Chapter 13

A loud buzzing roused Marcia from a fearful dream.

The doorbell. She came fully awake with the echo of her own scream in her ears. She couldn't remember now what she had been dreaming about, but she felt used and defiled. Shakily, she lit a cigarette. She saw that the bed beside her was rumpled but empty.

The doorbell rang again. She waited irritably for Ken to answer it. But it kept ringing, and she heard no sound of movement downstairs. Lucifer should have been barking.

She got out of bed, pushing sweaty hair back from her face, and slipped a robe over her nightgown. She hurried down to the front door, expecting to hear Ken open it before she arrived. But he didn't. Apparently he had gone out. Maybe he had forgotten his key, or was too drunk to find it.

She snapped on the outside light. "Who is it?" she called.

"Police," said a firm, businesslike voice. "Open up."

This was it, she thought, fumbling with the door: Ken had gone out while she'd slept and killed himself in an auto accident He's gone to bed half-loaded. Maybe he'd had a few more before leaving. Maybe his girlfriend, whoever she was, had poured a few more into him.

She pulled open the door and glimpsed an intimidating array of belts and badges and guns before her eyes fell on the principal figure of the tableau: Melody. She stood between two township policemen.

"I know you," said the younger cop, carrot-haired, hardly more than a boy. "You're the Mrs. Creighton from the Banner."

"Yes, I-"

The other cop interrupted the reunion. He was older, dark and sour-looking. "I'm Officer Davies. This is Officer Peterson. Is this your daughter, Mrs. Creighton?"

"Of course. What's all this about?"

She asked the question of Melody, but Melody looked too scared to speak. Marcia had never seen her in this condition. Her normal composure had been destroyed. She was death-white. Her lips trembled wordlessly. She flung herself into Marcia's arms, hugging her so tight that Marcia had difficulty breathing.

"May we come in?" Davies, the older cop, asked.

"What's all this about?" Marcia repeated, but this time she asked the question of Peterson, the young policeman she remembered meeting at headquarters while covering some routine story.

"Well, there's nothing to worry about really, it's-"

"When did your daughter go out, Mrs. Creighton?" Davies interrupted.

"I didn't know she was out," Marcia said as she led them up the stairs to the living room, half supporting Melody. "I mean, she was in bed when I came home ..."

That wasn't true, she realized. She had merely assumed that Melody was asleep when she and Ken and the younger children had come home from the movie, sometime before midnight. She had been too tired to check on her oldest daughter. She had been emotionally exhausted from the strain of sitting next to a moody, fidgeting Ken through the film.

Had Melody been raped? Was that what this was all about?

"What the hell is going on here?" she very nearly screamed, halting the procession halfway up the stairs and turning on the startled cops. "You come busting in here at God knows what hour of the morning, asking me questions-my daughter is obviously upset-what do you want? What's happened? Has something happened to my daughter?"

"Your daughter's OK. We think she's had a bad scare, that's all." Surprisingly, it was Peterson who took it upon himself to give that information, and this time his senior partner didn't interrupt him.

"Mostly she's upset about losing a dog," Davies said. He looked at Marcia suspiciously. "Did she have a dog, a Doberman, with her?"

"My dog!" Marcia cried. "Where is he?"

"Has he ever bitten anyone before?" Davies demanded.

"Before what?" she snapped, still blocking their path halfway up the stairs.

"Let's go in and sit down," Peterson suggested. "We don't know where the dog is."

"But he must have been with Melody. Where did you find her? Won't you go back and look for him?"

"We'll talk about that," Davies said. "But let's go in and sit down, first."

Marcia at last resumed her ascent, snapping on the living room lights when she reached the head of the stairs. "Nice place you got here," Davies said. Marcia didn't bother to acknowledge that inappropriate observation. She hurried toward the couch with Melody and sat her down. The girl didn't seem to want to let her go.

"What's the matter, honey?" Marcia asked softly.

"I guess ... I guess I was sleepwalking." She managed a thin laugh, but it wasn't convincing. "I took Lucy for a walk, just in the neighborhood, but then I-I woke up, and I didn't know where I was."

"But what did you do with him-"

Davies interrupted. "Do you know a man named Ronald Green?"

It took Marcia a moment to recognize the name. Even though "Ronald" was the form used in his byline, she'd never called him that.

"Yes, he works with me."

When neither of the policemen said anything, she continued. "We were on an assignment together today. Has he ... ?"

Her voice trailed off. She had intended to ask if he were in some kind of trouble, but she decided that it would have been disloyal to ask such a question. Nevertheless, she could easily picture him running afoul of some irascible desk-sergeant while in hot pursuit of a story; or bouncing a check; driving with a delinquent auto inspection sticker; committing some similar lapse through his characteristic laziness and disorganization.

"He's dead, Mrs. Creighton," Davies said, after an uncomfortable pause.

"How-?"

"The same way the hermit was killed. Dogs, maybe. Or a dog."

She couldn't absorb the shock. She found herself wanting to insist that this was all wrong: Ken was dead, killed in a drunken accident, not Ron Green. She found it hard to believe that she wasn't still dreaming.

She recalled a question posed earlier by Davies, and indignation boiled up again. "And you think my dog did it? Are you crazy?"

Davies looked more sour than ever. "We found the girl near the scene of the attack. She couldn't give a good account of herself. She was carrying on about her dog."

She looked at Melody. In the dim light and the confusion at the door, she hadn't noticed her daughter's condition. Her shoes and the legs of her jeans were plastered with mud. Her face bore the marks of many scratches and insect bites. She looked as if she'd been wandering through a swamp.

"And what do you suppose? That she sicked Lucy on Ron Green?" Marcia demanded. "He isn't attack-trained. He's never even nipped anyone, not even as a puppy. We used to have a pet rabbit-my son did-and the dog played with him on the lawn. He's a ... a pussycat?"

"He's a Doberman pinscher," Davies said dryly, "and you can't trust them, not one inch. I used to train dogs in the army. Shepherds. But I wouldn't mess around with one of those things for a million dollars."

"You don't know Lucy," Marcia said firmly. "Anyway, Peachtree wasn't killed by dogs-or a dog," she added with sarcastic emphasis. "That's just a story you're giving out for public consumption, isn't it?"

Davies looked uncomfortable.

"I was there," she continued, "I found the body, as a matter of fact, and-"

"We're aware of that, Mrs. Creighton."

"-and it was obvious ... What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing at all. It means I read the report, that's an."

"You don't think that Melody and I are roaming around the countryside with our savage Doberman, killing anyone who crosses our path?"

"I didn't say that, Mrs. Creighton."

"You haven't said much of anything, have you? Where and when did all this happen?"

"I guess we don't have to bother you anymore," Davies said, turning to go. Perhaps he was satisfied that his suspicions had been false. More likely, he was fed up with her attitude.

Peterson spoke. "Around midnight, the M.E. thinks, maybe later. A motorist found him near Blackwood's Corners, and it looked at first like he'd been hit by a car, but that didn't stand up. Did he normally carry a gun?"

Marcia shook her head. "I don't think so."

Davies had changed his mind about leaving. "What kind of story are you and he working on? Was it this Peachtree thing?" he asked.

"No, it was the-the people at the commune. We spoke to some of them."

"Did you talk to a guy who calls himself Alexander Hamilton?"

"Why, yes-"

"He gave Mom this necklace," Melody said unexpectedly, holding out the one she was wearing. The policemen looked at her uncomfortably for a moment, as if expecting her to do or say something irrational.

"That's right," Marcia said. "Why do you ask?"

"Green was found a few hundred yards from his house," Peterson said. "We've taken them all in for questioning."

Marcia felt considerably relieved. She was glad to hear that they had found more suitable suspects than Melody and Lucifer.

"And Melody was near there? That must be about fifteen miles away!"

"That's about right," Davies said. "We figure somebody gave her a lift. But she won't talk to us."

"I don't remember," Melody insisted, and a shrill note entered her voice. "I told you, I-"

"It's all right," Marcia said. "It's all right."

She wanted to hear more about Ron Green's death, but it was obvious that her duty lay elsewhere. It was essential to get rid of the police and quiet Melody down. Tomorrow she could devote all her time to this story-assuming Higgins would let her. He probably knew about Ron Green's death already and. had someone working on it. She fought the temptation to call him now. Melody should be her only concern.

She got up and moved toward the door, keeping an eye on her daughter. Melody sat huddled on the couch, staring down at the floor. For the first time it occurred to Marcia that she might be using drugs. That would explain a lot. Reluctantly, the policemen drifted along toward the door with her.

"I want to thank you for bringing her home," Marcia said, forcing herself to be polite.

"It's our job," Davies said. "Considering the address and all, we didn't want to take her to a hospital and put it on the book. But you ought to have her looked over."

She shuddered at the class-consciousness and injustice implicit in Ms remarks, but she tried not to reveal her feelings as she said docilely, "I will."

"And if you ever get your dog back, you ought to keep him in at night," Davies said. "The farmers have been shooting strays ever since this business started."

"My God," she said. "I forgot about him. I can't go out looking for him, not now. Please! Please look for him, won't you? He's harmless. He's probably scared out of his wits."

"We will," Peterson promised, cutting off the answer that Davies was about to give. He quickly changed the subject. "What do you suppose Green was doing out there?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea. He didn't say a word to me."

"Did he get into any kind of hassle with those hippies?" Davies asked.

"Yes, with Hamilton-but he was just blowing off steam," she said, and she went on to tell about Ron's exchange with the jewelry maker. They seemed so interested in the story that she felt obliged to add, "But he's always blowing up like that, then forgetting it five minutes later. He wouldn't have gone there with a gun-"

"But the fact is, he did go there. With a gun," Davies said.

She had no ready answer. It was just possible that Ron had been angrier than she'd thought, that he'd gone back to the commune with some childish notion of getting even by taking a pot shot at a window. If he had, he hadn't realized that he would be stirring up a hornets' nest, angering the same people who had murdered Matthew Peachtree.

"You ought to keep closer track of your daughter," Davies said, interrupting her thoughts. "Those people out there, they aren't the kind you want her mixed up with."

Next thing she knew, he would be telling her to brush her teeth after meals and be sure to eat all her spinach. She was tired of his advice. But she had to accept his judgment. Her communication with Melody had broken down, and she felt guilty about it. If it hadn't, the girl wouldn't have been wandering through the woods at this hour. Maybe Ken was right. Maybe she did need a psychiatrist.

"Please look for my dog!" she shouted after the policemen as they drove off. "He answers to the name of Lucy."

An arm waved from the window of the car in acknowledgement, but she knew they wouldn't look. They had more important things to do. Late though it was, she would have to get dressed and go looking herself, hoping to find him before someone picked him up. Or shot him.

She had something else to do, first. She could no longer avoid having a serious talk with her daughter. It was a bad time for it, but then it always was. She couldn't use that excuse anymore.

She was about to close the door when she heard claws scrambling in the gravel of the driveway. Lucifer came forward, favoring one of his paws. He was a muddy mess.

"Where the hell have you been?" she demanded, falling to her knees and hugging him. He squirmed happily and licked her face, obviously just as relieved as she was. He went through the entirety of his large repertoire of moans and groans-sounds that suggested desperate attempts to form words. No words were necessary, though: he was telling her he was happy to be back and scolding her for letting him wander.

Melody had curled up and gone to sleep on the couch by the time they got to the living room. Marcia looked at the clock over the mantel. It was five.

"Melody," she said; then, more loudly, "Melody!"

"I'm awake," she protested. "I'm tired, that's all. I want to go to bed."

"Not without a bath."

"A shower."

"All right, I'll put Lucy in the bathtub."

"Oh, hi, Lucy!" Melody cried; but Lucifer, who knew what "bathtub" meant, ignored her outstretched arms and retreated behind the couch. Marcia sat beside her daughter, restraining her when she tried to get up.

"Where were you?"

"I told you," Melody said, and she looked her straight in the eye. "I don't remember. I took Lucy for a walk, and then-then I was running through the woods ... holding my clothes. That's how the cops found me."

Marcia winced at that detail, omitted by the police. The steady gaze of Melody's slanted blue eyes began to unnerve her, as it sometimes did. She looked instead into the blackness of the hearth.

"You were running around naked in the woods, and you don't remember ... anything?"

Melody unexpectedly giggled. "It sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Marcia said. "It does."

"But I didn't do anything wrong. I know it."

"Do you remember anyone-anyone with you?"

"Just Lucy. And-my brother."

"Jesus Christ! Roger! Where is he?"

"No, of course not Roger. I told you about my dream-brother. It was like the same dream again, only more confused. More confusing. Running, just running-being carried. Like he was leaping, sort of, and covering miles with each leap ... "

Marcia waited, but Melody had nothing more to say. She believed the time had come to tell her daughter a few things about her own past.

"When I was about your age," Marcia began hesitantly, "I ran away from home. My parents were very, very strict-fanatical, even. They wouldn't even let me wear lipstick."

"Big deal."

"In those days, it was. All the girls wore it to school. That's just an example of the way they were. I couldn't go out with boys. They never said that in so many words, but every time I wanted to go out, my father would launch a regular federal investigation into the boy's background, and it would turn out that he wasn't 'suitable.'"

"I would have run away, too."

"I never really regretted it, not that part of it. Later, we made up, sort of. They took care of me while you were being born. And they looked after you, later, while I was in the hospital." She was censoring the story. Perhaps she would never tell Melody that abortion or adoption, both strongly urged by psychiatrists, had been rejected by her own parents. They believed she should "live with the consequences of her sins."

"Why were you in the hospital?"

"I-well-after I ran away, I fell in with the wrong people. I thought they were great, compared to my parents. They didn't expect anything of me, except that I be myself. They talked about love, and peace, and doing your own thing. We smoked a lot of dope."

"What's it like?"

Marcia gave her a sharp glance. As far as she could tell, the total ingenuousness of Melody's question was sincere. But Melody's face seldom revealed her feelings.

"It fogs the edges of reality. It makes you feel happy. Time sort of floats by."

"It sounds great."

"It is, if you want to grow up to be a vegetable," Marcia said severely. "This is the only world you've got, and you have to come to grips with it, sooner or later. It isn't always pleasant."

She saw that she was getting off on a tangent, and she was surprised that her own views sounded so much like those of her puritanical parents.

"We took LSD, too, and-that was different. It scared me, and I never got over being scared. I thought the Devil was after me. Sometimes I could see him, and I'd scream-on a crowded street in the daytime, or at night, looking in a window-"

"What did he look like?"

Marcia really didn't hear the question. "We went out, way out in the country, to the Black Hills. The Center of the Universe, that's what the Indians used to call it. It was given to them by treaty-forever-it was such a sacred place, but then the white man found gold in it, and that was the end of the treaty. So we went there, to a sort of commune ... and something happened ... and I had to go home ... the drugs, you see, the drugs had driven me out of my mind ... "

"Mom!"

Marcia was shocked by Melody's cry. She stared at her daughter, still trying to struggle out of the past. The memory had been at her fingertips, the memory of what had actually happened at the commune: the memory of Melody's conception.

"Something terrible happened to me," Marcia said, holding her daughter tightly by the arm, "something I can't remember, not even now, because of those drugs. Because I couldn't talk to my parents, or make them see my point of view. I could have been killed, or worse. I could have spent the rest of my life in a mental hospital. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"Sort of," Melody said. "But I never have any trouble talking to you. I don't want to run away from home, if that's what you're driving at, and I never took any drugs in my life."

Marcia entertained the frightening suspicion that her daughter was mocking her. The cat-like mask of Melody's face was unreadable. Her normal serenity, so recently shattered, had returned completely. But it was only a suspicion. Marcia decided that her daughter was speaking the truth.

"Those people out at Blackwood's Corners," Marcia began cautiously, "the ones in the commune-"

"I didn't see anybody. At least, I didn't see anybody I remember. Like I said, I think I was sleepwalking. Can I take a shower now?"

"Yes. But-please. Don't ever be shy about talking to me. About anything."

"I never have," Melody said, getting up and walking from the room.

Marcia watched her go in silence. The talk had accomplished nothing. For a long time she had wanted to tell Melody certain facts about her own past; but if she had thought about it, she would have known that those facts simply weren't in her possession. She hadn't established communication with her daughter. She had merely made herself feel tense and confused by her inarticulate groping. Perhaps she had even left Melody with the impression that her mother was still more than a little bit crazy.

Worse yet, she had gained no information at all about Melody's activities tonight. Her story about falling asleep while walking the dog, then waking up naked in the woods, fifteen miles away-it was a lie, obviously. But what was the truth?

And where the hell was Ken?

She got up and walked restlessly. Perhaps by subconscious design, she found herself at the door of Ken's study. She opened the door. She had cleaned it up, but the ruined rendering still stood in a corner, awaiting Ken's disposal. "My sist"-that phrase suggested the dream Melody had referred to tonight: my sister. She had suspected that Ken was to blame for the wreck of the study, but maybe it really had been Melody.

Was this destruction senseless, or was it revenge for something she didn't know about, something that neither Ken nor Melody could tell her? They had both been absent from the house tonight at the same time. Melody could have gone to Blackwood's Corners only by car. Then she had left the car and the driver-holding her clothes. Ken was still out. She veered her mind away from this assembly of facts before it could be completed, before she could reach a conclusion too vile to contemplate.

May Eve. Why had that phrase stuck in her mind all day?

She repeated the phrase under her breath as she walked back to the living room, and it seemed to have the effect of an incantation. She began to remember the dream that the ringing of the doorbell had interrupted. Clear fragments of it, like shards of a stained glass window celebrating the vilest obscenities, flashed in her mind. It was a loathsome dream, but parts of it were "clearer than reality."

She wore a simple white gown. She walked through a dark forest. Others preceded and followed her. She could smell rotting mold and wet wood. She was excited, sexually, more so than she could ever remember in her waking life. Her cunt tingled with electricity. Her belly and thighs glowed. Her breasts ached. Each step brushed the coarse material of her gown against her nipples, making them hard as pebbles.

She remembered a clearing lit by torches.

She lay on her back on a stone table. Her gown had now been discarded. The figures contorting themselves around her were also naked, but some of them wore grotesque headdresses or were loosely draped with the hides of animals. Some of the men had stiff pricks. She wanted one of them. She burned for it.

"Come and fuck me," she begged, spreading her legs wantonly wide.

They ignored her, or they didn't hear her. Their motions were rhythmic. She heard thin, insane piping, the sound of drums and tambourines. The men and women were teasing one another, touching genitals, flaunting their bodies shamelessly as they circled around and around her.

"Fuck me!" she screamed. "I want it! Anybody!"

Her cheeks burned as she remembered the dream, because it seemed too real. She must in fact be remembering something that had actually happened to her at the commune in South Dakota. Had she once actually felt that way, said such things? She hugged herself, wanting to melt into the floor and seep through the boards and never be seen again.

Then she remembered something that certified it as a dream.

A naked woman stood over the table beyond her widespread knees. Her body had been painted silver. It gleamed in the flickering torchlight. The silver horns of a ram curled at her head. It was Nora Curtis.

But she looked no younger than she did today. In the dream, Marcia was little more than a child. Therefore, this couldn't have happened in real life.

Nora's cunt had been shaven. She fingered it lasciviously with her silver fingers until its red interior showed the only slash of color on her metallic body. Her features were cold, immobile, contemptuous. But she leaned forward. Her pink tongue appeared between her silver lips.

Marcia writhed on the rough stone, spreading her legs until the tendons stood out like white ropes pointing to the black shrub of her cunt.

"Eat me, Mistress," she moaned, "please!"

Nora lowered her face between Marcia's thighs. She licked slowly up one lip of her cunt and down the other, tracing its outline with a feather-light touch. Marcia slid her hands down her nude body and spread the lips, begging her to probe more deeply. But Nora only tickled and teased, driving her crazy with frustration. She began to augment the tantalizing cunnilingus with finger strokes of her own. It was only then that she realized she was still a virgin, that her vagina was partly occluded by a tough membrane that prevented the entrance of her fingers.

Something hot and wet rubbed her cheek. She turned to see a man standing above her, holding his cock toward her face.

"I want it, I want it," she moaned, but he cut short her words by shoving it into her mouth.

She struggled to push it out, but he stayed with her, holding her by a handful of her hair.

"Suck him off," Nora ordered. "You have to do everything freely. Everything."

She did as she was told, because Nora had stopped licking her cunt. She couldn't stand the removal of that soft, wet touch, frustrating though it was. She slid her hands up the man's hairy legs and gripped the muscular cheeks of his ass, pulling him closer. Her lips firmed around the thick rod of flesh.

He climbed onto the table above her, his knees straddling her head. She shivered with anticipation as she realized that he and Nora were going to lick her cunt at the same time. Then his balls pressed down on her nose, and his cock slid so deep that she found herself gagging on its rubbery thickness.

He allowed her to push his hips up slightly, relieving the pressure of the bulging, plum-like head at the back of her throat. She began to stroke it with her tongue, coating it with her saliva and the slime that oozed fronts the tip. It was the first time she'd sucked a cock, but she knew instinctively what to do and how to please the anonymous stranger who was fucking her in the mouth.

She reached up to fondle his odorous balls and the root of his prick with her fingertips. He began to squirm above her, prodding her and pulling it in and out while she maintained a strong, pumping suction. She hoped he would come soon. She thirsted for his semen, and that of the next man, and the next ...

He and Nora managed to work on her cunt simultaneously. She wished she could watch them, but her vision was blocked by the man's hairy belly. She twisted to graze his skin with the ruby-hard tips of her nipples while he and Nora licked either side of her tingling clitoris.

The man's steady, shallow thrusts into her puckered lips became erratic. He shoved deeper, gagging her again, but she sensed that it would soon be over. She sucked harder, trying to milk his prick as it quivered on the edge of its eruption. It gave a sudden pulse and began to spatter sticky fluid into her mouth. She savored it as it slid down her throat as she sucked greedily for more.

She was no longer conscious of her body. Below the waist, she had become an incandescent cloud, shot through with red-hot lines of ecstasy that were the strokes of the two busy tongues. She whimpered and screamed around her hot mouthful of male flesh, unable to handle the overload of sensation that was dissolving and transforming her.

Even now, sitting in her living room, the memory made her glow with a pleasurable awareness of her body. She must have climaxed in her sleep. If so, it was the first time in a long time, awake or asleep. Ken had never succeeded. He was easily satisfied, and he'd never tried very hard to unthaw her.

She forgot about her shame as she strove to remember more. She knew that she had never made love to a woman. The idea of sex with Nora Curtis had never occurred to her, and even now it seemed slightly ludicrous. But she remembered how pleasant it had been in the dream. She complimented herself wryly on her vivid imagination.

She remembered wanting another man when she'd satisfied the first one, but it was Nora who took his place. She lay above Marcia on the stone table-could it have been an altar? That seemed to fit in with the weird music, the dancing, the ceremonial quality that permeated the orgy. Whatever it was, Nora lay above her on it, and she found herself staring up at the other woman's smoothly shaven cunt.

She hesitated to kiss it for reasons that now seemed frivolous: she was worried about whether the silver paint would come off, and what it might taste like. But Nora was offering it to her, right over her mouth. Nora's own mouth was still greedily slurping at Marcia's cunt, keeping her excitement at a feverish level. She couldn't deny the painted woman what she so obviously wanted.

She raised her face. According to the logic of the crazy dream, it was considered a great honor to do this to Nora. She sensed jealousy radiating from the pack of naked people now ringing the altar closely. The first touch of her tongue brought out scents and textures that reminded her of oysters. The warm radiations she felt against her lips grew steadily warmer. She hesitated no longer, plunging her tongue into Nora's cunt. Pushing inside was like piercing the skin of a swollen, ripe fruit. Sticky sap leaked out to smear her lips and chin. She stuck her tongue in deeper to scoop more of the salty-sweet juice from the hot hole.

In the dream, her emotions had been uncomplicated. She had wanted to do it. She had loved doing it. She shuddered now as she remembered her desire to lick the other woman's cunt.

She stuck her tongue out farther and rubbed it all around the slick inner walls. She pressed her lips hard against the yielding flesh. She was electrified by Nora's eager response. Everything she did to Nora was returned with redoubled energy as the silver-painted woman writhed above her and lapped thirstily between her legs.

Marcia pressed her tongue higher to lick the firm little nugget of flesh near the top of Nora's cunt. Nora screamed at the touch. A convulsion stiffened her stomach like an oak plank. Her spine arched like a bow. In her virginal innocence, Marcia had never suspected a woman might react like this. It took her a moment to realize that the reaction was one of pure pleasure.

Nora's hips quivered with uncontrollable vibrations. Spasms rippled through her taut belly. The more Marcia licked her clitoris, the wilder Nora got. She squeezed Mama's head with her thighs until her ears rang. She bucked her cunt down against her face as if she were actually fucking. She rubbed the sopping flesh all over her face.

In the dream, this neither alarmed nor disgusted her, much as it did now. Whatever happened had seemed right, desirable, even holy.

Now Marcia made a conscious effort to forget the dream. She lit a cigarette with a shaking hand and got up to walk to the wall of windows. She stared at her reflection. Her face was white in the black glass, the lines in her skin were cruelly etched. She had been fifteen years old when she'd gone to the commune in the Black Hills. Nora would have been twelve, approximately. Therefore, Nora couldn't have been there as a grown woman. This was a dream that she was recalling-a dream she'd had tonight. It had no basis in reality, none whatsoever. That was what she had to keep telling herself.

She tried to remember other details that would reassure her. The memories became entangled with the emerging recollection of being pawed and prodded tonight by Ken in a fit of drunken lechery. The bastard. He'd tried to fuck her in her sleep. The animal. Maybe she'd said something in her sleep, something connected with her erotic dream, to give him encouragement. Maybe her refusal had angered him into leaving.

Thinking of Ken brought back a new aspect of the dream. The hippie who called himself Alexander Hamilton lay above her on the stone table. In the dream, though, his name was Abel Hopkins. She began confusing him with Ken. But her husband was coarse and flabby; Hamilton had been smooth and young. That was nonsense. In real life, they were both about the same age. She hadn't known Hamilton when he was young.

A coarse animal hide lay over the youth's shoulders. She clutched it, drawing him down. Twisting her head from side to side beneath his bearded face, she saw others watching, waiting their turn. She wanted them ail-now.

She felt the hot hardness of his prick slipping up her inner thigh, clumsily nudging against the loose softness of her cunt. She was fully aroused again, even more excited than she'd been before Nora had touched her. She lifted her buttocks from the rough stone, eager to clutch and unsheathe his stiff prick. She forgot about the watchers. She could think only of the man who held her, whose cock was even now pushing deeper than anything had ever gone before, who was stretching her and hurting her with the piercing pressure of his hard flesh. But the pleasure outweighed the pain, and most important of all was the desire to have more and more of his swollen prick crammed inside her, no matter how much it hurt.

She encircled the shaggy hide on his back with her legs. Her arms wrapped around him. She felt his hands lifting her ass as he struggled to fill her completely. He didn't kiss her. She remembered no tenderness at all. He was screwing her, bluntly and simply-like an animal. That was what made it so exciting.

Even the sound of it was exciting: the liquescent squishing and squelching as his prick plunged in and out of her cunt. He raised himself slightly so he could look down at the juncture of their loins. She looked, too. Her cunt lips were spread wide, swollen and inflamed, to clutch the thick shaft that speared her. She knew that the dark smear on his cock in the flaring torchlight was her own blood.

He began once again to move inside her, back and forth. She felt as if she were riding a firehose driven mad by tons of pressure. She desperately clutched the animal skin cape, and her teeth chattered as he rammed his cock into her again and again, into her and out again, stabbing her with a giant sword.

He was pressing his prick into the very center of a storm unfolding throughout her body. She felt herself begin to achieve another release, one that was far greater than the first, one that was almost frightening. She was being swept away on a wave of pure pleasure, torn away forcibly from all contact with the material world except at the point where his cock was thrusting deep into her cunt. She felt her quivering vagina throbbing rhythmically, as if the heart of the whole universe were beating inside it.

She flung her hips against him to make sure the penetration was complete, wanting to imprison every last inch of his cock inside the sweating walls of her cunt, and then she began to wriggle and slide and squeeze with desperate energy. He knew what she wanted, and he hastened to give it to her. His cock plunged into her like a battering ram, again and again, making her scream and claw in a frenzy of pleasure as she felt the wave building up inside her for yet a third assault on her senses.

This was madness. She was doing more than recalling the dream, she was reliving it. It was only a dream, nothing more. She wrenched her mind away from it with an effort as she snuffed out her cigarette.

She dismissed it from her mind as she walked quickly to the upper level, snapping her fingers for Lucifer. He took his time about coming, remembering that she'd spoken the fearful word "bathtub." While she waited, she opened the door of Roger's and Karen's room. They slept in their separate beds. A tree outside the window glowed green with the first light.

Lucifer dawdled along to the bathroom. It was like a tropical swamp from Melody's recent shower, and she had left sopping towels on the floor, but Marcia was willing to overlook that in view of the hour and the circumstances. She half-filled the tub with lukewarm water, firmly gripping Lucy's collar when he tried to escape.

"You'll feel better, I guarantee it," she said. "You don't like being dirty, do you?"

Lucifer shivered and moaned.

"In you go, baby. It's good for you. Really."

Lucifer got into the tub. Ears laid back, eyes glistening with abject terror, the dog trembled in the belly-deep water while Marcia rubbed him with a soapy washcloth.

As the substance that she had believed to be mud came off his coat and dissolved, it stained the bathwater an even deeper shade of red.