could be with Sonia right now. Right NOW... She winced. Goddamn Frank. Talk about getting torpedoed. Soon the images turned lewd, but didn’t involve Sonia at all. When just an hour ago she’d felt cured of her kinks and demented fetishes, now they all poured back into her head like cement from a mixer. She recalled the feeling of being pissed in by Snow White yesterday, only to likewise be forced to drink more piss straight from Peter Pan’s rancid cock. Then she could feel the ghosts of his dirty fingers jammed down her throat, to make her vomit it all back up. She shuddered as she walked, appalled by the violation; nevertheless, all the disgusting memory did was throw her pervert switch, and next thing she knew her sexual nerves were buzzing. Oh, no, not again... Even as nauseousness grew, her sex moistened.

Sick, sick, sick, came the dismal thought. She wouldn’t even admit to herself why she’d come here in the first place, but now she had to face it...

The Fish Boys...That’s what Horace said.

Her angst was twisting her up. She needed to find these Fish Boys...

She wandered a bit, glancing in random shop windows. A Rite-Aid store appeared round the corner. She went in to get a Sierra Mist but had to do a double take when she passed a line of ten people at the photo counter. They all stood chatting amiably, beneath a sign that read PASSPORT PHOTOS.

THESE rubes? she wondered, passing them to the checkout. That’s an awful lot of rednecks getting passports, of all things...

Oh, well. She walked around some more, mainly taking in the distant scenery. The green, wooded hills closer, and mountains miles off. Everything seemed pure here; even the sky looked pure.

Eventually she meandered into Bosset’s Way Woodland Tavern. Someone in here must know where I can find the Fish Boys. It was the only way to discover for herself if they, indeed, had been the ones who mauled her.

The place stood two-thirds empty, yet cigarette smoke hazed the bar area. Quiet, work-weathered rednecks either chewed the fat over beers at the tables, or— clack! —played pool. One elderly couple, obviously tourists, marveled over plates of possum-sausage hoagies. Hazel drearily took a seat at the long empty bar.

“Waal, hey thar, sweet pea,” greeted a corpulent barmaid with bunned hair and an apron. “What’ll it be?”

“How about a beer?” Alcohol just makes me more fucked up than I normally am, she admitted. So why did I just order a beer?

“Comin’ right up! Ooo, and I just love yew’re hair! What a lovely color!”

“Thank you,” Hazel said. My hair looks like steel wool dipped in barbeque sauce. What are you–correction: YEW–talking about?

Her brain seemed to tick as she sat there. She felt so sick right now, yet so anxiously demented. Motherfuckin’ Frank. Fucked me over six ways till Sunday. If he really does have a girl with him, I’m gonna cut his cock off and put it on a stick.

Clunk. The barmaid set down her beer. “Thar yew go, cutie pie.” The broad face seemed enthralled by Hazel. “Hope yew durn’t mind my sayin’ so”—chubby fingers reached out and actually pinched her cheek—“and yew might not believe this but thar was a time when I was just as pretty and slim as yew—”

“Yeah, Ida!” someone yelled from the pool table. “Back when Eisenhower was president.”

The barmaid’s face bugled, pig-eyed. “Just you hush thar, Nahum Gardner! Lest I tell Nabby what it looked like yew was doin’ in the men’s room other night!”

Guffaws cracked in the air.

Hazel glumly sipped her beer. Redneck paradise. She thought of ordering lunch but realized she had no appetite. All that filled her mind were images of sex with Sonia—sex she’d likely never have. But when she tried to think of something else, she winced at what her mind produced: being pissed on, being cracked in her face, being choked and held up off her feet as some faceless thug fucked her...God... She thought of calling Ashton, whom she knew loved her, but she shrugged the idea off. I only want to be loved by Sonia and that’s NEVER going to happen. She glanced errantly at the pool table, noticed one stocky man with bulging muscles and hair pouring over his T-shirt collar. In the vision she saw him fornicating with her on one of the bar tables, duct tape slapped over her eyes and mouth. He gulped from a beer bottle while he stroked, but then he suddenly withdrew, creamed her labia with his sperm, and slunked the beer bottle in her, fat-end first...

Hazel rubbed her forehead and groaned, her sex squirming, swampy with need.

“Oh, new, that’s right, I never got chance tew tell ya ‘baout it, Hannah but, ee-yuh, all’s I need is my passport, then I durn’t think it’ll be long afore I go.” It was Ida, the barmaid, now yammering excitedly on the phone. “Ee-yuh, Sao Paulo it’s called. Not shuh whar it ‘tis but I think it’s one’a them beachy places...”

Hazel’s eyes narrowed. This woman is going to SAO PAULO? Nothing more unlikely could’ve occurred to her.

“Oh, goodness, yes! I en’t had me a vacation in yeers! ”

When Ida hung up, Hazel had to ask, “Did you say you were going on a vacation to Sao Paulo? ”

“Why, yes! I’se so excited!” the woman beamed. “Do you know whar ‘zactly it ‘tis, hon?”

“Yeah, it’s in Brazil.”

Ida’s eyes blanked. “And, uh, whar’s that?”

She getting a passport to go to Sao Paulo and she doesn’t even know where it is? Hazel was flummoxed. She must’ve won a sweepstakes or something. “South America, the south western coast. But it’s not on the beach like Rio, it’s more like thirty miles from the ocean. Read about the place before you go there because, well, it’s not exactly a tourist hot-spot any more.”

“No...beaches?”

“Not unless you’ve got a Land Rover. I’m sure there’re buses that go to the coast but in South America even the buses are suspect. Highwaymen, insurgents. And Sao Paulo has one of the highest population-densities of any city on earth, almost twenty million people and most of them live in extreme poverty. There’s death-squads, gangs, drugs, pick-pockets, you name it. And there are Marxist terrorist cells that love to kidnap Americans.” Hazel sipped her beer. “You might want to try Rio, instead, or some of the beach resorts south of there.”

“Why, I say...,” Ida blurted. “I never would’a thought they’d be sendin’ me tew a place like that. ”

Yeah, a sweepstakes she must’ve won, Hazel knew. “Oh, and by the way. Do you know where I can find the Fish—” but before she could finish, the phone rang.

“Be right back, sweetie...”

Just as Ida parted, a stool scuffed the floor several spots down. In it a wide-shouldered, grizzle-faced man sat. He wore a sweat-stained T-shirt that read ACME TREE TRIMMING AND HAULAGE. He sat almost dejected, rubbing his eyes as though fatigued or mentally frayed. “Dang,” he muttered.

“You look like you’re feeling about as good as I am now,” Hazel offered.

The man glanced over, bleary-eyed. “Howdy’n, waal, ee-yuh, not feelin’ up ta snuff. Had the wust night’s sleep ever.” He sputtered. “Nightmares, yew know?”

“Well, I had a doozy myself,” Hazel replied. “Must be in the air.”

A big hand glided over. “Name’s Nathaniel—call me Nate. Nate Peaslee.”

“Hi, Nate, I’m Hazel.” When she shook the large, steel-firm hand, she imagined it clamped to her throat while he rubbed the wet end of a huge penis back and forth over the nub of her clitoris. Stop it! Stop it!

“I once dated a psych major who said the best way to disarm the memory of an unpleasant dream is to talk about the dream itself,” she said.

He shook his head, gruffed a sound. “Curn’t ‘member ever havin’ a nightmare so reel. Dreamt I woke up in my bed and somehaow knowed that someone were in the house. Then I thought shuh the place was on fire”—he pronounced “fire” as far—“‘cos thar were this black mist all abaout, like seepin’ up through the seams in the floor but when I sniff, it durn’t smell like smoke no ways. Smelled kind’a like fresh meat’re fish. Next thing I knowed I’m lyin’ in bed but curn’t move a muscle ta save my life but I ken see some fella walkin’ araound my place, mutterin’ all this jibber-jabber. Looked like he was weerin’ sunglasses, of all the durnt things.”

“And that’s it?” Hazel asked. “That’s the dream?”

“Ee-yuh, all’s I ken ’member. Didn’t sleep me a wink after thet.”

Shit, buddy, she thought. My nightmare’s got that beat by a mile. “Say, Nate, have you ever heard about a really old cottage up on top of Whipple’s Peak?” she thought she’d ask.

His eyes narrowed in contemplation, then he perked up and said, “Ee-yuh, naow’s yew mention it. En’t thought ‘baout it in yeers. Some place no one knows who built. Never seed the place myself but my brothers did, hiked all the way up thar back when we was little kids—”

Ida, clearly eavesdropping, lumbered from the back. “Oh, naow, Nate, durn’t ya be fillin’ my friend’s head with all that tripe!” She looked earnestly to Hazel. “Honey, thet en’t nothin’ but tall tales. Thar en’t no haunted cottage up on Whipple—”

“But my brothers done seed it when we was little,” Nate insisted.

A reproving glance. “Nate, yew’re brothers may be fine, hard-workin’ fellas but they both lie like a couple’a rugs.”

Nate stalled. “Waal, curn’t argue with yew thar, Ida.”

“Okay,” Hazel said, “but there’s something else I need to know. Can either of you tell me where to find some people known as the F—”The phone rang again, summoning Ida, while simultaneously, Nate’s cell phone rang.

Jesus! Hazel could’ve screamed at her luck.

“Aw, god-durnt it,” Nate said. “Rush job at the Curwen place, huh? I was just abaout to grab a samb-witch, but—Aw, all right.” He hung up, jangling his keys. “Gotta run, Hazel. Boss is payin’ double-time so’s I guess lunch ken wait. Nice talkin’ tew ya, though.”

“You, too...”

A moment later he was out the door.

The Fish Boys, the Fish Boys, Hazel turned the words over. Was Fate preventing her from finding out their location? Fate or God, came a second, unpleasant thought.

The pool table men left, high-fiving after their game, and when Hazel turned to look she now found the bar empty. She could still ask Ida about the Fish Boys...If she ever quits yacking on the phone! Several yuppie-looking young men came in next, in hiking gear. They wore Boston College shirts—the enemy. Dead end. They wouldn’t know either. Ida put another beer down for her, with the phone tucked between cheek and chin. I guess you’re gonna run your mouth all day, but then Hazel blinked after having noticed a crimson sparkle.

How do you like that? Ida was wearing what seemed a scarlet ring identical to Mr. Pickman’s and the woman who’d been arguing with her husband...

A sound like a squeaky bearing snapped her attention, then a crackly voice, “Aw, now, there she is! Hazel, ain’t it?”

Hazel turned to see Clonner Martin wheeling up in his chair. “Hi, Clonner. Nice to see you again.” She hopped off her stool and sat across from him at the nearest table. “How are things going?”

He huffed, raising his stumps. “Still got no hands, but the sun’s still shinin’, the world’s still turnin’, and I’m still drinkin’ beer, so’s I’m just fine.”

Hazel smiled, shaking her head. She remembered his similar optimism yesterday. “You’re quite an inspiration, Clonner.”

“Aw, hail...” He ordered a beer for himself. “I do all right. A dang sight better than Luntville, West Virginia.”

“Oh, that’s right. You grew up there. Didn’t you say you had a brother there too?”

“Yeah, sure did. Jake.”

Then Hazel grimly recalled that Clonner had lost his hands to diabetes, while his brother lost his feet. Suddenly she felt charged up in a small way; the old man’s mere presence helped put away her own angst and doldrums. It refreshed her to hear the snappy, crackling southern accent as opposed to the low-throat drawl of the true locals. “What urged you to move here of all places?”

Clonner took a good swig of beer by biting the can’s lip. “Pot luck, I guess. Saw an ad for the land in the back’a Field’n Stream. Price was right and I’d just come inta some money so’s I said hail’n come up to check it out. Never went back. Were all ready sick’a the heat’n skeeters.” Another swig and he rambled on, “Bought me a piece’a lakeside property with a shack on it, and a decent double-wide on a couple acres just down the road. I’se live in the trailer, and my loser nephew’n his deadbeat buddy live in the shack. And like I told ya yesterday, darlin’, I’se also bought me this bar once I seed how bad it were suckin’ wind. But I’ll be danged if’n I ain’t doubled the profits.”

“But you still have land in West Virginia?” Hazel inquired, somehow fascinated by the whiskery old man.

“Naw, naw, hon, solt it all, I did. Hadda a hunnert acres’a crap land in Russell County. Weren’t worth squat, it wasn’t, but then some business fella up’n offered me some long coin fer it. He were from a mining company and the land was worth fair scratch ‘cos of the gypsies on it.”

Hazel stalled. “Gypsies?”

“Yeah. So he and his mining company bought it all and here’s I am.” He shook his head. “My whole blammed life, though, I never once knew of a mine in the area and shore as hail never saw no gypsies or hurdy-gurdy folks on it.” He scratched his chin with a stump. “Reckon he wanted to get the gypsies to work in his mine under the table.”

Hazel squinted. “Clonner, I think you mean gypsum, not gypsies. It’s a mineral used in construction materials.”

Clonner gaped. “Ya don’t say! Shee-it, all this time I thought it was gypsies. I’ll tell ya, a fella learns somethin’ new every day!”

Hazel had to control herself not to laugh. “Yes, I’m sure your land had gypsum on it, and that’s why you were paid well.” What a character...” Oh, and I’m glad I ran into you, Clonner. Are you familiar with some people—brothers, perhaps—known as the Fish Boys?”

Clonner almost dropped his beer out of his dentures. “Oh, yeah, missy, I’se sorry to say I am. ‘S the two losers I just tolt ya I let ‘em live in my lake shack, my fat’n useless nephew Clayton and his goin’-nowhere pal Walter Brown. They sell their catch to the local restaurants. They’se also trap’n filet woodchuck, possum, muskrat. In fact, I pointed ‘em out to ya yesterday.” He pronounced pointed as “purnted,” and then gestured the waist-high opening in the wall in which Hazel remembered seeing two men fileting fish.

“Oh, so those guys are the Fish Boys,” she acknowledged, and now she felt a twinge of suspense. The bearded fileter had been overweight while his partner next to him had been tall and wiry-slim. Peter Pan was fat, she remembered, and Snow White skinny and tall... Maybe Horace had been correct with his hunch.

“Where can I find them, Clonner? Where’s this lake shack of theirs?”

The question almost caused the old man to audibly moan. “Aw, missy, now, you don’t wanna go there. What’cha wanna find them two white trash loafers fer?”

Hazel laughed. “You certainly don’t speak very highly of your own nephew, Clonner.”

“He’s a lazy, fat putz and his buddy Shot Glass ain’t nothin’ but a skunk and a weasel.”

“Shot Glass?”

“Aw, yeah, that’s Walter’s nickname.” Clonner made a pppppht sound with his lips. “Great nickname fer a al-ker-holik. Shot Glass come here from Brattleboro, Vermont, more’n likely ‘cos of the husbands of too many redneck tramps he were messin’ with. Only friend my nephew’s got–peas in a pod. Oh, shore, I guess they’se decent fishermen’n trappers but they ain’t good for nothin’ else. Deal I made with ‘em was they pay me some two-bit rent ever month with the fish’n game they catch, but then they blow all their scratch on booze and don’t hardly pay me squat.” It was clearly a sore subject to Clonner. “Cain’t kick ‘em out, though. Clayton’s blood, after all.” At last, his gaunt face seemed to grow more gaunt. “Say, Hazel, what’choo askin’ ‘bout them two no-accounts fer anyway? Did ya say ya wanted to know how ta find ‘em?”

“Well, yes,” and she was disturbed by how effortlessly the lie arrived. “My friend Sonia and I want to cook out on the grill tonight, so I need to get some fresh fish. Then someone mentioned the Fish Boys so I thought they’d be a good bet.”

Clonner shrugged. “Aw, well, they do bring in a good fresh catch, I’ll give the pair’a morons that.” His stump waved toward the front door. “Just go on down the road a half-mile, then turn toward the lake on Zadok Spur it’s called. Go on a spell, there be the shack.”

Bingo! Hazel thought. “Thanks very much, Clonner.” She tried to pay her tab but the old man wouldn’t hear of it. “Yer cash is no good in my bar, sweetie. But just you do me a favor if’n ya catch up to Clayton’n Shot Glass.”

“Sure, Clonner.”

“You tell those two beer-soaked, do-nothin’ bums that it might be nice, just once, fer them ta actually pay their blammed rent like ever-one else in the world!”

“I’ll do that, Clonner. See you soon.” Hazel smiled at him then left the bar.

The shift from morning to early afternoon brought more heat and humidity; it came in waves. Shouldn’t have had those beers, she thought at once. She was already buzzed, a feeling she didn’t typically like. Nevertheless, each step she took down the road brought a refreshing excitement to her. Clayton Martin and Shot Glass Brown... Would they really prove to be Peter Pan and Snow White? And if they were...

Why wasn’t she afraid of the prospect?

She found the turn-off, the oddly named Zadok Spur, in less than ten minutes. Here, though, the asphalt ended, leaving a narrow road even muddier than Horace’s. When she thought of walking within the forest’s fringe, one step told her it was useless. Evidently the land here lay very low; last night’s showers had turned the forest’s carpet of leaves and detritus into swamp. To hell with it, she consigned. Mud washes off, and she took off her flipflops and marched unfazed through the slop. She didn’t care how dirty her feet got, anyway. The rest of me just might be a whole lot dirtier in a little while...

More excitement welled, however unspecified. Sweat drenched the Mark Twain T-shirt now, to the extent that it stuck to her chest like a wet veil. Nerves squirmed in her nipples which had distended a half-inch, and between the heat and the considerable walking, her shorts worked up tight into the cleft of her buttocks. When the mud-trench of a road broke, she felt woozy...

There sat the aforementioned shack, just off the shore with the flat glass of Lake Sladder shimmering nearly as far as she could see. From the shack, a ramshackle pier extended, while a decrepit boat sat still in the water, heaped with nets and fishing rods; animal pelts hung up on a two-by-four frame. Well here they are, Hazel thought, ankle deep in mud. The Fish Boys. In only minutes she’d have the answer to her question...

Her feet schlucked as she approached. She glanced at the shack’s small windows and—

What’s that noise?

She heard a sound like a vacuum cleaner, though by the looks of the place, and her impression of its tenants, she couldn’t imagine much housekeeping going on here. A awful stench blew into her face from a garbage can just beyond the porch; Ugh, she thought, looking it, for it contained piles of fish heads along with the heads of possums, squirrels, and other mammals. A wooden door stood open, from which the machine-sound emerged. Great design, she thought in sarcasm, for the shack had been erected below a slight rise before the shoreline; the excess rainwater from the woods had clearly entered the teetering building at one end.

BUY YOR FISH HEER, read an incredulous painted sign. MUSKRAT, POSSEM, WOODCHUK - CHEAP.

Hazel felt no hesitation when she stepped onto the facsimile for a front porch and entered the shack without knocking.

The vacuum sound deafened her. It was a disaster of a domicile: busted recliner chairs sitting askew, a warped table full of empty beer cans, a television with a coat hanger for an antenna. Various wires looped from the ceiling; a dented refrigerator, a microwave with a crack in the window, and a hot plate comprised the kitchen, while pots and pans dangling from the ceiling. The only true lamp in the place sat on the counter, but it was shadeless. A fat, brown-haired man was opening the fridge for a beer. He had a beard. Clayton, Hazel realized. Clonner’s nephew. He went to the counter and began the grisly task of fileting some skinned animal the size of a dachshund. A second man busied himself at the opposite end of the shack: tall, wiry, stubbled-faced and sunken eyed. His long hair was the color of a dirty sheep. Walter “Shot Glass” Brown... Indeed, Hazel had seen both men fileting fish at the tavern yesterday. Shot Glass paused to chug a can of beer, then returned to his noisy duties, for he was the one behind the deafening sound. The shack’s far end dipped enough to form a low spot which had accumulated an inch of water on the floor. Unmindful of the possibility of electrical shock, Shot Glass tramped boot-footed through the water, wielding a two-foot-long clear plastic tube an inch in diameter; this tube was connected to a long, black hose stuck to a machine that looked like an engine analyzer at a gas-station, only very old. The man was vacuuming up the water that lay in the dip, the shack’s crude sleeping area, she could see, for two ratty, steel-framed beds occupied the nook. Mattresses lay sheetless and stained.

Hazel merely stood there, looking around.

“Yo! Yo!” Clayton, the fat one, yelled to his partner. He set down his bloody fileting knife. “Shot Glass!” He banged a pot on the makeshift kitchen counter. “Turn that dang thing off!”

Shot Glass looked up amid the siphoning cacophony; water slurped loudly into the tube. He noticed Hazel standing there, then flicked the machine off.

“We’se got company,” Clayton said.

Shot Glass set the nozzle aside, then tramped out of the water. He peered, weasel-faced. “Who’re yew?”

Hazel crossed her arms below her bosom. “Clayton, Walter, a.k.a. Shot Glass–the Fish Boys, huh? Nice to see you again. And just so you know, I didn’t file rape charges yesterday, but I did tell some people I was coming here now. So if I, say, disappear, the police will know where to come. Keep in mind, there is still a death penalty in New Hampshire.”

Both men looked at each other, narrow-eyed.

“But that was some job you guys did on me yesterday. The foot-fuck especially.”

“Clayton, what’s she talkin’ ‘baout?” Shot Glass asked.

Hazel snapped, “You stupid redneck dimwits!” then she pointed to a cluttered shelf on which sat two plastic faces: Peter Pan and Snow White. “If you’re gonna rape a woman half to death, at least have enough brains to hide the evidence!”

The shack stood silent several moments, Clayton and Shot Glass at a loss for words. Clayton gulped, and...was Shot Glass nervous when he went to the refrigerator for another beer?

“So...,” Hazel began. “Here we are, and since I’ve just told you that I never filed a police report, what does that tell you two think-tankers?”

“Eh?” asked Shot Glass.

Clayton scratched his head.

Hazel sighed. “You guys know what carte blanche means?”

“Eh?”

“Cart...what? ” Clayton inquired.

“Free pass?” Hazel continued. “Consensuality?”

Shot Glass swigged more beer, frowning. “We durn’t know what yew’re talkin’ ‘baout.”

“For shit’s sake,” she muttered. “Listen, I have some problems—some psychological problems. They have names, for all the good they do. One’s erotomania. Another is chronic transitive paraphilia. One doctor even said I was sexually pathological. It means I have destructive sexual fantasies that are severe enough to cause detriment to my life. I don’t expect you guys to know what any of this means since you both probably dropped out of school in the fourth grade—”

“Try seventh, there, missy!” Shot Glass cracked as if offended.

“‘Bout the same here,” Clayton twanged.

“Wonderful,” Hazel groaned. “But here’s something you can understand. I’m sick in the head. Sick as in sexually sick. I have fetishes and fantasies that exist on an obsessive level.”

Shot Glass’s face seemed to lengthen in contemplation. “Yew mean yew’re, like, nympho?”

“Yes!” Hazel celebrated. “You finally got it!” She peeled off the moist T-shirt, bearing sweat-misted breasts erect with the most obvious anticipation. Then she stepped out of her shorts. “Any time now. It should be pretty clear to you two dopes that I’m ready, willing, and able.”

Chuckling, it was Clayton who lifted her up by a hand to her crotch and the other to her armpit.

“On the bed,” Shot Glass directed. “Guess we didn’t tune the bitch up good enough yesterday.”

Clayton slammed her down on a dirty mattress. Springs squeaked. “Think of me as an all-you-can-fuck buffet,” Hazel panted. “Do anything you want.”

“Anythang?” Clayton asked, taking off his smudged jeans.

She flinched when Shot Glass pinched her labia. “Just don’t kill me or cut me. Oh, and— please—no foot stuff.”

The men roared laughter. Clayton, pantsless now, sat on her stomach, his groin reeking. He cleared his throat, then let a wad of phlegm splat between her breasts.

“Thar’s some ripe chest-peaches, heh, heh, heh!” Shot Glass remarked.

“Yeah, and I’se gonna fuck ‘em fierce,” Clayton promised. He lay his erection in her modest cleavage, then pressed both breasts together. He began to hump. Hazel felt the mucous-slick organ slide back and forth. Meanwhile, Shot Glass was working two, three, then four fingers into her drenched vagina. When the thumb nudged in and all the fingers closed to form a fist, Hazel bucked in a crest of agonizing pleasure. Shot Glass pistoned the fist back and forth while traversing clockwise and counter-clockwise, and when he pinched her clitoris—quite hard—Hazel came in a series of clenching, eruptive spasms. She shrieked when the fist pushed in deeper. The bed rocked. Then the great weight of Clayton lifted as he raised his penis up, stroking the slick skin. He quickly leaned forward, put his gorged corona right against her nostril and—

“Here’s some nose drops for ya...”

—ejaculated with force. Most of each jet of semen shot right down the nostril till she gagged, hacked, and then could feel it sliding down the back of her throat. Clayton tapped the rest off against her lips.

“Kind’a like blowin’ yer nose backwards, huh?” the fat man reveled.

“Ee-yuh,” Shot Glass agreed. “And I done got the dirty whore off already.” He shimmied his hand out of her, wiped it off on her face, then said, “And haow’s this fer an ideer?”

Shot Glass moved away as Clayton dismounted her. Hazel lay squashed on the atrocious bed, stomach sucking in and out. More, more, her thoughts pleaded. Her fingers stroked her aching, thumping sex. “Set ‘er up, Clayton,” Shot Glass ordered next, but what was he doing? Clayton man-handled her to a sitting position, while he himself sat right behind her, and vised her neck in the crook of his elbow. “Aw, yeah!” he hooted. “That’ll really fuck the bitch up!”

Hazel flicked her eyes to the right— What’s he doing? —but all she saw, very briefly, was Shot Glass take another swig of beer and smack his lips. Then he disappeared from the edges of her vision.

“Ee-yuh, this’ll likely put some zing in her day...”

Hazel clenched at the loud, abrupt sound: the scream of the vacuum pump being turned back on. Clayton’s hand slapped across her mouth, then her eyes shot wide when Shot Glass reappeared holding the long clear nozzle at the end of the vacuum’s hose.

“Let’s see what this does ta her nipples, eh?”

Hazel’s back arched when the nozzle was applied to her right areola. The instant contact was made, the nozzle’s rim sealed against her flesh and the motor’s whine doubled from the resistance. She watched half in terror and half in fascination as the clear tube sucked her areola out an inch, then an inch and a half. When it seemed that the motor would burn up from resistance, Shot Glass took to turning it on and off, on and off, over and over, the pressure sucking the nipple out, then releasing. Hazel squirmed in the bed from the delicious pain.

“Hot damn! Would ya look-it that?” Clayton yelled.

“Ee-yuh siree,” Shot Glass commented after turning the machine off. “En’t thet dandy ta look et?” He removed the nozzle to reveal Hazel’s molested nipple, which had now been sucked out to something the size of an unshelled walnut, only raging pink. “Yew could hang yew’re hat’n coat on it,” and then the machine’s deafening whine resounded and the process was repeated on her left nipple, on and off, on and off, over and over.

Now both nipples stuck out similarly, gorged with blood.

“Do her pussy now,” Clayton suggested.

“Wait a minute, time out,” Hazel roused enough from her sick daze to object. “That’s a bit much, I’m afraid.”

Crack!

The impact of Shot Glass’s hand across her face slapped half of her consciousness out of her.

“Yew said anything, ” he reminded, and then once again the vacuum was turned back on. Now Clayton pulled her knees back to her shoulders, to protrude her vulva. All that filled Hazel’s head was that mad, deafening sound...

The nozzle’s rim sucked right up tight against the opening of her sex. At once the pink labia was pulled taffy-like into the tube. Both men stared in glee at her crotch. All that nerve-charged, hypersensitive flesh seemed to fill the first inch of the nozzle as though the suction were drawing her vagina inside-out up into the tube. On and off, the switch went amid Clayton and Shot Glass’s dark laughter. On and off, on and off...

After several minutes of this Hazel was nearly convulsing—two inches of her vaginal flesh—the vaginal metus, might be the proper term—had been sucked up into the tube. The machine’s insane whine rose and rose as more and more resistance was met, and again Hazel began to climax, this time via the most perverse means of her life. When three inches of metus had been drawn out, Shot Glass shut the machine off.

“Dang!” Clayton exclaimed of the visual effect. “That plumped her pussy up fierce, it did!”

“Ee-yuh, shuh did.”

Gog-eyed, Hazel looked between her legs; her labia appeared swollen, like the lips of a boxer who’d just lost the fight. The demented activity had trebled the blood supply to this tender area, leaving it to throb in a viscous tingle.

Shot Glass chugged more beer. “Heh, heh, heh. ‘S’one tough cooze this tramp’s got.”

Clayton twisted the still-protruding nipples till Hazel yelped. Then he ran fat fingers through her deep-red pubic hair till they found the marauded labia and began to diddle with it.

“Shore is fun fuckin’ with gals.”

‘’Specially sick pups like this ‘un heer,” Shot Glass added, unbuckling his trousers. He manipulated several pillows beneath her rump, while Clayton remained sitting behind her. Her cross lay stuck between her breasts by semen and mucous.

Shot Glass knelt between her legs. “Ee-yuh, only one thing a fella can dew with a pussy plumped up like this’n that’s fuck it.”

The erection looked a good eight inches, uncircumcised. He peeled the abundant foreskin back, then ran the dome up and down the folium of her sex. “Shit, the bilge pump got this sick bitch so horny she’s leakin’ like a sieve,” he said.

You can say that again, came the panting thought. Now stop toying with me and FUCK me...

He banged his cock in hard to the balls, then began to hump her with vigor. Hazel’s vagina felt effervescent from the previous suction, as though the pump had generated new webs of nerves. Shot Glass pulled his cock all the way out, then banged it all the way back in, over and over and over, until the bed was rocking so violently it must’ve been close to collapsing. Incredulously, though, the man maintained his fornication with one hand on his hip, and he swigged beer from the can in his other hand.

Joggling, Hazel winced up. She had to ask, “If all you drink is beer, why is your nickname Shot Glass? Seems to me you’d drink shots...”

His face was twisting up as orgasm impended. “Eh?” Balls slapped the bottom of her elevated ass. “Waal, yew’ll see.” He winked at Clayton. “Choke the hose-bag up some—git some spark in her. Just be keerful ya durn’t kill her—”

Hazel gagged when both of Clayton’s meaty hands clamped her throat and squeezed. This again, she thought in the most despairing delight. At once she grew dizzy and dim-visioned. The cock continued to bang in and out. Each time Hazel’s consciousness began to blacken, Clayton’s grip released enough to bring her back a moment. Her head lolled and her tongue stuck out through a droopy smile. Her sex was being plundered now; it was squirming around the piston-rod of resilient flesh. All the while, the higher and higher she got, the combination of rising sexual sensations merged with the effect of decreased oxygen to the brain producing a heroin-like euphoria. For the third time, she began to climax hard...

Her consciousness fell into dead space; the black-out seized her, lingering. Through cracks in the lightless curtain of her soul, she saw her father peering at her, in tears...

She revived as if rising from a tar pit. When her eyes reopened she saw nothing at first. Her heart was missing beats but eventually corrected itself. When her vision finally focused...

What’s he...doing...now?

The scene formed in front of her. She remained on the bed, her ass propped and legs spread wide. Shot Glass remained kneeling between them, though he’d withdrawn his erection and was now frenetically masturbating...

“Aw, fuck, theer! Theer she goes!”

Clayton giggled manically behind her.

Shot Glass did not spend himself on her belly as she thought he would. Instead—

Oh my God...

—he was carefully masturbating into the object of his namesake: a shot glass. Hazel watched with incredulity at each white spurt that fired into the tiny glass.

“Uuuuuuuuuh...Ee-yuh...”

When he’d finished, his cock fell away limp. He held the shot glass up for her to examine.

Clayton giggled slobberingly into her ear. “See? That there’s why they call him ‘Shot Glass...’”

“I’m like thet coffee, yew know? Chock Full’a Nut. ”

The shot glass was almost full to the top with sperm.

“Heer ya go, reddy-head. Open up.”

Hazel’s eyes crossed at the prospect. “No way. That’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly expect me to swallow that much cum.”

Whap!

All of the air in Hazel’s lungs vaulted out. Shot Glass had pile-driven his fist straight down into her solar plexus. At the same time, Clayton had reapplied his asphyxiating grip to her throat.

She flopped fishlike on the bed, face bluing. It had been fun before but now it was excruciating. She couldn’t breathe.

Shot Glass’s voice sounded as though it was coming from the end of a long echoic tunnel. “Curn’t believe the sass’a this ‘un, eh?”

“Dag straight. Ya do a bitch a favor, then she talks shitty to ya.”

“Curn’t have that, new-sir.”

Clayton released the grip; Hazel turned limp as wet rags on the bed, wheezing.

“Naow,” Shot Glass addressed her. He held the shot glass forward. “Yew were sayin’?”

Aw, jeeeeeze... Hazel craned her head back and opened her mouth. Both men chuckled as the shot glass was tipped, and nearly an entire ounce of semen was poured into her mouth. Nauseated, she let it sit there, dreading the inevitable, then she counted to three in her mind and swallowed.

“Yew’re welcome,” Shot Glass sniggered.

“Look at it this way, red. Ya just got free lunch.”

Both men climbed off the bed.

Exhausted and still out of breath, Hazel could only remain sitting up in the filthy bed, staring at them. Shot Glass, limp dick dangling, went to the refrigerator for still more beer. Clayton looked all the more ludicrous: fat, dirty, and without pants. He thunked toward the back door. “Be’s right back. I gots ta pee.”

“Me tew,” Shot Glass said and for a moment moved toward the door as well. But then he stopped on a dime.

“Wait a sec’, Clayton. What’re we thinkin’? Why we goin’ aoutside when the toilet’s right heer? ”

He pronounced toilet as “tur-let.”

Hazel’s face seemed to wither, and by now, she didn’t even have the energy to object. Shot Glass knelt up to her on the mangy bed. He slipped the flaccid cock right into her mouth. Hazel squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for his void, but instead, he held off, and called out, “What jew doin’, Clayton? Come on.”

“Huh?”

Shot Glass waved him toward the bed. “Get right up heer next ta me’n get yew’re willy in her yap. Let’s double-fill the bitch. Both the same time.”

Fat, stupid, and pantsless, Clayton hesitated. “Aw, shee-it, Shot Glass. I don’t know. My dick stuck in there right next ta yers? Sounds kind’a queer, don’t it?”

Shot Glass frowned. “En’t queer if’n it’s a gal’s maouth we’re pissin’ in!”

Clayton shrugged, gut roll hanging. “Guess yer right,” and then he knelt right up next to his partner and slid his penis into Hazel’s already burdened mouth. Both men began to giggle as the whizzing commenced.

Dual hot jets fired into the back of her throat. Hazel put the whys and wherefores out of mind, to solely concentrate on her task. Her throat worked desperately, machinelike, to swallow the urine in enough time to make room for more. She strained forward, not daring to think what might happen if she regurgitated, or simply hacked on them.

“Theer, ya go, theer ya go,” Shot Glass kept saying, fist to hip, pissing away. “Seems a waste ta piss in the lake when we’se got a perfectly good gal’s breadbasket ta pee in.”

“I hear that!” railed Clayton.

They pissed for several minutes more, Hazel managing to swallow almost all of it. Yesterday had been nothing compared to this. Just how much in liquid volume could they possibly put in her? And worse, exactly how much piss could a 105-pound woman drink before her stomach burst?

When she thought she would die, the dual jets abated. The men withdrew, chortling, leaving Hazel to sit spread-legged, pot-bellied, and filled to rupturing with atrocious, sloshing heat.

“Tune ya up enough, did we?” Shot Glass asked, grinning as he reached for yet another can of beer.

Fuck, Hazel thought.

“Now do our laundry’n git this placed cleaned up,” Clayton yapped, then both of them roared laughter.

Why on earth did I ever come here? she asked herself, then plodded off the bed. Her stomach did indeed audibly slosh as she trudged back to the “kitchen” and dazedly put her shirt and shorts back on. I’m out of here and I’m never coming back...

“Have a nice day, sweetie!” Clayton bid, yuckling. “‘Member ta put on a happy face!”

“Shuh ya durn’t wanna stick araound?” Shot Glass blared. “Yew know. We could cuddle some, hold hands’n read poetry.”

The shack nearly rocked from their laughter. Hazel staggered toward the door, stupefied. It was some inner-sense, however, that halted her at the entry. She coughed, blinked, took a deep breath. I need to get all this piss out of me, her mind wandered but at the same time her eyes had roamed to the can-littered table. Next to an opened bag of potato chips rested a travel book, New York City for Dummies. Also, in the dip of a corroded couch cushion was another book, Fodor’s Guide to Mexico City.

This didn’t sound right. She pointed to the books. “So you guys travel, huh? You guys?”

Both of the men looked at each other as if concealing some secret satisfaction. “Aw, ee-yuh,” Shot Glass affirmed. “I’se goin’ to Mexico City’n Clayton heer’s goin’ to New Jork.”

Hazel peered at them in spite of her exhaustion. “Travel much, do you?”

“Waal, new, en’t never traveled to speak’a. But we figgure why not? Hard-workin’ dudes like us? Weer entitled to a vacation.”

Hard-workin’ dudes...“Mmm. How peculiar,” Hazel murmured.

“What thet, missy? Sumpin’ wrong with us goin’ on vacation?” Shot Glass snapped.

“You guys just don’t strike me as traveling types. And you’re best friends, presumably.”

“So?” Clayton demanded, holding a beer. He still had not put his pants back on.

“Since you’re friends,” Hazel conjectured, “I would think you’d travel together—”

“What, you sayin’ weer homos? ” Shot Glass tested her.

“For God’s sake!” Hazel exclaimed. “Neither of you have traveled before but one’s going to New York and the other to Mexico City? Why those places, and why not together? It just seems...odd to me.” The only thing more unlikely was the lowbrow barmaid, Ida, getting ready to go to Sao Paulo, of all places. This wasn’t adding up.

Shot Glass’s patience was ruffling. “Odd, huh? Waal I’ll tell ya, only thing seems odd to me is yew still standing theer. We just bilge-pumped yer tits’n pussy and then put enough piss in yew ta fill a kiddie pool.”

“Yeah,” Clayton moronically concurred. “Best you git-cher ass out’a here, ‘less’n we decide to do a real job on ya.”

Hazel’s volition told her to move toward the door at once—to leave... She even saw Clayton errantly rubbing his cock, which suddenly looked half-hard again. If these two scumbags get their dicks up again...I know exactly where they’re gonna put them...

Nevertheless, her feet remained where she stood.

She put a hand to her nauseous belly, then looked back at them. “I need to know how to get to a place called the Gray Cottage.”

Silence.

Shot Glass froze mid-sip. Clayton slowed playing with himself as he peered at her.

“En’t never heerd’a no Gray Cottage,” Shot Glass told her with a sharp smirk.

“Me neither,” Clayton gruffed, oddly defensive.

“Bullshit,” she retorted. “You know what I’m talking about. What is it with people around here? The barmaid at the tavern says the place doesn’t exist, while two other people I talked to say they’ve heard of it but don’t know how to get there, and now you two jokers say you’ve never even heard of it. But it does exist; I know that for fact.”

“Oh, dew ya naow?”

“Yeah . It’s supposed to be up on Whipple’s Peak someplace, where all that mist is. You guys live here, you must know of a trail that leads to it.”

Shot Glass flapped his hand. “Aw, it en’t up on Whipple, it’s way over at Mount Washington—”

“Oh, so you have heard of it,” Hazel challenged, and when he’d told her that, she received the immediate impression that he was deliberately giving her false information.

Why?

The dilapidated room grew tense. Shot Glass rubbed a fist in his palm. “Yew sassin’ us again, girlie?”

“Yeah!” Clayton demanded. “Sounds like youre’ gittin’ too big fer them whory britches. Want us ta loosen ’em up a tad fer ya?”

“Yew ask tew many questions, reddy-head, and it’s gettin’ my dander up. So why’n’chew get aout’a heer afore I kick you in the cunt so hard yew’re fuckin’ ovaries slide aout’cher nose?”

“What is the big deal? ” Hazel insisted. “All I’m asking for is a little help finding this place. Shit, it’s the least you could do.”

Shot Glass’s neck stiffened as his eyes leveled. “What’chew mean by thet? ”

Hazel sputtered. “For fuck’s sake! I just let you two animals use my body for Pervert Party Central! All I’m asking for is a favor! Tell me how to find the Gray Cottage!”

“Oh, so we owe yew a favor, huh?” Shot Glass mocked. “Waal, then...Clayton!” he snapped. “Hold her up!”

The fat one had already slipped behind, and in a second he’d chicken-winged her. She shrieked when he pulled her elbows so close they touched.

“All right!” she screamed. “I’ll leave! Let me go!”

“Heer’s yer favor, missy—”

Fwump!

Hazel’s body jerked up when Shot Glass kicked her right in the crotch, punter-style. Clayton didn’t let go when the impact drove her feet off the floor. Then the pain set in...

Had he broken her pubic bone? She could only pray that the violence didn’t burst any organs or cause internal bleeding.

“Heh, heh, heh. Think yew larnt yew’re lesson ‘baout askin’ questions thet en’t yew’re business?”

Half-doubled over, Hazel drew her gaze up to see Shot Glass standing tall and snide, arms crossed. She took note of his hand...

Another one...

He wore a scarlet-stoned ring.

Her voice ground like gravel. “What’s that ring you’re wearing?”

Shot Glass’s face drew seams when he stared closer. “I’se durn’t believe this! We just warnt the bitch not to ask questions, so what she dew?” Shot Glass bellowed: “Ask another question!” He reached up and grabbed the light fixture hanging from the kitchen ceiling, then—

He shattered the unshaded bulb against the counter-top, then...put on a black rubber glove.

Hazel began to squeal and kick, but the effort was useless; Clayton only tightened his grip on her elbows. Shot Glass pulled her top up, then, with the gloved hand, squeezed her right breast. The nipple remained distended from the suction machine.

“Don’t you dare!” she screamed. “Don’t you—”

Zap!

Shot Glass meticulously touched both of the broken bulb’s lead-stems to Hazel’s swollen nipple. After the zap there was a crackle.

She flopped upward from the shock, which felt more like the impact of a two-by-four than an actual shock. Though the contact lasted only a second, her legs agitated involuntarily. The entire right side of her chest throbbed in a strange sensation of tingling, burning, and numbness.

“One more time fer posterior sake,” Clayton urged. “Like my daddy used to say.”

Even in her horror and unrelieved agony, Hazel couldn’t help it: “That’s posterity, you dogshit-for-brains, useless fat vagabond—”

Zap!

crackle...

The second jolt zapped her left nipple. Hazel howled.

“What’chew think, Clayton? She larn’t huh lesson?”

“Yes, yes, I have!” Hazel wheezed.

“Naaaaw...”

The third jolt kicked her feet a yard off the floor and bent her spine forward like a pretzel. Shot Glass had reapplied the bulb’s 110-volt lead-stems this time to Hazel’s crotch...

She fell limp in Clayton’s arm’s, vibrating in the aftermath.

“Had enough, reddy-head?”

Hazel, barely cognizant, nodded.

“Durn’t come ‘raound heer no more. Weer sick’a yer red-hairt pussy’n sass. Clayton?”

Hazel’s heels dragged against the floor as she was moved out to the porch, stood up limply at the step, and pushed.

She bowled forward, staggered, then fell— splat! —into the sea of mud that made up the driveway. She landed face-first.

“Heh, heh, heh—Yew think little missy’ll be back tomorrow?”

“Shore hope so! We’se can have tea’n crumpets!”

Nothing particularly sentient occupied Hazel’s mind at that moment, only her awareness of her outrage and her pain and her stupidity. Just one coherent thought sparked: I’m SO LUCKY to be alive... Mud-spattered, she eventually teetered to her feet, then cupped her aching crotch with her hands. Her nipples sizzled in a low, steady pain. Then she groaned when she remembered that she was still full of beer-piss. She staggered away down the drive, Shot Glass and Clayton hew-hawing laughter behind her. When she took a final dismal glance back, she saw that Clayton, too, wore one of the crude, crimson rings.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, her thoughts droned with each imprecise step. Flipflops long gone, her bare feet eventually schlupped their way off the driveway to the paved, secondary road. She paused when her heart skipped a few beats, then managed to pull herself back from a probable fainting spell. When more awareness sparked, she bent over right on the road’s shoulder, jammed two fingers down her throat, and forced herself to vomit. Gushes of urine flew out—more than a few. I must be the only woman in history to vomit up redneck piss TWO days in a row...

When it was all out, she staggered on, then turned onto a wooded nook which led down to the lake shore. Next thing she knew she was trudging into the cold, raw water to let all the horrendous filth of the day wash off of her body.

I asked for it, and I got it, she thought. No one to blame but myself. She took her shorts and top off in the water, rung them out and rinsed them over and over. When she came back to shore, she examined herself for physical damage. Fortunately no bleeding was in evidence between her legs, and no marks from the shock through her shorts. Her breasts were another story, though. The suction machine had been bad enough, but the electric jolts left them twice as swollen, with a minute burn-mark on either sides of the areolae. Thank God, she spared the final thought, then rung her clothes out as best she could, re-dressed, and went back to the road.

She knew what had compelled her to go there: her sickness, her paraphilia—triggered by the disappointment of missing her chance with Sonia. I don’t even remember getting it on with her. I must’ve done it in my sleep...

But what had urged her to ask questions, questions that only irked her detestable assailants further, to the point of molesting her, of beating her, electrifying her?

Too many things were brewing now. These odd rings, commonplace rural folk anticipating trips to Sao Paulo, Mexico City, New York? And Frank’s uncharacteristic absence and bizarre behavior. Then the problem still remained: was there really an ancient stone cottage up on the mountain? Hazel felt certain there was. So why can’t I get a straight answer from anyone?

A half hour of walking revived her. The pain receded somewhat, but by now her senses sharpened. She could’ve been maimed, critically injured, or killed, she knew, yet somehow she’d escaped those fates and was now walking home as though nothing happened. And that’s what I have to act like when I’m back at Henry’s cabin, she knew. Like nothing happened...

The day bloomed beautifully before her: flawless sunlight beaming through a cloud-free sky. The dizzyingly tall trees on either side shimmered in luscious, shifting greens. Birds sang en masse. Before long she was actually smiling as she limped along the road, but the smile faded when her cellphone rang and she saw that it was not Sonia but Ashton.

Just what I need... Why didn’t she want to answer it? She liked Ashton but...She let the voice mail get it, waited a moment, then listened: “Hazel, it’s me again—big surprise. I don’t know why it’s so hard for you to answer the phone but...Anyway, call me back, will you please? I’ve probably left a half a dozen messages since you left; I just want to know that you’re okay. I suppose I’d be worried to death but I just spoke to your father and he says he talked to you yesterday.” A long pause on the line. “I just...miss you. Oh, and I wanted to tell you about your father’s new church; I had a look at it this morning. It’s beautiful, and, well, you know, your father’s a little bit hurt that you haven’t been there yet—”

Oh my God! Hazel thought. If it’s not my dad making me feel guilty, it’s Ashton!

“So why don’t we plan to do that when you’re back from this trip, okay? It would make your father very happy...Anyway, uh, I hope to hear from you soon, and I love you—”

That was enough for Hazel; she put the phone away. Now is not the time for some guy to be telling me he loves me, and then she immediately thought of Sonia...and continued to curse herself for not even being able to remember what had happened between them last night.

When she’d made it back to the cabin, she felt frantic to wash. Quiet, she thought, for Sonia was napping. The ceiling fans were blowing, and the shades had been pulled down over the open windows, leaving the place grainy in half-dark. She stripped off her clothes, then snuck to the shower cubby. She pumped the cumbersome shower, the cold water raising gooseflesh. Perhaps it was a subconscious endeavor to punish herself by not heating the water first. Teeth chattering she lathered herself, scrubbed hard, then rinsed off but it was necessary to repeat the procedure two more times before she felt clean. Obsessive-compulsive, she half-joked to herself; she even scrubbed her tiny cross and then actually splashed Listerine on it. Forgive me, forgive me, came the aimless thought, and then she wilted when she looked down at her wet, naked body: the abused nipples still protruding from the suction machine, and her aching sex swollen and over-tender from the vicious kick, compliments of Shot Glass. Bastards...Pieces of shit... But of course she’d only wound up getting what she’d asked for.

She tip-toed back to the front room and put on clean shorts and a halter, then paused to look dreamily at Sonia who remained asleep atop the sheets. I should get into bed with her, she considered but then realized that would backfire. Sonia’s mood would remain ruined by her upset over Frank. Instead, Hazel grabbed her camera, then quietly went up the metal ladder next to the shower room, pushed open the trapdoor, and climbed onto the roof.

The sun blazed. Now THAT’S what I call scenery, she thought. If she positioned herself right, she could look straight down the direction of the driveway through a wide break in the trees and see just how expansive Lake Sladder was. The parts of town that were visible looked tiny but meticulously detailed. She took several photos.

Without realizing it, she was craning her neck. Another lucky vantage point showed her the ominous rise of Whipple’s Peak which now, for some reason, looked so immense it appeared unreal. After squinting— There it is! —she made out the clot of mist that Horace had indicated. The mist hung just before the bluff, which looked so steep now it made her dizzy to imagine being up there. But—

What’s the cause of that mist? It just seemed to sit there at the peak, a pale smear.

Was there really a cottage concealed within it?

And is Frank really there?

She dawdled around some more on the roof, then caught herself eyeing a very tall tree—a white pine, she believed—that spired right next to the cabin, so close that she could stand on the eave and touch the bark. She heard birds rustling amid the density of branches, noticed several bowls sticking out of the trunk like holed warts. She smiled when she noticed sparrows nesting in one. Next, though, she was leaning over slightly, hands on knees...

A track of splintery gouges were evident in the bark—she thought oddly of teethmarks—spaced by several feet and appearing fairly regular. The tracks led at least fifty feet up the fat, towering tree.

What the hell are those? she wondered but then the answer snapped. The gouges could only have been made by something metal, and that’s when she remembered those pole-climbing boots that Henry Wilmarth had mysteriously left in the garbage can.

He must’ve used them to climb THIS tree, she realized for when she looked around at the other trees in proximity to the dwelling, they were all free of the gouges.

Why on earth would he want to do that?

Hazel was back down the ladder and sneaking out the front door a minute later. I’ll bet the garbage men already came, she suspected but when she opened the can at the end of the drive, the implements were still there. Henry was almost sixty, and if he could do it, I can do it, she reasoned. She collected the spiked boots and buckled strap of leather that the receipt called a “tree-scaling belt.”

“Can’t hurt to check it out,” she talked to herself, and besides, from a position high in the tree she’d be able to get some spectacular pictures. She tip-toed back through the cabin, grabbed a pair of work gloves from the kitchen, then went back up to the roof. I’m a twenty-two year old with a Masters degree, she reminded herself. I should be able to figure this out... She sat awkwardly on the roof and strapped on the spiked boots. Standing, then, was even more awkward, but she managed to clip-clop to the eave, flail the scaling belt around the great pine’s trunk, then thread it behind her back and secure the clasp. And now... She put one spiked foot against the tree, took a breath, then hopped off the eave, sinking the second boot into the bark as well. Simple! All that remained was the incremental process of hitching the belt up several feet, leaning back, then stepping higher with each boot. She used the previous track-marks as a guide.

Ten minutes later she was nearly sixty feet aloft, within the middle of the tree.

Oh, wow! She leaned back, feeling utterly secure by the belt and spikes. She aimed her digital camera, forwarded the zoom, and snapped several stunning pictures of Lake Sladder and the town. She also noticed several tree bowls protruding, a few sporting nests crowded with tiny peeping birds. She took several more pictures.

But the original track-marks that Henry had made...proceeded higher.

Hazel proceeded higher. I’m a natural! she celebrated. Soon, she was nearly a hundred feet up the ancient tree, surrounded by heavy branches. The next series of snapshots would be even better.

She contemplated going higher but noticed that Henry’s track-marks had stopped. Don’t get carried away, she considered. Better to retreat and get back into the cabin; then she could download the pictures into her laptop and see them in better clarity. She was about to do just that, when...

A tree bowl, dinner-plate-sized, stared her right in the face just as she prepared to lower the scaling belt. Yet no bird nest was evident. Instead, the hole within had been filled with something black and–when she touched a gloved finger to it—tacky, like tar...

That tree-patch stuff, she recalled. The empty can had been tossed in the garbage.

The rest was simple deductive reasoning. When Henry had scaled this tree less than a week it ago, he’d done so for the purpose of filling this bowl with patch. However...

None of the other bowls have been patched, she knew. So...

Why had a man nearly sixty, bent on suicide, climbed a hundred feet up this tree, just to patch a single bowl, then go back down and put the climbing gear in the garbage?

At once Hazel pressed a gloved hand into the black semi-shiny surface of the patch material. It hadn’t hardened much; the sun kept it pliable as modeling clay.

There’s something in here, she knew for a fact, and then began to pull out sloughs of the tar-like patch. After digging half of it out and flapping it down to the ground, she felt a bump within the bowl. The bump moved. She twisted her fingers around, then—

Come out, you fucker!

—extracted the tar-covered lump. A thrill pumped through her when she noted its basic egg shape, and its length of four inches and perhaps three in depth.

This HAS to be it! Henry hid it HERE!

The Shining Trapezohedron.

Less than ten minutes later, she was back in the cabin, the scaling gear abandoned. She stood bent over the kitchen counter and commenced with the effort of cleaning the odd stone, first wiping off as much of the tar as possible with paper towels, then scrubbing more meticulously.

A half-hour later, she thought, Fuck! Her wrists and fingers ached. The thin layer of tar that remained would require much more effort to remove completely. I need some kind of cleaner, she resolved. Doing it this way would take forever.

“Oh, there you are,” came Sonia’s groggy voice from behind.

“Shit, sorry, I must’ve woken you—”

“No, no.” Sonia, hair tousled, got a soda from the fridge. “I’ve been sleeping for hours—jeez.”

Hazel looked at her. “Did—” she began, then bit her lip.

“No, I haven’t heard from Frank, that asshole.” Sonia rubbed her eyes. For a woman who’d just had a several-hour nap, she looked, if anything, like she needed more sleep. “It really bothers me.”

Hazel struggled for something to say in consolation but knew there was nothing.

“Anyway, I’m really sorry I abandoned you at Harold’s trailer.”

“Horace,” Hazel corrected. “And it’s okay. You needed your own space. I had—” Circumstance forced her to pause. “I had a nice walk around,” but then thought, Actually, I got raped, beat up, and electrocuted AND I had a ton of orgasms. See how fucked up I am?

“I’m glad,” Sonia said, then squinted at the black lump on the counter. “What is that? ”

“The Shining Trapezohedron, believe it or not.”

“The stone Henry said he got rid of?”

“Um-hmm. Long story short, I found it stuck in a tree bowel and covered with that black tree-tar stuff.”

Sonia chuckled. “So much for Henry’s ‘irretrievable’ disposal.”

“Actually, it was pretty clever. Something he didn’t want found so he hides it close to the house—”

“The last place anyone would think to look. Like Poe’s ‘Purloined Letter.’ But how did you—”

Hazel shrugged. “I lucked onto it,” she said. “But it’s covered with this black stuff and I can’t get it off. I’m dying to see it cleaned up. The jpeg on Henry’s computer was astonishing—the colors, especially—so the real thing will be even better.”

“Tree tar, huh? If you used a Brillo, it might scratch the surface.”

Hazel scrubbed her hands now. “I’ll have to get cleaning solvent—”

“Any hydrocarbon would probably work fine, rubbing alcohol, gasoline—hell, maybe even Henry’s bottle of whiskey.”

“I’ll do it later—my fingers are cramping from all this scrubbing.”

Hazel followed her friend into the front room, where they both sat on the edge of the bed. Sonia was staring off into space.

“Stop worrying,” Hazel whispered. “It’s not good for you.”

“I don’t know if I’m worrying or seething. ” Sonia anxiously clutched her knee. “I’m thinking...that maybe I should just call off the wedding.”

Hazel knew she had to be careful in any attendant remark. “Listen. Sonia. I’m not sticking up for him, but I think that would be a serious overreaction.”

Sonia rubbed her temples. “You’re right, and I do overreact to things but—Jesus!—this really hurts.”

Hazel put her arm around her. “Men are tubesteaks—that’s just the way it is. We put up with their shit and they put up with ours.”

“How fair of you!” Sonia managed a chuckle.

“Just let him get all this Henry stuff out of the way, then he’ll be fine. And if he’s not?” Hazel spread out her hands. “Then we’ll pull his balls off and hang them on the rearview mirror like sponge dice.”

Sonia laughed sluggishly. “I wish I could be as matter-of-fact and sensible as you. I’m going to try, at least.” She stilled herself a moment. “But...isn’t it human nature to be jealous sometimes, or suspicious or insecure or paranoid?”

“Sometimes, sure.”

“And what should I do if he’s not back tomorrow afternoon? What if he calls up again and makes more excuses for not being here?”

“Well...”

Sonia wrung her hands. “If he’s not back tomorrow...I’m going to climb up that fucking summit or mountain or whatever it is and confront him.”

Hazel hugged her. “That’s reasonable, if he’s not back tomorrow afternoon. But you’re not going to go, I’m going to go.”

“Hazel, it’s my headache, not yours.”

“You’re eight months pregnant and have doctor’s orders not to exert yourself,” Hazel reminded. “I actually talked to some people today, about how to get to the cottage.”

“Really?” Sonia asked, surprised.

“Horace says his grandmother told him the place was right at the top where that fog bank is. He also estimated it’d take a half a day just to get up there, so that’s why I’m going, not you.” Hazel felt confident about the task, should it become necessary. “But let’s just give Frank another day and see.”

Sonia nodded. “You’re wonderful, Hazel. I don’t know what I’d do without you...”

The words made Hazel’s head go light. Then she could’ve melted when Sonia kissed her on the cheek.

Please, please, Hazel pleaded.

“I’m just so tired, I don’t get it.” Sonia yawned with a frustrated expression. “I shouldn’t be this tired, especially after the nap.”

“Stress,” Hazel offered. “Worrying about Frank’s got you worn out.” She hugged her, resisted making an advance, then just smiled and said, “Get some more sleep. I’ll wake you up for dinner. I noticed a grill out back—we’ll have a cookout later. I’ll cook you something.”

“Mmm,” Sonia murmured, “you’re sweet...” Then she was asleep again.

Hazel spent the next few hours trying to get Henry’s computer back to rights–to no avail–and another hour after that trying to get all the tar off the Shining Trapezohedron: impossible without some sort of cleaning liquid. She put it out in the car, knowing that in the morning the sun would heat it up and make the tar less adhesive. She truly did want to see the crystal in all its shining spectacle. Later, she drove into town and bought some fresh walleye from a market, plus some asparagus and potatoes. After waking Sonia at six, they’d had a fabulous backyard feast.

But her friend’s distress over Frank’s behavior never let go. Sonia remained distracted and on edge, in spite of an obvious effort not to seem that way. They sat outside till past dark, watched fireflies and listened to peepers, then went to bed.

Hazel essentially winced herself to sleep, first, from trying to banish the obscene dichotomy: the abhorrent things the “Fish Boys” had done to her along with the fact she’d received an extraordinary satisfaction from the foray. Also, being in the bed with Sonia but not being able to make love to her only compounded her frustration. Worse was knowing that last night they’d shared some potent intimacy but, of course...I don’t remember any of it... Several lovers in her past had complained that she talked in her sleep but was also periodically subject to sleep-walking. Last night I guess I was sleep-FUCKING. Consciously missing out on what she wanted so dearly only made her feel more dismal. Eventually, though, she did drift off to the soft hum of the ceiling fans—

—the night cocoons you as you lay naked and sweating in the bed, but all you see is darkness at first. Has the backdrop of your sleeping mind turned into a black chasm? Suddenly your spirit spins propeller-like as huge, wet words croak and echo in the chasm and begin to spin, spin, spin, spin around with your mauled spirit: algolagniac one who receives sexual satisfaction from pain dritiphily sexual stimulation derived from being covered with or in proximity to filth asphyxophile one who longs to be strangled during sex biastiphilia sexual obsession with being brutalized and raped hybristolaglia the desire to engage in sexual congress with degenerates and criminals asthenopagniac one attracted to being humiliated and overpowered and beaten cyesolagnia sexual excitement from pregnant women urophily the compulsion to be urinated on. Then: sick sick sick sick sick

Then:

you you you you you

And round and round you spin as more huge, wet, sloppy words cram into the spiral: Hazel my child I adjure you my dear friend Frank if you’re reading this then I am already dead eat the cum out of the toilet is the key by where the spheres meet this ungodly harlot needs to die full of the cur’s jism anyway uh I hope to hear from you soon and I love you the tenets of Non-Euclideanism have the potential to produce unlimited energy they could transpose objects of unequal weight and mass between two points of vast distance en’t much I’d ruther dew’n piss up a gal’s backside you don’t understand I’ve found still more of Henry’s work up here—it’s spellbinding when a gal gets a pussy full’a Shoggoth cum it don’t take but a minute or two letter weren’t signed just said he represented Henry’s gemolergy friends and they wanted more boxes thought it were a mite foolish a joke mebbe until I opened another envelope inside that had five thousand bucks in it my dreams have turned ghastly indeed tinged by a grotesque carnality unlike anything in my experience sometimes even—I swear—people (or things like people) make utterances in my dreams that reveal information which I verify later en’t never heerd’a no gray cottage yogsothoth and his retinue were are and shall ever be not in spaces known but between those spaces waiting the ghosts of all those dead from the storm follow me everywhere please come back to church come back to God it’s where you belong honey please don’t insult my memory Frank—

—forget that goddamned stone ever existed...

The black blood of the chasm clears and then...you can see. You can see yourself.

“Just got me a hankerin’, yew know? ‘N I carn’t think of a reason not tew.”

“Shit-yeah, Shot Glass!”

“I gotta see what’s in this heer big belly, heh, heh, heh...”

Your spirit plummets when you realize you are back in the nefarious shack of the Fish Boys. You sit nude on the rot-wood floor, your sex aching, lines of gelatinous sperm up and down your chest like slug trails, like white snot. You can smell it wafting up–all that sperm spattered on you in sport. Shackles gird your ankles; a chain between them is bolted to the floor. You look up...

“You fuckers! Stay away from her!” you scream bloody murder. “I swear to God I’ll kill both you loser redneck motherfuckers if you lay one hand on her!”

Sonia has been stretched across one of the foul-stained beds, nude, gagged, and shivering in horror. She lay in an X-configuration, ankles and wrists tied to each bedpost. Her great gravid stomach sticks out, gleaming in sweat, the navel popped out like an acorn of flesh.

Shot Glass smooths callused hands over the slick belly. “Heh, heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh,” then his gaze shoots to you. “Weer gonna make this big-belly-bitch give it up, reddy-head.” He stands grinning with his limp cock dangling from his zipper. “And yew get to watch.”

“Yeah!” Clayton rails, giggling and jumping up and down. He stands fat and malodorous as ever, his pants off, fecal smears at his hairy buttocks. He reaches into a can of lard, scoops out a handful, and spreads the pale glop over the end—

“What are you evil cocksuckers doing!” you scream.

—of the clear plastic nozzle that you’re all-too-familiar with. Then he kneels at the edge of the bed and, after some finessing, manages to insert the tube several inches into Sonia’s vaginal canal.

“Take that out of there! Don’t you dare, you sick pieces of shit! Leave her alone!”

Shot Glass winks, then turns on the bilge pump.

The motor screams. Sonia’s body goes rigid as she arches her back on the bed, trying to scream through her gag. Shot Glass and Clayton’s wicked laughter can barely be heard over the pump motor’s rising, insane whine. Shot Glass pushes down on her belly while Clayton pushes the nozzle in deeper.

“Git aout’a theer! Git aout!” Shot Glass hoots, then turns the machine on HIGH.

The motor’s scream is now deafening. It is a sound truly forged in Hell. Sonia squirms on the bed, balloon-cheeked as the industrial suction works harder against what can only be her cervical cap.

“Stop it! Stop!” you scream over and over till your eyeballs are fit to eject, but even from the bottom of your lungs, your pleas cannot be heard over the motor’s scream.

Whole minutes go by like this...

Finally, Shot Glass and Clayton cast incredulous expressions when the bilge pump cuts off and the insane whine grinds down to nothing.

Clayton scratches his beard. “What happened?”

“Bilge pump’s motor burnt up!”

“Dang! Bitch’s pussy done wore it out!”

Shot Glass shakes his head, drags the nozzle out, and looks perplexed at it. “Didn’t even bust her water. En’t that somethin’?”

“Shore is, Shot Glass!”

Sonia’s eyes are insanely wide now as she shudders on the monstrous bed.

Thank God! you think. But—But what now? “There, you’ve had your fun! Now let us go! I’ll give you money, I’ll give you the car–anything, just let us go!”

“Heer thet, Clayton?”

“Shee-it!”

Shot Glass goes to the counter, then reappears with not one but two lamps, each with shattered bulbs.

Oh my God NO...

“En’t never seed a baby come aout afore,” Shot Glass said. “So’s weer gonna make yew’re friend have aout with it.” He holds up the lamp-ends. “One way’re another, that kid’s comin aout. ”

Then the madness resumes. Sonia begins to flipflop on the mattress as Shot Glass and Clayton each wield a lamp, bearing the live lead-stems to her nipples. You hear the familiar Zap! followed by a crackle. Sonia’s teeth can be seen grinding her gag. After a while, tendrils of smoke trail up from the tortured areolae. “Naow thet we got’er primed,” Shot Glass remarks, “let’s do daown heer.”

You scream and scream and scream as they begin to alternately zap Sonia’s navel and clitoris.

Zap!

crackle...

Zap!

crackle...

Zap!

crackle...

Repeatedly, they hold the lead-stems down for several seconds, which causes Sonia to convulse and actually sizzle. Her hair stands on end, and even the tuft of her pubic hair swells out from static. Then they begin to zap all around the circumference of her swollen stomach.

By the time they stop, you’ve screamed your throat raw. Sonia lay still alive, shuddering with her eyes peeled open. Her eyes’ whites have long-since turned red from hemorrhage.

Shot Glass now appears annoyed by their repeated failure to effect miscarriage. “This bitch’s womb is tougher to crack than a fuckin’ floor safe, Clayton. I durn’t understand it.”

“Shore is one tough cunt.”

Burn marks pock Sonia’s belly. There’s an awful redolence in the room which can only be seared skin and burnt labial flesh.

“Lemme just go get the twenty-pound sledge,” Clayton offers. “Shee-it, we’ll beat the kid out of her.”

“Please please please, just STOP!” you rasp. “Why are you doing this?”

Shot Glass frowns over at your query. “Why we doin’ it? What’cha think, missy? Weer doin’ it ‘cos it’s fun! ”

Then they both begin to cackle again, Clayton actually flapping his penis up and down in amusement.

“New, the sledge en’t special enough, Clayton—”

“Special?”

“Ee-yuh. Got no style, yew know?”

“Style?”

Shot Glass rolls his eyes. “Clayton, any ole moe-ron cud think’a thet! We need sumpin’ en’t been done afore. Hmm...” He swigs some beer in rumination. “Aw, I got a ideer!”

“Please my God I’m begging you would you PLEASE not do this! Do it to me, not her! Just PLEASE let her go—”

“Clayton, I’m sick’a heerin’ that ‘un. En’t nothin’ wuss than a sassy bitch with a laoud moauth. Haow ‘boaut shuttin’ her up?”

With surprising agility, Clayton thumps over and—

Smack!

—sweeps a rank bare foot right across the side of your head. You topple over, your chains straining and your senses shatter like a window.

It’s mostly a grainy veil of semi-consciousness that cloaks your mind now. “Heh, heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh,” you keep hearing. You hear your chains clink as you attempt to drag yourself forward. When you try to keep your eyes open, they keep dragging shut.

“Heh, heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh...”

Your hand slides across your chest, through tacky sperm, to desperately touch your cross. Help me, God, comes your hypocritical supplication. But the cross has changed.

It’s now a pentagram.

You try to focus, to shove back the crushing urge to faint. More chains clink as you knee your way toward Sonia. On hands and knees, then, you look at the mangy bed—

And your heart slams in your chest.

For however long you’ve been dazed or unconscious, now you see what they’ve been up to.

You leap forward off your knees in an offensive reflex. Tiny warbling squeals can be heard leaking from Sonia’s gag as Shot Glass prepares a fair length of rope about the middle of Sonia’s stretched stomach.

He ties a knot—“Heh, heh, heh!”—then slips a wooden rod beneath it. Amid the madness, you think one word: Tourniquet...

Clayton giggles as Shot Glass begins to turn the rod...

Your screams fly like glass shattering. Your ankles bleed from the metal fetter and you strain across the floor, useless. Half a turn of the rod sinks the rope into Sonia’s belly, like someone tightening a string around a beach ball.

“Crank it, Shot Glass! Crank it!”

“Give it up! ” and then he casts the most evil grin at you when he slowly turns the rod further. You actually hear the rope creak.

You scream yourself senseless. “I’ll do anything! ANYTHING!

Just stop! ”

Shot Glass peers at her. “Anything?”

“YES!” you bellow.

“Hmm.” Shot Glass chews his lip, holding the rod to maintain the tourniquet’s tension around Sonia’s belly. “Would’jew, say, eat Clayton’s shit?”

Your mind wobbles. “YES! Just take that rope off her!”

He hesitates, reverses the rod till the rope hangs slack. “Okay, reddy-head, Yew got yew’re self a deal. But just so yew know. Clayton eats big so ya gotta figure he shits big.”

Clayton giggles uncontrollably now. Pantless, dirty, and fat, he thunks toward you, fingering his penis in exuberance. “Down on yer back’n open wide, reddy! I’se gonna shit right in yer purdy mouth!”

At least they’d cancelled their torture of Sonia. You lay back as instructed, open your mouth, but almost scream as Clayton crudely squats right over your face. The canyon of his shit-flecked buttocks lowers, then the vision trebles in horror when he widens that buttocks with his hands to lend a more concise view of puckered, pimpled anus.

“Clayton, try’n feed the turds direct inta her maouth. I’d be pleesed as punch ta see thet.”

“Shore thing!”

Open-mouthed, you wait. The abominable cleft now hovers only inches from your lips. When the even more abominable sphincter begins to dilate, you slam your eyes shut.

“Here she comes!”

Clayton’s anus squeezes out a stout, firm stool that—

“Eeeeeeeeeeee-YUH!”

—that miraculously slides right between your lips. When it lowers to the back of your throat, you have no choice but to sever it with your teeth, go tense, and swallow. The odor of the process can be imagined, but the taste?

You cannot think about that...

With each desperate swallow of each stool-segment, you only have time to re-open your mouth to admit another segment.

“Aw, noaw, yew’re cheatin’!” you hear Shot Glass complain. “The deal’s off if’n ya cheat! Curn’t just shalluh, yew gotta chew...”

The entirety of your soul moans now, but you must do it. It’s the only way to save Sonia. You actually chew the next segment, your belly quivering in revolt to what’s being forced into it. It’s as though your whole face is trying to seal shut against the outrage, but you keep eating none the less; even your mouth shudders as it attempts to manipulate the warm, tight stools. One after another they descend from the hellish clough. Your tongue cannot help but detect corn, arcane grit, bean casings, and other mysterious fecal debris. All you can do is mush it up and gulp it down, your spirit screaming all the way.

“Ee-yuh, naow thet’s entertainment!” you hear Shot Glass roar.

After another grunting minute or two, Clayton’s bowels are relieved. He is kind enough to wipe his ass with the back of your limp hand but you’re essentially too mortified to really notice. You’re practically convulsant as you lay gog-eyed on the floor with a belly full of hot shit; you’re all too aware of its heat and the sense of grotesque fullness within you.

Your teeth are creamed with feces, your mouth lined with it. You’re helpless to stop the rich, horrendous stench that eddies from your mouth with every breath...

But I did it, by God, you think. I did it!

“Unlock these shackles and let us go now,” you demand.

Shot Glass stands up, parting his hands. “I always keep my promises. A man who durn’t keep his word en’t wuth nuthin.’ Clayton. Let her go.”

“Shore, Shot Glass.”

You look up expectantly, but then—

“Oh my God, you fuck!”

Clayton turns around and starts pissing hard in your face.

And Shot Glass begins to crank the tourniquet rod once more.

“You lying scumbag evil pieces of redneck FUCK!”

“Heh, heh, heh! Heh, heh, heh!” Shot Glass keeps cranking the rod. The rope constricts tighter and tighter against Sonia’s belly. Her body actually bows upward now, with only her heels and her shoulder blades touching the mattress. “Heer she goes, ee-yuh! Ee-yuh!”

Clayton can only maintain his giggling as he shakes the last of his piss off in your face. Then he goes to the bed and removes Sonia’s gag—

The scream that bursts from her throat cracks every window in the shack.

“Heh, heh, heh! Heh, heh, heh!”

The rope creaks, digging deeper.

“Pop the kid out!” Clayton cheers.

“YOU CRAZY PSYCHO WHITE TRASH SCUM!” you bellow.

Shot Glass now stands up to crank harder. He pulls against the rod like a lever that won’t quite give. Sonia’s shrieks sound like brakes with no pads but in between, Shot Glass looks at you and says, “Durn’t know what’cher all bent aout’a shape over no ways, reddy. This en’t nuthin’ but a dream.”

“Yeah,” Clayton agrees. “Your dream. Which means it’s just a bunch’a shit from your head.”

The rope keeps creaking. “But what ya gotta understand is that, here? In this place? The shit from your own head mixes with the shit out theer...”

You stare at the madman’s words. The revolting mirage from the outhouse—the man with the upside-down face—had said the same thing, hadn’t he, and as that idea occurs to you your eyes rove back to, first, Clayton, then Shot Glass. They’ve changed...as if their revelation to you has triggered an allegorical metamorphosis...

Their faces are upside-down, the effect of which only makes their sneering, shuck-and-jive, backwater grins all the more hideous. And their genitals—normal only moments ago—now sport maroon spheres for glans and scrotums like sacks of grapes.

“Clayton, heer it comes!”

“Git it! Git it!”

One other thing: their arms have transformed to stout, heavily suckered tentacles.

Sonia’s final shriek whistles through the air. There’s a long, loud Crrrrrunch and then a gush of splashing water. You look away just as Sonia’s belly begins to collapse.

“Heh, heh, heh...”

Shot Glass and Clayton jump up and down in monstrous jubilation, tentacles writhing. A baby begins to hack, and the last thing you see is Shot Glass’s inverted face moving closer and closer to yours, the upside-down grin widening, and he explains, “Waal, missy, theer en’t but one more thing I have ta say ta yew. Wanna know what it ‘tis?”

Your eyes feel lidless as you stare.

“Gub nbb shub naabl e uh bleb nuuurrlathotep...”

You scream so hard that blood sprays from your mouth and you—

—woke up in bed next to Sonia, glazed in sweat and shivering beneath the caul of granular darkness stretched across the room. Hazel could hear her heart thunking down. Oh my God, another nightmare...What the FUCK is wrong with me?

She lay still, recovering from the mudslide of detestable images still in her head. Calm down, calm down, it’s all over...

She turned her head to the left and found Sonia sleeping contentedly. Then she turned her head to the right—

She could see the narrow door to the den; it stood open a few inches, and the desk lamp threw a widening wedge of pale-yellow light on the floor. Had she left the light on earlier, or had Sonia? The prospect made little sense, since Hazel would’ve noticed it before going to bed.

Something smelled meaty in the room, even with the overhead fans going. But her attention was snared not by the odd smell but by rapid, irregular clicking sounds which she recognized immediately.

A computer keyboard.

Her eyes widened where she lay, staring at the crack in the den door.

Someone’s...typing. On one of the computers...

There could be no doubt unless, of course, this was another dream...”Who’s in there?” she called out, but her voice sounded scratchy and feeble in the grainy dark. “I can hear you typing.”

“You don’t hear anything, Hazel,” a man’s voice replied quite nonchalantly. “So just shut up.”

The voice—she was positive—belonged to Frank.

“Frank, what are you doing in there? How come you didn’t wake us up when you got back?”

An annoyed sigh in between pauses of the keyboard. “Because I’m not back.” Then a chuckle. “I’m still up at the Gray Cottage. This is a dream, Hazel. Haven’t figured that out yet?”

Dream, my ass, she determined then climbed off the bed...

She could do little more than try to get off the bed, however. She propped up on her hands, tried to swing her legs out but suddenly a horrendous pressure was pushing down on her. Was she having a stroke, a heart attack? No, she realized. No symptoms, no pain. So why— It was as though the gravity of the space she occupied had increased tenfold. “Frank! This is fucked up!” she yelled, yet the brassy exclamation did not stir Sonia from her sleep.

Another chuckle from the den. “Hazel, the only thing fucked up in this house is you. ”

“Asshole! Help me up!”

Her plea was answered only by more key-clicking.

What was he doing in there, even if this was a dream? And if truly a dream, then that would have to make it—what? A dream within a dream within a dream? came the absurd consideration. Meanwhile, every muscle in her back and arms strained quite failingly against the increasing weight, pressure, or gravity; something invisible was essentially squashing her back down to the mattress. A moment later she lay flat on her back again, and she couldn’t move. The paralysis permitted her to move only her head, back and forth. When she snapped her gaze back to the right, her eyes flicked lower, to the floor before the den...

Wisps of black smoke seemed to be sifting upward from the floor. Fire! The cabin’s on fire..., but then in her scrutiny she realized it couldn’t be smoke.

Smoke didn’t smell like meat.

“It’s not really smoke,” Frank elucidated from the den. “You can think of it as a gas-phase effluent...” The wedge of light swelled as the den door creaked open. A shadow stood huge in the wedge, then shrank quickly as Frank ambled out. He looked down at Hazel from the foot of the bed.

“It’s a conduction-flux, Hazel”—he grinned—“from the spells.”

The spells, Hazel repeated the word in her mind. Even in her trepidation, she frowned at him. “Who do you think you are? Van Halen?”

Frank wore sunglasses in spite of the room’s meager light. “Hagar,” he said and laughed.

“And what’s this about spells?”

“Spells, Hazel—occult theorems that manipulate the angular invariants of the surface of the Shining Trapezohedron.” He leaned over and rubbed her bare leg. “You know what that is, don’t you? The Shining Trapezohedron?”

Hazel was about to say yes, was about to tell him that she’d found it and locked it in the car, but then retracted the affirmation without knowing why. Instead, she credulized the lie with an incomplete truth. “Oh, that red gemstone on Henry’s computer. File Number 1. I saw the picture of it. What the hell is it?”

“What the hell is it?” he murmured. He wore khaki pants, loafers, and a short sleeve shirt with the tails out. His hair look disheveled, and overall he appeared tired and dirty. “You don’t need to know because you would never understand. You’re a lit-head and a sex-maniac.”

“Thanks...”

“Henry chickened out, just like my father. So he threw it away, the asshole. The system works in sequences of 33, but without that crystal we only have 32. It reduces the power-quotient by ten to the 32nd power.”

Hazel smirked her confusion. What’s he talking about?

“Don’t you see? Henry knew he was screwing us over. That’s why he got rid of it.”

Hazel sighed nervously. “Frank, this doesn’t feel like a dream. It feels real.”

“Three cheers to God, then, hmm? For creating the human mind and all its ten trillion synaptic connections. Quite a piece of work, to be able to do all those things and still produce dreams with such clarity, such accuracy, and such sheer authenticity that we don’t even believe they are dreams.” His hand slid up the inside of her thigh, played through her abundant pubic hair, then gave her crotch a squeeze. “Did that feel real?”

“Yes!” she yelled.

“But how can that be? If this were real, Sonia would’ve woken up. You have a very loud voice sometimes, you know that?” He sputtered. “It reminds me of my mother, which I guess is one of many reasons I’ve never liked you.”

“Oh, that’s just great, Frank!”

“This one, on the other hand...” He wandered over to Sonia who remained asleep on her side. He pushed her over on her back, then kneed onto the bed. His fingers slipped the straps of her nightgown down, then he lifted out the large, bulbous breasts. “God, those are great tits, aren’t they? Shit.” He played with them, infatuated. “I love these tits, Hazel, but the problem is...I fucking hate everything else that’s attached to them.”

“You really are a shitty person, Frank.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “I am. But I’m a sucker for big tits, I guess. Drop a couple loads, then next thing I know she’s got me believing I’m in love with her and we should have a kid.” He pushed the nightgown up over Sonia’s swollen belly, then grimaced in disgust. “I should’ve made big-bellied whine-machine get an abortion.”

“Frank! That’s awful!”

His brows raised over the sunglass rims. “Think about what you just said. It’s awful for me to say that?”

“Yes!”

“But it’s your dream, Hazel, just like the fat guy told you in the other dream. It’s your mind that put those words in my mouth, so what does that really mean? Does it mean that I’m awful?” He thumbed open Sonia’s labia, then smirked. “No. It means that you’re awful.”

Hazel exhaled a long breath in frustration. “This dream sucks, Frank. I just want it to end.”

“Of course you do.” He walked back over to Hazel. “But between looking at your body and my fat, knocked-up manatee of a fiance’s tits, I’ve all of a sudden got some lead in the pencil, if ya know what I mean.” He stood at Hazel’s side of the bed now, closer. It was then that Hazel noticed the oddity: his breath.

Whenever Frank spoke, his mouth seemed to expel breath-fog, like when one talks in cold weather.

Only this breath-fog was black, like sooty smoke.

“Why is your breath—” she began.

“Just more conduction flux.” He smiled more sharply behind the black oral mist. “The spells reverse the valance of proximal molecule chains—it’s all geometry, Hazel—and one of many results is a directional yield. Fictility. It involves an inversive model of a quadric surface within angular hyperbolean variants. For instance, right now you probably feel like an invisible water bed is lying on top of you, right?”

“Yes!”

“Ah, well, consider, this”—he leaned over—“if I put my finger, just one finger, behind your head, and lift—”

He did this, and Hazel’s head raised off the bed as though it was instantly weightless.

“See? My brain waves—my thoughts—manipulated the desired valance.”

His finger continued to lift her head up, then her back, until she was fully sitting up, and then—

He continued to direct his finger, forward now, and down. Moments later, she was bending forward as her back bowed...

“What are you doing?”

“Sonia said you’re double-jointed or some shit, used to be a gymnast.”

“So?”

“I want to see you go down on yourself.” A smoky chuckle. “Don’t know why, really. It’s just the idea of you sucking yourself off really rings my bells...”

The bizarre task, impossible to most, was easily achievable for one as nimble as Hazel, though it had been awhile since she’d bothered. She gave into the perverse request, however, relaxing her hip joints and spreading her legs to an extreme. Concentrate, she thought, Frank’s finger still pushing. She imagined her spine going rubbery, then it bowed further until her pubic hair tickled her lips. She extended her tongue, ran the tip between the folds, and felt the forbidden thrill.

“No, no, not just the tongue,” he ordered. “Get your whole mouth down there on your pussy and suck.”

She relaxed more, folded over now in a human convolution. She smelled her own musk as each tiny increment of effort brought her closer and closer until—

“There,” Frank said, satisfied. “You did it. Now suck it.”

Her labia still ached from the various tortures the day had brought, but once the outer vulva was drawn into her mouth, she enjoyed the intense yet soothing sensation. She sucked her own folds, played with them between her lips. She heard Frank’s zipper come down.

“Suck your whole clit into your mouth,” he panted, leaning over close to watch. The meaty smell of his black breath gusted into her crotch. “Suck it like it’s a little cock and get yourself off...”

Hazel did so, coaxing the clitoris, hood, and immediate flesh upward via suction. Her saliva clicked as the suction grew systematic.

“Good, good, yeah,” Frank gusted, and with his approval came the sound of his own masturbation. “Suck it off. Make yourself come...”

Hazel filled her head with many of the day’s debauches; nauseating to typical women, these images had her whining in only another minute, summoning waves of imminence that made her groin throb. She let it all replay in her mind: being mauled, man-handled, tit-fucked, and fisted; being slapped, choked, and bilge-pumped; being forced to swallow a shot glass full of sperm and then letting not one but two male bladders be emptied into her stomach. All these repugnant images left her enfrenzied as her mouth desperately plied her own sex.

“Think about Sonia,” was what Frank’s black voice whispered next. “Pretend that’s her pussy you’re sucking...”

The mere words set her off; her pelvis bucked up against her mouth as the potent spasms broke.

“Good, good...Suck, suck...”

She came till she thought she’d collapse into herself. She was actually crying it had been so good...

When she wanted to teeter over, Frank jerked her face up. Thumb and index finger of his left hand dimpled her cheeks to give her fish-lips, while his right hand pressed his glans right to the hole and–

“There...”

Globs of sperm flowed between her lips onto her tongue, eddies of it. When he’d finished he kept her cheeks pinched together and pushed her head all the way back.

“Swallow now.”

Hazel nearly vomited when she did so. Oh, gross... The sperm tasted unlike any she’d experienced—it tasted wretched. It tasted the way old sperm smelled on a dried up wet spot three days old.

The room’s occult gravity slammed her shoulder blades back down on the bed.

“You’re something, you know that?” Frank’s words misted. He pulled his zipper back up. “You’re every perverted male fantasy in the flesh, Hazel. You are the personification of Woman As Object, a sexual spittoon, a thing, Hazel, that exists solely as a receptacle for every twisted desire to ever comprise a man’s most carnal obsessions.” He smiled below the foolish sunglasses. “You’re meat, and what’s worse is that you’re content with that role. You walk the earth with only one true purpose: to be fucked. You’re a human condom, Hazel—a fuck- dump—and that’s all you’ll ever be.”

“Fuck you,” she drooled.

Frank’s black voice puffed as he spoke. “Find the Shining Trapezohedron and you’ll be rewarded,” and then he turned and walked out of the cabin, counting each step.

“One, two, three...”

When he was gone, Hazel’s awareness was hauled down into utter, ghastly black.

“It’s almost noon!” the voice pried into her sleep. “Don’t you want to get up?”

Hazel’s eyes clicked open. When she tried to speak, her tongue seemed glued to the roof of her mouth. What? she thought, then, Oh, God...Blocks of sunlight came one by one into the room as Sonia opened the shades.

“Here’s some coffee.” Sonia smiled down at her, setting a cup on the nightstand. She wore another bright, flowery sundress.

“Is it really noon?” Hazel groaned. A headache twinged at the back of her skull.

“Almost.” Sonia seemed perky, energized, as she busied about the room.

At least she’s not still down in the dumps, Hazel considered. She sat up naked in bed, rubbing her eyes. Damn. “Sorry I slept so late. That’s not like me.”

“No problem.”

Hazel was going to mention her nightmares but then thought better of it when she recalled the slowly reforming details.

“I was doing work anyway.”

“What work? Summer session’s over. You’re on vacation.”

Sonia sighed. “This morning I checked my email and found a note from Administration. They lost all my student evaluations—the entire student roster—for all my classes in the session. So now I have to re-collate the whole friggin’ thing, and send it back to them. They have to have it for the quarterly stats.”

“Bummer,” Hazel said. “I’ll be happy to help.”

“Thanks, but it’s really something I have to do. It’ll probably take a couple more hours.” Her smile beamed. “At least it’ll give me something to do while Frank’s on his way.”

Frank... Hazel tried to blink away the remnants of the nightmare: Frank’s black sunglasses, his black breath, ugly comments, and rotten sperm...

Sonia sat next to her. “And I’m sorry about yesterday.”

Hazel could’ve groaned. “You don’t have to ap—”

“You’re right, I did overreact.” Sonia laughed and rubbed her baby-bump. “Knocked up, you know? Crazy hormones. I don’t know how Frank’s been putting up with me the last eight months.”

Well, that’s a change, Hazel thought. He’s not the Big Bad Wolf anymore. “He said he’ll be back this afternoon,” she tried to sound confident, “and I’m sure he will be.”

“I know. I keep forgetting. Frank’s not just a self-absorbed guy, he’s a self-absorbed college professor. And by now his phone battery is dead, it’s got to be. Like you said, once he gets all this Henry stuff out of his system, he’ll be fine.”

Hazel nodded through a distraction. Of course she knew that last night was indeed a dream...her mouth was lined with the most awful taste. She hopped off the bed. “Well, you get back to work. I’ve got to take a shower and decide what I’m going to do today,” but as she moved away, Sonia’s hand caught her wrist.

“Wait!”

“What?”

Sonia kissed her lightly on the lips. “Thanks for being such a good friend. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Hazel looked at her, hoping the moment would turn serious, but then Sonia’s expression turned to one of concern. Her finger daintily touched Hazel’s left nipple.

“Your nipples look swollen...”

They ought to, Hazel thought. “They get that way sometimes, that’s all. Period’s coming,” and then she strode naked for the shower.

In the cubby, she brushed her teeth, brushed her tongue, gargled with vehemence, then let the cool water blank her mind. But there was still the Shining Trapezohedron to clean, and she did want to take another stab at uncrashing Henry’s computer. Frank might know what to do, she considered. She sudsed her pubis thoroughly, then blushed in the spray when she recalled dreaming of performing cunnilingus on herself. I didn’t really do that in my sleep, did I? She couldn’t imagine. What bothered her most, however, was the prospect she’d only now let come to the surface of her consciousness. Sonia seemed confident that Frank would indeed return this afternoon, but...

What if he doesn’t?

Hazel knew that she would have to find the Gray Cottage herself.

Today she dressed in fluorescent-green flipflops, a shortish stone-washed jean skirt, and a sleeveless tee that read: APRIL IS

THE CRUELLEST MONTH, BREEDING LILACS OUT OF THE DEAD LAND – T.S. ELIOT. She rolled her eyes when she saw her reflection in the little mirror: both nipples stuck out like pegs between the lines.

Hazel couldn’t identify what brought the idea to mind when she came back out. “Didn’t you say that Frank’s father lived in Concord?”

Sonia sat at her laptop in the den. She never looked up from her typing as she answered, “Yeah. I went up there with him once—pretty depressing place. It’s practically a nursing home.”

“So Frank’s father is an invalid?”

“He walks fine, the problem is he’s totally blind. Frank always felt bad about not having enough money to get him in a nicer facility. At least now, with Henry’s inheritance, he’ll be able to.” Sonia looked up. “Why do you ask?”

Hazel fiddled with the metal-version of the crystal box. “You’re busy for a while and I’m bored. Can I borrow your car and drive to Concord? I want to ask Frank’s father about the Shining Trapezohedron.”

“The wh—Oh, the crystal.”

“Yeah, and I want to ask him about this gemstone club Horace mentioned. That sounded pretty weird.”

“That along with an anonymous letter and five thousand in cash.”

“I mean, come on. A gem club? Did Frank ever mention anything about Henry Wilmarth being in a geology club of any kind?”

“Nope. But he obviously knew about this Shining Whatever, ‘cos Henry’s last instruction asked him not to bother looking for it,” Sonia reminded. “I’m kind of curious myself now. You really want to drive to Concord?”

“Why not? It can’t be that far.”

“From here, probably less than an hour.” Sonia checked her address book on the laptop, then quickly printed out the address of Thurnston P. Barlow. “Just use the map in the car, you shouldn’t have any trouble. It’s not far from the New Hampshire Technical Institute.”

“Cool. See ya later.”

“Oh, wait, and while you’re there, bring back some carry-out, okay, for the three of us. I’m dying for Chinese!”

“Sure.”

“Beef with chow fun noodles!”

“You got it,” Hazel smiled. “See you in a few hours.”

She skipped out of the house, into breezy heat. The car’s interior was scorching; she left the door open to air it out, then picked up the paper bag containing the Shining Trapezohedron. The tree patch had indeed softened in the heat but still left a tacky mess. I’ll work on this later, she resolved, then was in the car and on her way.

Southward on Interstate 93 had in forty-minutes’ time brought her to Concord. Revolution-era architecture was seen in every direction; the town seemed neat as a pin yet too small for a state capital. A few minutes later she’d parked and was entering the The Ammi Pierce House - Assisted Living Apartments. Frank had referred to the place as a “shit-hole,” but Hazel found the exterior clean, stately, and impressive. The shit-hole came after she’d entered when at once she was accosted by nursing-home odors and distant babbling. Jesus...These weren’t really apartments but just single rooms, like a boarding house. Hazel signed in at the shabby front desk; then the clerk—a gaunt, balding man with a giant adam’s apple—came around the desk to take her to Mr. Barlow’s room. The clerk’s gaze seemed to brush over her nipples through the T-shirt. He took her up to the second floor. The tannish carpet smelled rotten; she forced herself not to look to closely at variously shaped stains. A man in white-garb pushed a cart at the end of the hall. A male maid, she guessed. The man looked at Hazel blank-faced, then pushed onward.

Creepy joint.

When she knocked on Mr. Barlow’s door, a hushed voice said, “Please, do come in.”

The room was dark— Of course it is! The man’s blind. “Hi, Professor Barlow. My name’s Hazel Greene. I’m a—”

The dark form in the corner’s voice possessed a surprising vitality. “Ah, yes. Frank’s mentioned you. You’re his fiance’s friend.”

“And her teaching assistant at Brown, yes, and I know Frank pretty well too.”

“Feel free to turn on a light and have a seat,” and when Hazel did so she was shocked to note the haggard state of Thurnston Barlow. He was a scarecrow in oversized clothes, but appeared clean, recently shaven, stark white hair neatly combed. Hazel knew the man to be in his sixties but the figure facing her from the armchair opposite looked in his eighties. Sunken cheeks, sunken eyes, face pallid like wax; overall he appeared drained of life. She could only see the very bottoms of his irises. The rest of the apartment looked as infirm as he did. Poor bastard, she thought.

Thin, bloodless lips barely moved when he continued, “And now you, Sonia, and Frank are taking a respite of sorts, at the late Henry Wilmarth’s cabin, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Henry was a brilliant man.” The voice was uncannily zealous to be spoken from someone so emaciated. “It’s quite a shame what happened. In hindsight, though, I wasn’t all that surprised.”

“Really?”

“He was quite a different person when he returned from St. Petersburg.”

The Mother’s Day Storm... Hazel tried to focus on her task yet she kept feeling an annoying distraction. She felt antsy...

“I suspect Frank or Sonia apprized you of the fact that I am completely blind,” the old man went on, “and I’m sure you’ve heard from time to time that the blind are known to compensate for their visual detriment by developing an excess acuity in other senses.”

“Yes, I have heard that.”

“So I hope you’re not offended by my saying”—he paused and sighed—“that you smell intense and absolutely lovely...”

Hazel chuckled. “I’m not offended at all, Professor Barlow.”

“Around a place like this, a sharpened olfactory sense is more a curse than a blessing.” He smiled, dead-eyed. “You’ve livened up an old man’s day more than you can know.”

“Well, I’m glad of that,” and only then did Hazel realize that she’d unknowingly spread her legs in the jean skirt. Had the man been able to see, right now he’d have a bird’s-eye view of her pantiless crotch. The idea instantly moistened her. “I think what you’re smelling is my shampoo. It smells like blueberry muffins. The guy I’m dating likes it.”

“Blueberry muffins and, well...” A thought faded. “In that case I envy your beau,” he said and laughed.

Oh my God, she thought. She noticed the old man’s baggy crotch: a lump was forming it. He can SMELL my pussy...and it’s making him hard... The awareness fascinated her. “Anyway,” she tried to keep on track, “I guess I should’ve called first, so I hope this isn’t an inconvenience—”

“Not at all, Hazel. Any friend of my son’s is always welcome here, unconditionally.” Another laugh. “Not that here is any great prize.”

The distraction was cutting into her now. Her sex was seeping, from the simple knowledge that her scent and her presence was giving the infirm man an erection—that, and the knowledge that he couldn’t see...

Very, very slowly, she hiked her skirt up to her pelvis, then rolled her top up, while saying, “I came here to ask you some questions.”

“The questions of the young bring only delight to retired academicians, believe me.”

Now Hazel sat spread-legged on the chair, her skirt peeled all the way back, her bare tits plump as peaches from arousal. I’m exposing myself to a blind man, came the bald and thoroughly unfeeling thought, and with it her own nipples inflamed further and the groove of her sex began to flood. Meanwhile, the “lump” in Thurnston Barlow’s baggy convalescent slacks lengthened. Hazel’s vision grew hazy but she managed to ask, “I’d like to know about the Shining Trapezohedron.”

Barlow’s eyes, however dead, seemed to darken. The strangely energetic voice seemed to corrode when he replied, “How do you know about– Frank didn’t tell you, did he?”

“No, sir, but there were some references to it on some letters Henry left on the desk. Sonia and I weren’t exactly prying but we couldn’t help but see them. Henry referred to it as a ‘graven image,’ and a ‘golden calf.’ What on earth did he mean? It’s just a rock, right?”

The man seemed crestfallen now...and his erection was ebbing. “It would be pointless for me to explain, Hazel. You’d have to be a very deft mathematician with a sound knowledge of physics to even come close to understanding.” The old man seemed to falter through a thought. “You don’t have it, do you? The stone?”

“No, sir,” she lied. “Henry’s letter said he disposed of it.”

Barlow’s bony hands rubbed his face. He went silent.

“Professor Barlow? Are you all right?” Hazel gulped. “If I’ve upset you in some way, I apologize.”

“No, no, it’s just...My God. You wouldn’t believe what we almost got ourselves into.” He cleared his throat with difficulty; if anything, he looked even more skeletal now that Hazel had raised the topic. “What you have to understand is that Henry Wilmarth was a genius–a genius with the potential of an Edward Teller.”

“Edward Who? ”

“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t know that. He’s the man who invented the hydrogen bomb.”

Hazel struggled with her curiosity and her raging arousal. She couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. What’s he talking about?

The old man leaned toward an augmented telephone sitting beside him. “Pardon me a moment, but I need to call Frank—”

Hazel draped her knees over the arms of the chair, baring her furred pubis even more extremely. “You probably won’t be able to get him. Right now, it’s just Hazel and me at Henry’s cabin.”

Barlow’s face webbed with concern. “So where’s Frank? He’s supposed to be there destroying...”

“Yes, sir, destroying Henry’s documents and files. He felt it would be deemed quackery and only bring ridicule to his name.”

“Quackery,” Barlow muttered.

“This theory the three of you were working on. Non-Euclideanism.”

Pale white brows popped up. “You’re very resourceful. But do you know what that means? ”

“Haven’t a clue. Frank tried to explain but it went right over our heads.”

The old man’s voice sounded guttural. “I’m glad it did. There are some things people don’t need to know, Hazel. It’s better that they never even consider them in the most farfetched fancy. Fortunately Henry Wilmarth realized this before it was too late. I pray God Frank does the same. So...where is he? He’s not at the cabin now, you say?”

“No, sir, he left right after Henry’s funeral several days ago,” she said while at the same time running the pad of her middle finger up and down the slickened groove of her sex. Pervert, pervert, pervert, she condemned herself but kept doing it nonetheless. The sensation made her want to hiss through her teeth, but she knew she dare not. Not only were the blind known to develop an accelerated sense of smell but an accelerated sense of hearing, too.

Barlow was about to further his questions but Hazel interrupted. “Would you excuse me a minute, sir? I need to use your bathroom if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, of course.” The crabby hand pointed behind him. “To the right. It may not be the cleanest bathroom—I’ve no way of knowing, of course.” He smiled. “I’m at the mercy of the housekeeping staff.”

“I’ll be right back,” she said and strode off.

In the bathroom, she glared at herself in the mirror. What are you DOING? You came here to TALK to the old man, not PLAY WITH YOURSELF in front of him! Fuming, she urinated, flushed, then washed her hands, all of a sudden crawling in prickly heat. It was her sickness, she knew, sinking in like it always did. Whatever perverted brain cells in her head made her like this...they were sparking now with vigor. No, no, no, she groaned to herself and pulled her top over her head. She took off her skirt and now stood naked.

No, no, no...

She took care to make no noise when stepping out of the bathroom. She peeked around the hall entrance and, sure enough, Frank’s father was tremble-handedly caressing his crotch. She stepped back to the bathroom, closed the door loud enough for him to hear, then walked back out.

“I’m back,” she said and gingerly lay her clothes over the chair. She sat back down, prickling all over now by the fact that she was sitting completely nude in front of a blind man. “Where were we? Oh, yes, were we talking about–”

The old man faltered. “Hazel, I—I’m delighted to talk to you but I’m afraid I’m terribly side-tracked right now. I’ve been blind for almost five years, but—but...”

Hazel pressed her hand flat against her sex and made slow circular motions. “But what, sir?”

He seemed hesitant. “Would you mind terribly if I touched your face? I’d really like to see you and, of course, touch is the only way the blind can really see.”

Careful. Be VERY careful. “Sure,” she said and hopped up. She stood immediately before him, bent over, and took his hands. Then she placed them on her face.

The fingertips trembled all about, from forehead to throat and back again. “Oh . . . my. You’re so beautiful, so lovely.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The dead eyes looked up. Now his fingers were trembling at her collar bones, and Hazel’s vision just got hazier and hazier and the sickness sunk deeper, drenching her brain like a sponge.

Two tears glittered in the old man’s eyes. “Please...,” came the driest peep.

Hazel grabbed his wrists and pushed his hands down to her breasts.

“I knew it,” he whispered. Now his entire form trembled in the chair.

Her own voice parched. “I have some problems, Professor Barlow, and...as I’m sure you’re all too aware of now. I try to think of them as frivolous little fetishes, little kinks, but I guess they’re a lot more than that. I rationalize what I’m driven to do by telling myself that if no one gets hurt, it’s okay. But that’s pretty naive, I suppose...”

The old man’s hands smoothed over Hazel’s young breasts, then down her waist, over her abdomen. “Blind men dream of this, Hazel. There is no other fantasy for us, really...”

As the hands tended her breasts, Hazel looked down between his arms, down the flat of her stomach and the formidable puff of dark-red pubic hair; she spied the old man’s tented crotch and noticed the dime-sized wet spot there. How long had it been since he’d touched a woman? How long had it been since he’d experienced this proximity and actually gotten an erection? Had climaxed?

Barlow’s hollow breaths quickened. “What a beautiful moperist you are, Hazel.”

Her breasts jiggled when she laughed. “Moperist? ”

“That’s the name of this particular fetish,” his voice rose and fell. “One who commits ‘mopery’ is one who becomes sexually aroused by exposing oneself to the blind.”

Mopery, huh? “That’s a new one on me,” she said, moving her pubis closer. “I’ll have to put it on my list.”

Now the old hands were molding her hips, circling her belly, probing her navel. “But certainly you’re not aroused, ” Barlow whispered. “A young, beautiful woman such as you couldn’t possibly be aroused by a blind old man...”

Hazel took his hand and put it to her sex. She manipulated one of his fingers right into the sopping-wet slit. “So you think I’m not aroused, huh?”

She drew the trembling finger in and out, tightening herself.

“Please,” he pleaded. “Let me...taste you...It’s been so long.”

Hazel needed no time to contemplate, nor weigh the subjectivities of the situation. Most of her conscious thought felt filmed over. She pressed Barlow back in the chair, then effortlessly hopped up, placing each bare foot on a chair-arm. Professor Barlow quivered and moaned, blindly looking up in wait. Only once did Hazel’s conscience ask, What am I doing? Only once.

She raised her right leg straight up like a punter at the peak of the kick, then pressed the sole of her foot against the wall. From here she merely inclined her pubis, leading it straight to the thin-lipped mouth of Frank’s invalid father. The alignment was perfect.

Hazel’s pose tensed her back and leg muscles to tight cords when the sexagenarian tongue delved into her folds.

The old man mewled in something like pleading delight. Hazel urged her clit closer. Soon, though, he got the hang of it, perhaps old memories rekindled, as his tongue movements grew rhythmic.

Beneath his mewls, she could hear him desperately pawing his crotch with one crabbed hand. Don’t over-excite him...” Just relax,” she whispered, abdominal muscles tightening. “Take your time.”

Hazel’s sphincter and vulva began to pulse. The inside of her mind felt like a dam, holding back a seamy gulf of deviant images she longed to bathe in. When the damn burst—

Hazel hissed, her pussy spasming.

—the images gushed through —men coming in her face, pissing in her face, locking her down bent over in a pillory to be sodomized en masse— and came right in the old man’s face, her sex like a steaming sponge being squashed. She felt her own juices squirt out of her like an overripe fruit being bitten into. She kept her sex pressed to Barlow’s mouth as she continued to come with every flinch of her pelvis.

Careful, careful, she kept telling herself. He could have a heart attack, but she couldn’t discipline herself one bit. She slithered down to a squat, unbuckled his pants, and took his penis out.

“Oh, dear,” he wheezed, dead eyes gazing up. “You’re such a lovely, lovely...”

This is one hard-as-a-rock cock for an old man, she thought. She finessed it in her hand. Bigger than Frank’s too, I think. The pole of aged flesh quivered in her hand. Barlow cringed when her fingertips teased over the slippery glans. The piss-slit looked agape, a tiny, famished mouth hanging open. “Relax,” she whispered, then adroitly fed the tip into her vulva and slowly declined her squat until her sex swallowed the entire thing. The awkward position caused the cock to touch her in areas not typically explored. She slowly began to ride her pelvis up and down. “Don’t move,” came her next whisper. “Just relax and let me do all the work...” She stepped up her rhythm, running her open hands over his sunken chest, thinking, Don’t die, don’t have a coronary, but then the man gasped and went into a series of feeble bucks. Hazel sighed, feeling the hot, gluey threads leap up into her vaginal canal. “There, there, that’s good. Just relax and come...”

Moments later, the old man lay limp in the chair, a stick-figure in too-big clothes, when Hazel tightened her vaginal muscles to squeeze out the last semen and sensations, then daintily climbed off him.

I should NOT have done that, she feared, standing now to look at him. “Professor? You’re all right, aren’t you?”

The gaping-mouthed face nodded. “Yes, yes, I—”

“Don’t talk just yet. Just rest and get your breath back. We’ll talk in a few minutes. Let me get you a glass of water.”

He nodded again, mouthed Thank you. Hazel put her clothes back on and went into the kitchen.

Give yourself a pat on the back, Hazel. You just came close to fucking a poor old blind man to death. You are the pervert’s pervert. Each day you manage to find yet another new low. She poured a glass of water, was about to return to him, but noticed an opened door. Bedroom, she realized. There was almost nothing in it, just a bed and a dresser. Barren walls whose corners were rounded by cobwebs. On the dresser, though, stood a singular oddity: a framed picture. Why would a blind man have a—, but then she figured the picture must have sentimental value, whether he could see it or not. It hadn’t been touched in years, though, as quarter-inch-thick dust proved. Hazel picked it up, wiped it off.

Three men in hiking gear stood in front of Henry Wilmarth’s cabin, all bearing timid smiles. Frank to the left, looking young, vibrant, eyes burning with a thirst for knowledge. He had to have been in his late-twenties when this was taken. To the right stood Thurnston Barlow, in no way resembling the withered shell in the outer room. Early fifties, Hazel estimated. He stood sturdy, confident, strong, yet radiating the aura of an academician.

In the middle stood Henry Wilmarth, whose smile seemed less timid and more knowing. Intense-eyed, lips pursed within the scholarly beard. Cupped in his hand at waist-level was the Shining Trapezohedron.

Interesting...

Perhaps Professor Barlow put the picture here because it reminded him of better times. Dead eyes notwithstanding, maybe he pictured it here in his mind every day and mused upon what it meant: a part of his life that had purpose.

The picture seemed sad. Hazel flipped it over, hoping for a date, but found instead a small photo slipped under the frame’s lip. She took it and out stared.

No human subject stood within the snapshot’s border. Photographed amid brambles, vines, and closely converged trees was a small building made of uneven stones. Unshuttered windows stood in deep embrasures of finely hewn rock; even the meager, slanted roof appeared to be made of sheets of stone, slate, perhaps. Mist clung around the dwelling’s only visible corner. No door of any kind was in evidence.

The Gray Cottage, Hazel’s thoughts croaked.

So...it really did exist. For whatever reason, seeing the picture made Hazel’s heart quicken.

She set all back to rights and returned to Professor Barlow, who’d been able to catch his breath. “Here I am,” she said to alert him, then took his hand and placed the water glass in it.

He smiled, exhausted. “What an angel you are, Hazel. What a blessing...”

Hazel wilted. I’m a sex-freak, I’m a deviant, erotomanic paraphiliac. When men rape me and force me to drink their piss, I LIKE it. When they choke me unconscious as they’re fucking me...I come. She could’ve laughed. An angel? A blessing? I don’t think so...

“I had a pretty good time, too, you know,” she dismissed. But now that her perversions had been slaked, she felt steadfast. “Among other things, we were talking about Frank, Professor.”

His slack face stilled, then showed recognition. “Oh, yes. And you’d mentioned that he wasn’t at Henry’s cabin yet. So...where is he?”

Hazel elected not to confess to having seen the snapshot. “He went up to the top of Whipple’s Peak, to a place called the Gray Cottage,” and then she studied Barlow’s face very closely.

The old man suddenly went rigid with distilled anger. “For God’s sake. He was expressly instructed not to do that.”

“Is this cottage...still there?”

“Yes,” the old man croaked. “Henry and I went there several times many years ago.” He made a bony fist. “Damn it!”

“Sonia’s none too happy about him being up there. She’s due in a few weeks and wanted to spend as much time with Frank as possible.”

Barlow’s agitation made him visibly shake. “Really, I must call him—”

“He’s been up there several days, last we heard from him was yesterday.” Hazel sat back in her chair, thinking. “His phone battery’s got to be dead by now.”

Barlow feebly felt for a button on the phone, pressed it, and said, “Frank,” into a pickup that was undoubtedly connected to a voice-recognition program. The speaker phone began to ring. Frank’s voice-mail came on immediately, and after the beep, Professor Barlow snapped, “Frank, this is your father! You’re not supposed to be at the goddamn cottage; it’s fit to collapse so leave at once! I’m serious, son. I’ve never asked anything of you in my entire life, but I’m asking now. Leave the Gray Cottage and go back to Henry’s cabin. Leave at once! It’s a disgrace for you to be up there when you’ve got a pregnant fiancé waiting for you—you should be ashamed of yourself. And hear this, son: when you’re back, you call me. You and I are going to have a long talk,” then he jabbed his finger into the off button.

“Wow, looks like I just got Frank in big trouble with his dad.”

Barlow wrung his old hands. “Frank has an obstinate side, but one thing he’s never been is greedy. That’s why this surprises me.”

“Greedy? I don’t understand.”

“Earlier you asked why Henry called the Shining Trapezohedron a golden calf. It’s very much a false icon, Hazel.”

More perplexity. “So there’s a correlation between the crystal and the Gray Cottage?”

“Indeed there is.”

“Frank said he’s been detained there because Henry left a great deal more paperwork in the place, said it’ll take him a while to destroy it all.”

“Listen—” He sat upright, arthritic hands on knees, and stared directly at Hazel with his useless eyes. “Forget about it all, Hazel. Frank’ll likely see the light once he thinks about things, puts two and two together. All I’ll tell you”—he pointed a bony finger—“That stone, that horrid crystal, has...a power.”

“Come on, Professor.”

He seemed to calculate his next words. “It’s a good thing indeed that Henry disposed of it, but let me just speak my mind. If for some reason you, Frank, or Sonia find where Henry hid the stone, throw it into the lake, bury it, put it in the garbage–anything. And whatever you do...don’t look at it.”

This was getting strange. What bothered Hazel most was the conviction with which Barlow made his comments. “Why, sir? It’s just a stone.”

“It’s far more than that. It’s a seducer. ”

Maybe I should just leave, she considered. I’m probably agitating him at this point. But still—

She had looked at the crystal, hadn’t she? Not the stone itself, but the jpeg on Henry’s computer. And she’d seen things.

No, I THOUGHT I saw things...

“The metal box, too,” the old man continued. “Destroy it. Let’s just say you’d be doing me a favor.”

“You’re really confusing me, sir. Don’t look at the stone?”

He seemed animated now, tense in some unexplained resolve. “Precisely. If you look at it long enough...it will make you want to do things, Hazel. It came very close to making Henry Wilmarth do something abominable—”

“What?” she almost yelled.

“—and it did the same to me.” He laxed back in the chair, somehow looking even older now, more infirm. “Henry was stronger than me, I suppose. He was able to say no to it in time, before it got its hooks in him. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky.”

All right, this is useless. The man’s getting carried away. He’s probably part-senile by now. Semi-precious gems don’t have POWER. You can’t say NO to a hunk of rock. “What do you mean by that, sir?”

He pointed to his eyes. “I looked too long, my dear. And when I realized what the Shining Trapezohedron was trying to do to me, I resisted...For that resistance, I was punished.”

Hazel’s eyes shifted as she looked at him.

“The crystal is what made me blind.” He took a breath. “And remember what I said earlier? That the blind are able to hone other senses to a higher clarity via the loss of the vision?”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his face as if weary. “It’s not just smell, taste, and hearing, you know. It’s also certain intuitions. For instance when I asked you before if you had found the Shining Trapezohedron, you said you hadn’t.” A very silent pause. “You were lying, weren’t you?”

Hazel froze. “Yes, sir, I was.”

“And you found it where? ”

“Henry put it in a tree bowl, then covered the bowl with tree-patch. I happened upon it by pure coincidence.”

The old man seemed lost now, yet he also seemed desperate not to appear that way. “I suppose I may have sounded a bit over-dramatic, Hazel. But can’t you do this for me?” He made a parched chuckle. “Can’t you appease this nutty old man? Please. Put the stone back in the tree bowl, cover it up, and, for God’s sake— don’t tell Frank you know anything about it. Will you do that for me? Please?”

“Yes, sir, I will,” she said. Big deal. It’s just a rock.

“Thank you. And, please, tell Frank to call me when he gets back to Henry’s cabin, all right?”

“Sure.”

The man was winding down. I guess I fucked out any energy he might have, she thought. “I have to go now, Professor.”

“Yes–I’m getting very tired and I’m afraid the nurse will be by shortly with my medications.”

Hazel’s eyes narrowed. Blind, yes, and old, but he didn’t seem to be sick. “I hope you’re not ailing from anything serious, sir.”

“No, no. Blood pressure, arthritis—the inevitable afflictions of old men.” He seemed even to struggle smiling. “But, please, stop by again anytime. It’s been a pleasure...being in your company. You’re a wonderful, generous person.”

I guess that’s the urbane way of thanking a nymphomanic woman for fucking you. She got up. “I’ll come by again soon, I promise. Goodbye, sir.”

He raised a palsied hand to wave.

Hazel left, thinking, Does he really believe all that? Don’t look at the stone because it has POWER, it’ll get its HOOKS in you? She closed the door and turned only to see whom she’d previously dismissed as a janitor pushing his cart right up to Professor Barlow’s.

“How nice,” he said. He was looking right at her breasts, where her nipples still stuck out noticeably against the fabric of her tight shirt.

“Pardon me?”

“How nice to see Professor Barlow with a visitor,” the man went on. He was fortyish, bulky, drab. He opened a drawer on the cart and withdrew a small paper cup. “His son comes around once in a blue moon but that’s about it.”

Hazel noticed now that what he pushed was not a cleaning cart but a med cart. Multiple drawers were loaded with pill bottles.

“So you’re the nurse for the residents?” she asked.

“Just the pharmacist.”

“I wasn’t aware that Professor Barlow had a blood pressure problem–”

The man was in the process of stealing another glance at Hazel’s distended nipples, but her question snagged him. “He doesn’t have high blood pressure. What gave you that idea?”

“He just told me.”

“Oh,” he said stretching the word. “I can understand that, I guess. He doesn’t want you to know. His blood pressure’s picture perfect. Wish mine was.”

Hazel was getting aggravated. “So what is wrong with him?”

He shook the little cup of pills. “Let me put it this way. These pills? They’re anti-psychotics.”

“Anti—”

“Professor Barlow is completely, utterly, one-hundred-percent insane.”

I wonder if Frank’s back yet? she asked herself when she got back to the cabin. Something felt weird when she got out of the car and looked at the wooden building. The entire drive back had sapped her brain; between Thurnston Barlow’s bizarre remarks and Frank’s suddenly erratic behavior–not to mention Sonia’s mood swings, and the various other tidbits of either mystery or claptrap, Hazel had trouble thinking straight.

And now this...

The cabin looked empty, but why would she receive that impression? I’ve had the car all day, so there’s nowhere Sonia could go. She tried to shirk off the disquieting impressions as she headed up the front walk with a take-out Chinese order and the bag containing the Shining Trapezohedron (she’d also bought a can of gem polish at a drug store near the restaurant) but then peered at something white just off the driveway. A paper ball? she wondered.

It was even more disquieting picking it up, for it lay only feet from the notorious out-house. Every time she saw the archaic structure, she shivered at the recollection of the “daymare” she’d had. Find the stone...and you’ll be rewarded, the slush-voiced, upside-down-faced rapist had told her. Frank said the same thing in the dream I had last night... Hazel’s stomach tensed as the dream-bits hovered over her.

The object was indeed a sheet of paper rolled up into a ball, as if someone had dropped it there. The ball crinkled as she unrolled it. “Now what the hell is this? ” she muttered.

Tight handwriting filled both sides. Hazel’s gaze seemed to warp as she examined it: a list of names, addresses, phone numbers, and Social Security numbers. Each entry was numbered, and the first on the list were—

1) Hannah Bowen, 610 LaFanu Wood Rd., Bosset’s Way, NH

03266 - 161-14-6557 - Ph: 646-262-0051

2) Emma Freeborn, 368 Bierce Spur, Bosset’s Way, NH, 03246 -

464-18-9571 - Ph: 646-202-4978

3) Nabby Gardner, 4285 Machen Creek Dr., Bosset’s Way, NH, 03246 - 410-42-2649 - Ph: 646-301-2476

The list went all the way to 33. Hazel noticed several familiar names, such as Ida Saltonstall, more than likely the barmaid at the tavern; and Nathaniel Peaslee, whom she met there as well. Richard Pickman, the dour artist and shop-owner, was on the list, too, and so were Walter Brown and Clayton Martin, the men whom she’d solicited for rape. . .

More weirdness. Why would there be a handwritten list of thirty-three local residents on a piece of paper in the yard? Something Henry had written? but, no, she’d seen enough of his characteristic penmanship to know he hadn’t been the scribe.

Frank, the name dropped in her head like a bell-toll.

“Sonia, I’m back!” she called out when she barged into the cabin, “and I didn’t forget the Chinese...” She stood still, waiting for a reply. A quick glance showed her the den was unoccupied. “Sonia?” Hazel stowed the take-out in the refrigerator, already knowing full well Sonia wasn’t in the cabin. Frank must’ve finally come back, and they’re out for a walk, she hoped, yet her gut told her something altogether different. She hurried to the den, searched for a sample of Frank’s handwriting, but could only find Henry’s. For the hell of it, she turned on Henry Wilmarth’s computer—even knowing it had crashed for good—then sat down with a rag and began to clean the tar-patched crystal with the pungent cleaner she’d just bought. Works like a charm... She was surprised by how efficiently the solvent dissolved the tacky black muck. Within minutes, the scarlet crystal glimmered.

Wow... She held it up. The black striations woven within the stone’s ruby-red seemed to move. Next, she took down the metal box and compared it side by side to the Trapezohedron. The glyph-like engravings on the box corresponded identically to many of the angles of the stone’s shimmering facets. Whatever you do...DON’T look at it, Professor Barlow’s warning resounded in her head. He wanted her to dispose of the crystal and destroy the box.

Hazel stared into the stone...and saw nothing.

Foolishness.

She felt tempted to gaze more deeply into it now, but to her surprise, Henry’s computer suddenly booted up. She put the box and the Shining Trapezohedron back into the bag, then turned her attention to the computer, immediately accessing the massive index of Henry’s notes. She clicked a random file toward the bottom—

Strange...

She was looking at a list of cities. BIG cities, she realized as her eyes scanned the list.

PRIMARY

1) Tokyo/Yokohama - 32.1 mil

2) New York Metro - 17.8 mil

3) Sao Paulo - 17.7 mil

And the list continued down–a long list. Hazel knew at once that the list comprised the most heavily populated cities on earth. The last three were—

31) Bangkok - 6.5 mil

32) Johannesburg - 6 mil

33) Chennai - 5.9 mil

—and then it ended. Hazel peered, confused. Thirty-three local residents on one list, and thirty-three major metropolises on another list. Why was the number thirty-three suddenly popping up everywhere? More of the nightmare, she reckoned, and then her stare lengthened. Didn’t Frank say in the nightmare something about sequences of thirty-three?

All this mess was making her head spin. The very next file was a list of the same names on the list she’d found outside, though not alphabetical this time—

1) Nahum Gardner - Tokyo

2) Clayton Martin - New York

3) Ida Saltonstall - Sao Paulo

—and right on down, listing every name on the handwritten list.

Thirty-three names, thirty-three cities...

But what on earth could any of this mean? Hazel clicked on another random file and found a queue of jpegs. But the file-name was ST. PETERSBURG

Oh my God, she thought when she opened the first one.

What was it? A great mass of shapes filled the sky, fronted by a city-scape just before dawn. The shapes were a merge of colors: brown, black, gray. Hazel wanted to believe they were storm clouds but if they were they were unlike any clouds she’d ever beheld. They seemed part-solid, part gaseous, and though she knew it was her imagination, she could swear she detected immense malformed appendages sprouting from the mass. Henry took this just before the storm hit last May, she realized.

The next jpeg caused her to jolt. The ill-colored mass now seemed to be lowering on a city block, consuming high-rise condos and spiring office buildings...

And the next: All the stone blocks of a skyscraper had been caught in a freeze-frame, blowing out as if bombed and leaving only a steel skeleton.

The next one: Buildings concussing along a boulevard, while cars, mailboxes, debris, and people were blown down the street.

A final file showed a pile of human bodies massed against a wall: limbs contorted, faces frozen in an appalling death. Many of their arms and legs looked like the flesh had been corroded off, leaving curled bones that were somehow yellowed and rubbery...

Hazel closed the file down at once, her stomach clenching. Holy shit, that’s horrible... The news had blamed the tragedy on multiple-vortex tornados—a rare fluke of nature—but, but—

Hazel knew what a tornado looked like. None had been visible in the jpegs.

She grew sicker and sicker as her mind played over every question. To clear her head, she went to the kitchen for a soda, then returned and found herself staring at a smaller desk along the back wall, where Sonia had set up her own laptop.

How could I have missed that!

Sonia’s laptop sat opened, its flowery screensaver roving, and taped to the keyboard was a quickly scrawled note.

HAZEL: FRANK CALLED JUST AFTER YOU LEFT, SAID HE WASN’T COMING BACK TILL TOMORROW. CALL ME THE MINUTE YOU GET IN. LOVE, SONIA

Oh, no, no, no—please. Tell me she didn’t— She snapped open her cellphone and dialed.

“Hazel! Thank God,” Sonia answered, sounding winded.

“What happened?”

“The asshole made up more excuses about not coming back to the cabin,” Sonia seemed to temper her words. “So I just have to know. I don’t think he’s ever been to this goddamn Gray Cottage, if it even exists at all.”

“It does, at least according to Frank’s father. I saw a picture of it.”

“All right, fine, but that’s why I did this. If Frank’s not there, then I know he’s been lying to me all along—”

Hazel’s lips tightened. “Sonia, please tell me you’re not climbing up to the top of Whipple’s Peak.”

“I had no choice!” her friend squealed. “He’s been lying to me for days and I have to know why!”

“Sonia! You’re eight months pregnant! The exertion could make you have a miscarriage!”

“I’m being careful, I’m taking it slow—”

“Bullshit! Come down right now!”

A pause, heavy breathing. “I can’t, Hazel. I think I’m almost there. It’s cooler all of a sudden, and there’s a lot of mist...I’m going to sit down a minute and catch my breath...”

Hazel couldn’t have been more infuriated. “You’re overreacting again! I can’t believe you’d do something this crazy!”

A winded laugh. “Crazy, huh? You want to hear something crazy? Frank was in Henry’s cabin last night while we were both asleep.”

Hazel’s stalled. She remembered her dream: I dreamt of Frank...in the cabin. Last night.

Impossible.

“Look at my laptop,” Sonia instructed. “I left it on deliberately so you could see.”

Hazel jiggled the mouse to find Sonia’s computer already logged online. But the screen name at the top wasn’t Sonia’s, it was Frank’s, and right now she was looking at the website for the U.S. State Department. “Sonia, what’s this all about? The State Department?”

“I was going stir-crazy with paranoia, Hazel. So I went onto Frank’s account–he doesn’t know I have his password.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why do you think? I wanted to see if he was getting emails from another woman.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t but...look. Look at the URL trail.”

Hazel frowned, fulfilling the request. Several dozen URL’s shot down the screen, all from the State Department’s website. Hazel looked closer, then, and saw the page that had been repeatedly accessed was:

“Online applications for United States passports?”

Sonia was catching her breath now. “Yep. That’s what Frank was doing when he snuck in last night. I have no idea why he’d be requesting passport applications for dozens of local residents. Look at them.”

Hazel scrolled down to the first URL, found the application and saw whose name and info had been typed in.

“Hanna Bowen,” she said aloud. Then she clicked the second access: “Emma Freeborn.” And the third: “Nabby Gardner.”

“They’re all locals, Hazel. It’s crazy. I counted the total number and it was thirty-three. For God’s sake, why would Frank do that?”

Hazel’s stomach was already twisting. Those first three names were the first three on the handwritten list and the corresponding city-list. “Give me a second.” She checked the rest and inexplicably found, in alphabetical order, thirty-three Bosset’s Way residents. The names on the paper and the names on the online applications were identical.

“Are you there?” Sonia asked.

“Yeah. Listen, Sonia, there’s a whole bunch of weird things happening all at once. I found out more about the crystal, and I found out more from Frank’s father...”

“Thurnston? What did he say?”

She continued to stare at the handwritten list as she talked. “It’s too complicated to explain on the phone. But I’ve got some ideas.”

She could hear Sonia walking again—her break over. “Just stay where you’re at. You’re jeopardizing yourself and the baby by hiking all the way up Whipple’s Peak. Just sit down, take a nap, and I’ll be right up. I’m slim and in good shape, I’ll bet I could be up there in a few hours.”

“I wish you would come up, Hazel,” Sonia said, her tone growing thin.

“I will. Right now. But don’t exert yourself anymore.”

“Just keep in cell contact. I’ve come all this way, I can’t stop now.”

“Yes you can, damn it!”

“And—” A long pause stretched over the line. “Jesus...”

Hazel squeezed the phone to her ear till it hurt. “What?”

“This fog or mist or whatever...It’s really thick right now.” Her footsteps could be heard crunching. Then: They stopped.

“Oh my God...”

“Sonia, what is it!”

Sonia’s voice lowered to a hush. “I found it, Hazel. I found the Gray Cottage...”

“Don’t go in! Frank’s father said it’s about to collapse!”

“Doesn’t look like it, it looks solid.” Another pause. “I have to go in now, Hazel. If Frank really is in there, I have to confront him. And if he’s not...then I guess that means he’s been shacking up with some girl at a motel somewhere.” “Don’t go in the cottage!” Hazel kept yelling. “Wait till I get there!”

“No, no, Hazel. I have to go in. This has been making me sick.

I’ll call you back in a few minutes—”

“Don’t hang up! Don’t hang—”

The line severed.

Crazy! she thought. This whole thing’s crazy! She was out the door in seconds, back in the car, and then speeding off onto the road which would take her to the bottom of Whipple’s Peak...

What happened? Sonia thought. She lay in a muggy daze when she awoke. But... Awoke?

What was she awakening from?

She lay on a cold stone floor. Above her stretched a small ceiling that, like the walls, was composed of stone. She could remember nothing until...

The cottage. The Gray Cottage. She couldn’t move. Memories filtered back in the tiniest trickles. I was pissed at Frank so I hiked up Whipple’s Peak and—and...I found the cottage, didn’t I? I’d been talking to Hazel on the cell, and...

Nothing. Darkness.

Think! she ordered herself.

She was too disoriented. Nothing came back to her in sequence. A door...that opened into thin air. Scarlet heat. Strange words. Two eyeballs on the stone floor. Chuckling that was somehow like black slop. A mind-boggling orgasm. A sucking sound.

Her heart thudded in her chest.

After a few more groggy minutes, Sonia was able to incline herself up on her elbows. Immediately, she burst into a round of screams.

She saw that she lay there naked, but that’s not why she was screaming.

Naked, yes, but she also saw quite easily that she was no longer pregnant.

And then— then— she remembered everything:

Sonia hangs up with Hazel just as she sees the Gray Cottage emerge from rising smears of pale mist. It’s a strange building, indeed. Stone block walls, their seams tinged dark with fungus and mildew; an uneven slate roof over which pour festoons of ivy; narrow, iron framed windows whose glass is so dingy with age that its nearly black. But—

No front door.

She walks a circuit around the cottage, first the south wall, then the east, then the north, then—

Sonia shouts aloud when she sees that the building’s westerly wall has been built flush against a sheer cliff. Had she taken one more step—

Her hand comes up to her chest.

—she would’ve fallen a half-mile straight down.

But who would build such an odd structure? And why on earth would Henry have chosen it as a place to work?

These things don’t matter, though, for Sonia is intent only on one thing: finding Frank.

The prick. He’s probably got a woman in there with him right now, a YOUNG woman, a freshman probably. Making a monkey of me while I carry around his kid...

She begins to check the windows. A house with no door. It’s madness. All the windows are maddeningly locked—

Yes!

—save for one.

It creaks open, and a bewildering fresh-meat smell sifts out. For shit’s sake, she thinks, frustrated. Can I even do this? She gets one leg up and over, the window’s embrasure pressing her crotch. A grunt, then a deep breath, and she manages to shimmy herself through, the narrow frame barely clearing her gravid belly. Christ! But now...she’s inside.

Several candles light the stone-walled room. There’s no reason to call out for Frank for she instantly sees that the room—the entire cottage—is unoccupied. Her fury rises. It’s not just unoccupied, it’s empty. No furniture, no pictures, no lamps, no adornments of any kind. And furthermore—

No evidence of the additional papers, documents, and books regarding Henry’s “research.” In fact, there’s not a single book in the place, not a file cabinet nor folder. Nothing. Except...

She walks cautiously to the corner. She stares, leaning over. At first she thinks it’s a prank, some made-in-China rubber Halloween geegaw, but only a moment of observation shows her that it’s very real: two bloody eyeballs on the floor.

Sonia steps back, her skin crawling. Whose...eyes are they? the question whispers at the back of her mind. She knows that some mode of action must be taken—escape, most likely—but she’s unable to focus on that notion. Instead, she just keeps stepping backwards—

Thump

The wall stops her, then the faintest humming sound begins to waver about the room. She keeps still, keeps silent, as she sees tendrils of mist start to rise from the seams in the floor’s stone blocks, but unlike the pale mist outside, this mist is black.

Very slowly, Sonia turns around.