Chapter 18

Marcia was surprised at how easy it had been to get her way. First they had wanted to take her to police headquarters for questioning. She had refused. They had insisted. She had asked if she were under arrest. Uncomfortably, they told her she wasn't. They had contented themselves with questioning her in her own living room.

Then, when the interrogation had ended as fruitlessly as the first two interrogations today, they had suggested that she come along with them to a hospital, where she could be "taken care of." Again she refused.

She could take care of herself, thank you.

She could see in their eyes that they thought she was some kind of monster. How could a woman bear to spend the night in the house where two of her children had just been murdered? And not just murdered, but butchered, by a person or creature that was still at large?

She could bear it. The house, Ken's damned plywood and glass henhouse, was all she had left. She had made it hers by living here, by suffering and laughing here, by watching and sharing the fumbling efforts of Karen and Roger to progress from infancy. The house was under siege now-by lunatics, by cultists, perhaps by the Devil himself. She belonged here.

She was thankful that no well-meaning neighbors had come forward with offers to take her under their wings. Maybe the police had sidetracked them, and she was actually under a kind of house arrest. They had at last made a determined and successful effort to get rid of the crowd in the road which had swelled to alarming proportions. No phone calls had come through, either.

Maybe she no longer had any well-meaning neighbors.

"I'm sorry, Mom."

She pulled herself part-way out of her thoughts to stare distractedly at Melody, who sat on the opposite side of the fireplace. She had been questioned too-almost brutally. The blood on her face and hands had belonged to her brother and sister, but she couldn't or wouldn't say what it was she had seen in their room. Nor could the police, no matter how much they wanted to, get around the fact that Melody and Marcia had been outside the house, in plain sight, while the ... the killing was still going on. A policeman, the first one to get up the stairs, was dead, too.

"Sorry for what?"

"That I couldn't stop it. That I didn't prevent it."

"Don't be stupid. What could you have done?"

"I ... I don't know. But I was supposed to be taking care of them."

Marcia studied her. She sensed a certain evasiveness in Melody; but they were both overwrought, exhausted, grief-stricken. She shouldn't try to read fine nuances into her daughter's words. Melody had only recently come down from her room, and the evidence of her grief was etched on her face.

"Was it Lucifer?" Marcia asked.

Ludicrously, the timorous Doberman was now the police department's prime suspect. He had compounded his appearance of guilt by running away.

"No," Melody said. "No, it wasn't."

"Then what was it?"

Melody hesitated a long time, chewing her lower lip. Then she looked up and met Marcia's bleak eyes.

"You'll think I'm crazy."

"Try me."

"It was my brother. From the dream."

"Oh, God," Marcia groaned, looking away. Her daughter really was crazy. At least she hadn't committed the murders herself, Marcia was sure of that. Armed with an axe-and no one had found an axe-Melody couldn't have inflicted the damage that had been done to all the victims. But that didn't alter the fact that she was out of her mind.

"I didn't see him," Melody said. "I felt him. He was the ghost, too, I know that now for sure. It was dark in the room, blacker than night, even though it was still daylight out. And I could hear him. Breathing. Panting. He has trouble breathing our air-"

"Shut up, for Christ's sake, shut up!" Marcia screamed.

Melody stared at her, hurt and sullen, and Marcia already regretted her outburst. In the rear of the house, furious barking broke out.

"Get him in, quick! Shut him up before the cops shoot him!" Marcia cried, but Melody was on her feet and dashing for the kitchen before she'd finished blurting out the words.

The barking subsided. Marcia listened intently, then went to the front door and opened it. She heard the muted squawk of a police radio from the car at the foot of the drive, but no other activity. Apparently the officers on guard hadn't associated the noise with their prime suspect.

A full moon hung over the black tree tops. May Eve. Marcia shut the door and locked it.

Lucifer greeted her in the living room, panting and prancing. She ignored him for the moment, her attention seized by the disheveled man standing nervously near the door of the kitchen: Father Collins. She thought of asking him if he'd burned any good books lately, but she just couldn't find the energy to make the quip.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"I came to express my sympathy," he said. "And I came to help you."

"Thank you, but I don't need any help. Why didn't the cops stop you?"

"I came to the back of the house, through the woods, after I was turned back at the road. Anyone can come that way. Your back door isn't guarded. And they are coming."

"Who?"

He looked even more nervous. "I have to admit it-some of my own flock. Many of them. They ... got out of hand. Misinterpreted what I said, jumped to their own conclusions. And your husband. He, even more than the others, believes that you are a witch."

"Oh ... balls! This is the twentieth century, Father, in case you haven't noticed."

"A century noted for its lynch mobs," he said smoothly. "You've got one coming. It may be too late now. They're going to kill you, and your daughter. They have guns. Dynamite. One of them had a change of heart and told me what was going to happen."

"All right, thank you," Marcia said, walking to the telephone. "I'll call the police. I don't know why you didn't."

"The police know about it," he said. "They aren't going to intervene until it's too late."

Marcia picked up the phone and dialed the police. She said to Collins, "I don't believe it."

"The police think you and your daughter are responsible for the murders. For the murders of your own children, too. They don't know how. They can't prove anything. But they are morally certain that you are guilty. The only way they can stop the murders is to let this mob have its way. At least that's one way of viewing their inaction. You wouldn't believe me if I reminded you of what I told you before, that influential people, solid citizens, are involved in this hellish business."

Marcia struggled to hear what he was saying and conduct a conversation with the desk sergeant at the same time. He assured her that her house was being watched. She told him that one man had already slipped through, that she had been given warning of a mob on its way. He said he, would advise the officers on duty in front of her house. He didn't seem the least bit alarmed.

She hung up and stared at Father Collins, not knowing what to believe. It was Melody who broke the silence.

"We have to go, Mom."

"Don't be silly. This is our house. The police are watching it."

"The police were watching it this afternoon, too," Melody said. "I don't want to be blown up or shot. Neither does Lucifer. Let's get out of here. Now."

She didn't know what to say or do. She had Melody's safety to think of-Lucifer's, too, as Melody had reminded her. She was responsible for them, and she couldn't be led astray by her own stubbornness, her desire to prove something to herself. But Father Collins was crazy, she knew that; and so, she had decided this evening, was Melody. She couldn't go flying out into the night on their advice. He-they might be leading her into some kind of trap. She couldn't trust anyone.

Without announcing her intention, she crossed quickly to the tall cabinet near the fireplace where Ken kept his guns. He never used them, but he had bought himself a fine shotgun and a high-powered rifle. He also kept a couple of pistols there. Marcia knew how to use them. She took the key from its place on top of the cabinet and opened the door. It was empty.

Maybe Ken had taken them. Maybe the police had confiscated them. At one point in the day-was it before the horror or after?-they had shown her a search warrant. She couldn't even keep the events of the day straight in her mind. Her hand began to ache, and she realized it was because she was clutching the knob of the cabinet door with mindless force.

"We have to go, Mom," Melody repeated.

"But why? My house ... my children ... my husband ..." Fool, she told herself, this was no time to break down. But it felt good to sob against Melody's neck, to scream against it, while her daughter guided her, stumbling.

"I'll take you ... a car ... through the woods ... another town, ... " Father Collins's words reached her as if through a thick wall. She could grasp his general meaning, but she couldn't follow his sentences.

She saw the house sitting on its hill, an ungainly bird struggling to take flight, light pouring from all its windows. Not a cozy place in it, no warmth, no love, but she struggled to return to it. Melody took her arm and led her deeper into the damp woods, where someone who could be spoken of only as the Dark Man or the Black Goat was to take her fanatically guarded virginity. Fanatically, yes: they had castrated and blinded a boy who had only been kissing her, made her watch the execution of the sentence. But when the time came, it was Abel Hopkins, who now sarcastically called himself Alexander Hamilton, dressed in a hideous mask and a coarse animal-skin, who had rammed into her with all the delicacy and tenderness of a sledgehammer. Then the others, dozens of them, using her mouth and her rectum, too, until the pain and the shame were so great that she couldn't even scream, but only wish to die on the crude altar in the woods, choking on her own vomit. But that wasn't the worst of it.

"Here's the car," said Father Collins.

She got into the front seat between them. Father Collins turned on the headlights and revealed a gravel road known to her from daytime walks. They had come a long way through the woods. She was wet. She shivered. Melody put her arm around her. Father Collins smelled of alcohol and tobacco and wet wool, strangely reassuring odors. Rocking in the soft cradle of the car, illuminated by the dim green lights of the dashboard, she recalled nighttime drives with her father, who would sometimes sing songs like The Big Rock Candy Mountain or The Streets of Laredo while they drove. She felt safe.

She glanced down and saw that Melody still wore the necklace, the one-her father?-had given her. But she couldn't say that Hopkins was her father. It could have been any of them. Women, too, had caressed her, done filthy things ... with her. She couldn't remember half their names. And then the chant-"Yog-Sothoth! Yog-Sothoth!"-rising to a thunder that couldn't have come from human throats alone, even reverberating back against the craggy cliffs at the Center of the Universe; the chant that was augmented by labored, ear-splitting breathing as the torchlit circle was blacked out, as the stars were blacked out, as something huge and shaggy gripped her and tore into her once, twice, three times, before shocking her with an ejaculation that was colder than ice water.

She knew what the necklace represented. She knew the black, triangular wafers of the Mass of St. Secaire. Why hadn't Father Collins protested her daughter's wearing it? Had he just been putting on a show of sanctity back at his sleazy church? A priest was needed to celebrate the Black Mass, an ordained priest. No matter what Father Collins had done, no matter what sanctions had been imposed upon him by the Church, no one could rescind his ordination. Perhaps he was to be the celebrant tonight, when Melody-

"No! No, you have to take us back-"

"Shh, Mom, it's all right. We can't go back."

"But Lucifer-"

"He's in the back seat," Melody said-superfluously, because the mention of his name had caused Lucy to thrust his head forward and begin licking Marcia's cheek.

She felt more secure. She sat up and began to take notice of their surroundings, although they were traveling back roads unfamiliar to her. She had cried herself out; she was sure that her emotions would not betray her again. She felt calm, even strong.

"And my purse?" she asked, trying to make the question seem casual.

"I have it," Melody said.

She knew that the medal Father Collins had given her was still in it. She had inspected it, and it was what he had told her it was. If he were on the side of the Satanists, would he have given her a useful charm? She didn't know. Perhaps there were no useful charms. Perhaps evil held sway over the world, and there were no forces of good. But it was all she had. She would have preferred one of Ken's guns.

"Where are we going?" she asked Father Collins.

"I have a brother in Pennsylvania who'll put you up for a day, a week, however long you like. You'll be safe, after tonight. But it may be better for you to wait until tempers have cooled down, until the madness has passed. Spreading hysteria, discord-that's one of their principal weapons. People in a mob will follow anyone, believe anything. By tomorrow, they'll wonder whatever possessed them-I use the word in its fullest meaning-to go out into the night with guns. By next week, they won't believe that they did."

He sounded uncharacteristically calm too, and sure of himself. Perhaps he could afford to be, now that his intended victims were in his power.

The car slowed and pulled toward an island of light, a store. Before Marcia could ask, Collins said "We have to get gas."

As he pulled up by the pumps, Marcia recognized the place as the general store at Blackwood's Corners. Perhaps it was mere coincidence that had brought them here, but her flesh crawled as if some deep instinct sensed danger. Matthew Peachtree and Ron Green had been killed not far from here. It seemed as if Father Collins had led her back to the source of the evil.

When he took the keys and got out to unlock his gas tank, Melody whispered urgently, "I don't trust that man. Who is he?"

"He-" Marcia faltered. She didn't really know. She looked searchingly at Melody, who looked scared but purposeful: not at all hysterical, not even weak.

"Then let's ditch him," Melody said.

"Go back to the house?"

"No, of course not. He may be right about that. The first thing to do is ditch him, then worry about the rest of it."

Now that her own suspicions about Father Collins had been articulated by Melody, she no longer doubted them. She wondered how she could have been so foolish as to come this far with him. They had to get away from him immediately.

"How?"

"Follow me," Melody said.

She got out of the car, made an elaborate show of stretching, yawning, all the while drifting to the edge of the circle of light around the pumps. Marcia followed, clutching the shoulder-bag that should have held the medal, urging Lucifer to follow. He needed no urging.

"Mrs. Creighton!" Father Collins called.

"Just stretching my legs," Marcia said.

He looked as if he was about to follow, but at that moment the proprietor of the store, the same one she had talked to before she'd found Peachtree's body, asked him a question that apparently required his attention. He turned to answer. Melody started sprinting. Marcia raced after her.

"Mrs. Creighton! Stop! For God's sake, stop!"

The darkness swallowed Melody. Marcia was guided by the sound of her feet. She was far ahead, and Marcia couldn't catch her, but she didn't dare cry out. She heard Father Collins yelling, but his cries were becoming steadily more distant. He was taking the wrong road in his pursuit. He would never find them now.

She eased her pace slightly. A pain was developing in her side. She had to struggle to gulp down the air her lungs ached for. Lucifer ran far ahead, occasionally loping back to check on her progress. He probably thought this was a wonderful new game being played for his amusement.

Her eyes grew accustomed to the moonlight. The center of the road seemed bright as day, but the shadows were impenetrable. She stopped, gasping. She could no longer hear Melody, no matter how she strained to listen.

She risked a call. "Melody?"

Lucifer came back to dance around her. She started walking. Her feet hurt. She could barely lift her bag. She was getting old. Melody was impossibly young, as young as she had been on the night Melody had been conceived. That thing-that last, horrible thing, that couldn't be reasoned away as a man in a mask or a costume-had that been Melody's father? Or had it been a hallucination, brought on by drags and pain and revulsion and utter exhaustion?

Abel Hopkins, who now called himself Alexander Hamilton, had told her that they were going to bring back earth's Golden Age, restore man to his condition before the Fall, by certain spells and incantations, by certain rites and observances that would be explained to her as they went along.

No one had said a word about witchcraft or the Devil. She would have laughed in their faces, from the security of her teen-age skepticism, if they had. They had spoken about the Older Gods, locked away from access to the physical universe for too long. Their return to their rightful place would herald peace, plenty, and brotherhood. War would end. So would poverty and disease and death itself. Even when they'd blinded and castrated a boy for kissing her-with her tacit consent-she'd agreed that such sacrifices were justified by the importance of the goal.

One of Them would father a child on her. He could reach into the physical world only through the medium of an intense discharge of psychic energy by a mass of his believers: an energy released by pain, drugs, repetitive chanting, and sexual excesses. They had made it sound almost scientific-no nonsense about the Black Mass, or Satanism; no black cats or cauldrons or broomsticks. Abel Hopkins had spoken with the rational, detached air of an experimental psychologist explaining the reactions of his subjects to a scrupulously controlled test.

Only by imperceptible degrees, each following logically and smoothly from the last, had she been dragged down into the Pit.

"Where's Melody, Lucy? Find Melody!"

The dog dashed off. He returned shortly, unsuccessful, looking up alertly for his next assignment.

"Come on, baby, find Melody," she pleaded. She raised her voice. "Melody!"

The frantic click of the dog's claws faded away on the blacktop road. Marcia stopped cold. Even in the moonlight, she recognized this road. It was the one they had taken to the commune. It was the road where Ron Green had been killed.

Lucifer returned shortly, holding something in his mouth. She took it from him while he panted happily: Melody's jeans.

Years ago, the Satanists had failed in their mad scheme. She had given birth not to a devil, but to a human child: Melody. They were going to try again. Now it was Melody's turn. She herself wasn't needed at this Sabbat. She was old, used, superfluous. They needed another virgin. They needed her daughter. They had convinced Melody with the same pernicious arguments, played upon her innocent longing for justice and beauty and truth in the world, and tonight they would debauch her.

"Melody!" she screamed, but her voice sounded thin over empty fields.

She came upon the rest of her daughter's clothing by the roadside: everything but the damned necklace.

Melody had been converted by them.

It followed then that Father Collins wasn't one of them, that he was indeed what he had claimed to be, and that was why Melody had found it necessary to elude him. In the excitement and confusion of his arrival at the house and their flight from it, he simply hadn't noticed the necklace that Melody had been wearing.

So, she had one proven ally: but where was he? She had run a long way, walked a long way. It would be a waste of time to retrace her steps and hope to meet him at the general store. She was, presumably, on Melody's trail. It was unlikely, but not inconceivable, that Lucifer might pick up that trail and find her.

If Father Collins was thinking clearly-a big assumption-he would abandon his pursuit on foot and begin to search the available roads systematically with his car. He would eventually find her. Meanwhile, she should continue walking with Lucifer, hoping that the dog would realize what was required of him.

"We have to find Melody, lamb. Find her!"

Lucifer went off on a zigzag course, running up and down the banks and into the ditches that flanked the road. He looked as if he knew what he was doing, but Marcia doubted it.

Lucifer showed considerable interest in a roadside stand, apparently abandoned. Marcia followed him.

"Melody?" she called softly.

Lucifer went to each of the building's corners and diligently urinated. That had apparently been the only reason for his interest.

She saw a mailbox by the stand. Even in the moonlight she could make out the name. A. Walker. It took her a moment, but she made the connection. She had met him at the general store. He had been Peachtree's friend. He had spoken of spying on the hippies, and presumably he knew his way around in the woods. On top of that, he had seemed kindly; his lanky body and seamed face had reminded her of Gary Cooper-she had trusted him instinctively.

She looked beyond the stand, where a light shone in a downstairs window of the farmhouse. He had suffered on account of the Satanists, too. If he hadn't discovered it for himself, perhaps she could convince him that they were responsible for the mutilation of his cattle.

She couldn't find Melody on her own. Lucifer was hopeless. She had to trust somebody. She thought out these arguments while she was walking the long road to his house.

He answered the door almost immediately. "Is it-oh."

"Maybe you don't remember me, but-"

"Sure, I remember you. I ain't that old. You're the lady from the newspaper."

"Marcia Creighton. I ... my daughter is lost. Around here, someplace. I think ... "

"Come on in. You look kind of worn out. Don't you have a car? Bring your dog in, too. I like dogs. Had to get rid of mine, though, they was acting so strange. Hi there, fella."

Lucifer allowed his side to be thumped, then went on to inspect the house. The living room was furnished in Victorian style, complete with antimacassars and an ormolu clock on the mantel. It was scrupulously clean.

Looking at Alvin Walker in the light, she was struck by the odd thought that she must have made some mistake. This man was ruddier and healthier-looking than she remembered. He appeared to be no more than fifty. He could easily have been the son of the old farmer she'd met in the general store. But he'd recognized her.

"You're looking well," she said uncertainly.

"Well, that's good to hear. Wife passed on last week, God rest her, and I ain't been feeling all that good."

"I-" Marcia choked. Her own children. Was it only today? She looked away.

"Here, you better sit down. What've you been doing, running around in the woods?"

"My daughter is missing," Marcia repeated, sitting down where he indicated. "The hippies have her, I think, the ones you spied on. With the goat. You know where they go at night, where they'd be. Please! You've got to take me there."

She caught sight of her reflection in a black window pane: black hair disarranged, face white as chalk, eyes hollow. If anyone looked like a witch wandering in the night, she did. She looked down at her hands, looking more sickeningly veined and gnarled than she remembered. They shook violently.

Walker had turned his back for a moment, seemed to be doing something with his shirt. When he turned, it was buttoned up higher. She saw a bulge under it. She noted these details without really considering them.

"They ain't such bad people," he said. "Keeps an old fella like me young, talking to young folks with different ideas. A little weird, some of their ideas, but they ain't out to hurt anybody."

"I can't argue about that. I don't know what's right anymore. Maybe they are. But my daughter is only fifteen. She doesn't know anything. They're going to hurt her, I know it, believe me. They were the ones who hurt your cattle, I know that, and they killed your friend Peachtree."

"Crazy old fool. He didn't need to get himself killed. Should have asked what it was all about, learned the right things to do, the words to say. Those young girls ... didn't even think I could do it anymore, they showed me different. How old a man would you say I was?"

"My God," Marcia groaned, staring at him. She saw now that he wore a chain around his neck, a chain she recognized as the work of Hamilton-Hopkins. The thing he had concealed under his shirt was the bull-pizzle, taken perhaps from one of his own animals. "You're one of them."

"Damn right," he said, grinning down at her. "I figure I know who your daughter is, too, and I aim to get a piece of that before the night is over. Two or three others, too. You wouldn't believe it of an old coot like me, would you? But I'm telling you the truth. Maybe I'll have some steam left for you when I get back in the morning. You're a bit older than what I'm used to lately, but you ain't bad at all."

She believed she would get only one chance. She composed her mind carefully for it, willed energy back into her tired body. When she was sure that she would never be more ready, she sprang out of the chair and headed for the door.

Walker laughed. His arm encircled her waist easily, and it felt like iron.

"Lucy, help! Kill him! Get him, Lucifer!"

She twisted her neck to see the Doberman cringing in the corner, shivering, a front paw raised in submission. All the fight went out of her then.

"Some dog you got," Walker chuckled, sliding his free hand up to fondle her breast roughly. "Maybe I won't shoot him, if you promise to be real nice to me. I mean, real nice."

"Please. No. You don't understand. These people worship the Devil. Murder, torture, anything-mean nothing to them. Do you want to burn in hell forever?"

Walker laughed so hard at that, that he nearly lost his grip on her, but not quite. "I'll worry about that when I get to it," he sputtered through his laughter, "and that won't be for a long time yet, if what they tell me is true. They ain't never lied to me yet, and they made me like a randy young buck again; they got rid of the old woman for me with no one the wiser. If that's the Devil's doing, it's a damned sight more than I ever got from going to some fool church. Come on now, honey, I got to put you somewhere safe and sound while I go off to the party. I'll give that pretty daughter of yours a kiss for you-while I'm screwing the stuffing out of her."

Marcia lost all control. She knew it was useless to fight, but she did. She knew he might hurt her, even kill her, but that didn't matter. She kicked. She jabbed with her elbows. She tried to bite. It was all useless. He only laughed. Even worse, she could feel his prick hardening against her squirming body.

"Shit, I can't wait for no sabbat," he gasped, pushing her roughly forward. She thrust her arms out in time to catch the back of a chair. He shoved her legs wider apart with his foot, almost making her fall again, and at the same time he yanked her dress up over her hips. "Seems like I'm horny all the time now. Guess I can take some of the edge off with you, then give your precious little daughter a nice, long fuck."

He tore her panties away. She screamed. He hit the back of her head with the heel of his hand, jarring her teeth. The blow knocked her off balance, making her lean over the back of the chair and unwillingly present herself for penetration. She shuddered as she felt his hard cock pressing against her naked ass. She tried hard to hold back her tears of anger and shame and frustration, but they came anyway.

"Damn you," she sobbed. "God damn you!"

"Compliments ain't gonna get you nowhere," he snickered. "You're gonna take it now-just the way I want it."

She screamed again. He was pressing the head of his prick against her anus. She threw all of her remaining strength into the effort to free herself, but he was too strong for her. He pushed harder against her asshole.

"No! It hurts! Stop!" she cried as she began to feel the searing pain of the intrusion.

"Just you stick your ass right up and enjoy it, honey," he chuckled, shoving her head down firmly with his iron-hard hand.

She squeezed her buttocks together, resisting every inch of the way, trying to force his stiff cock out of her rectum. Not since that terrible May Eve had anyone done this to her. She had wanted it then, even though it had hurt. She had wanted them to do everything to her. Perhaps she had brought everything on herself. Perhaps it was all a punishment for her girlhood transgressions. But if that was so, the God who could dispense punishment in that way was worse than the Devil she had once worshipped.

She began to believe that her resistance was succeeding. She hadn't squeezed him out, but she'd stopped his inward progress. Just as she was preparing herself for a supreme effort to drive him all the way out, he gripped her wrist and twisted her arm up. The shock and the pain were so great that she forgot about keeping herself tight. In that unguarded moment he managed to ram more of his thick shaft into her aching rectum. He twisted her arm again as he increased the pressure of his inward thrust.

"Relax, honey," he hissed between clenched teeth. "Ease it up and let me in there, or I'll break your arm off."

She had to cooperate. She knew it would hurt less if she did. She struggled desperately to lift her buttocks higher, to ease the involuntary muscular constriction of her sphincter and admit his hard cock. She was willing to do anything now-to ease the pain.

"Give, you fancy bitch, give!" he snarled, shifting his weight to drive even more of his cock into her asshole. She groaned as a new spasm of pain hit her, as he seared some nerve that hadn't yet been touched by his cruel efforts to sodomize her.

Now he began to rock back and forth, grunting and wheezing, grinding his stiff flesh in and out of the dry, aching passage. She shut her eyes and snatched breath irregularly through her open mouth. Everything had to end; this would, too. She tried to think of something else, anything else, but the only options she could think of were even worse than this.

"You love it, don't you," he gasped, his breath ragged as he pumped his hips against her. "I know you do, you filthy bitch."

She was silent. It wasn't as bad as it had been. His inward strokes seemed to fill her like a stuffed fowl, pushing her insides up from the bottom and filling her throat with bile.

"Tell me, tell me how much you love it," he whispered, accelerating his plunging tempo and pulling her ass up with both his unnaturally powerful hands, pulling her loins up to meet him so he could drive the spike even deeper.

"Aren't you finished yet?" she asked coldly.

"Ah, you cunt, you bitch, you whore, you pig," he grunted in rhythm to his powerful strokes. "You'll know when I'm finished. You'll be screaming with pleasure long before then-you'll be begging for more, just like your darling little daughter will be begging for it later."

On and on he babbled, until she wanted to scream just to drown his words from her ears. Her teeth rattled from his insistent, hammering rhythm. His fingernails dug into her breasts through her dress, biting the soft flesh. His words became inarticulate curses and slobbering grunts. She felt his prick pulsing inside her rectum as he clutched her tighter and rubbed his belly against her.

He lay silent on her for a long time, until she began to wonder if he were asleep or dead. The pressure in her ass gradually dwindled. The once powerful, brutal prong slid out of her. She shivered as the semen that smeared her began to grow cold and clammy.

"Now you're through," she said dully. "Get off."

"Through with you, maybe," he laughed, pulling her back on her feet and forcing her forward again. "But I'll be good as new in no time at all. Them people deliver what they promise."

He forced her to a door near the rear of the house, opened it, and thrust her through. She stumbled and nearly fell down a flight of steps. He stood back from the door and Lucifer slid through, growling at Walker. It was a pitifully small gesture, but she loved him for it. The door slammed and the lock shot home, leaving them in darkness.

She sat on the steps for a long time. Lucifer licked her face. She heard Walker go out. There was a cricket in the cellar with them.

At last she pulled herself together and got to her feet. She returned to the head of the stairs and groped until she found a light switch. It worked, although the dim bulb illuminated only a small section of the extensive, cluttered basement.

She descended to the circle of light and sat on a dusty packing case. She tried to analyze her situation. Her only hope for Melody lay with Father Collins. In other words, there was no hope for Melody. Perhaps she could save herself. At any rate, she didn't plan to sit here until morning, waiting for Alvin Walker to return.

A noisy boiler came on in a dark recess of the basement. She put that fact aside. If there was gas or oil, she might set off an explosion or a fire, but she would examine less drastic measures first.

She opened her purse and inventoried the contents. Father Collins's medal: a worthless piece of junk. Kleenex, cosmetics, innumerable keys, a mirror, stubs of pencils, a notebook, film cans-just more junk. She looked at it hopelessly, trying to think of clever things that might be done with hairpins or a nail file.

She slung the bag over her shoulder and began a tour of the basement. Walker hadn't planned in advance to confine her here and he might have left tools, a crowbar, a hatchet. But she found no such items. She found that the windows were tightly boarded up.

"Lucy! Where have you gone off to, baby? Mama still loves you, more or less."

She had to shout to make herself heard over the boiler, or whatever it was. She hadn't found it yet in her tour. She overcame her fears about the darker reaches of the basement and began to explore them. All that she had to fear lay outside her prison, and they were all ... busy at the moment.

Lucy didn't respond. She called sporadically, striking matches from time to time to peer at cob webbed beams and brick walls. She wondered how Walker ever managed to sleep, with the racket that went on down here.

She turned back to the light bulb. It was dimmer than she remembered. It was getting dimmer still. It was as if a shadow were rising between herself and the bulb, as if a mist were congealing and stifling the light. The noise was intolerable. And there was now a smell, a frightful odor like burning hair.

"Lucy!"

A monstrous piece of the darkness detached itself from the other shadows and came forward. It was Lucifer, and yet it wasn't. She recognized the general configuration of his face, the narrow muzzle and slanted eyes, the rust markings on sable; but it was swollen, bloated, distorted out of all proportion. It had black claws-but they were attached to hands of a sort.

It was her dog. It was a devil from a picture book. It was darkness made solid. Its footfalls shook the house as it came closer, sniffing, chugging like a steam engine, seeming to grow larger, its odor becoming a solid fog that hurt her lungs when she breathed. It came closer, driving her back against the brick wall.

And then it spoke.

She was frightened-terrified-by the sight of it and the smell of it and, most of all, by the dreadful implications of its appearance. But what filled her with utter loathing and hatred, what made her swing her bag at it, the only weapon she had, was neither its appearance nor even the sound of its voice--a hoarse, agonized croaking, as if a throat never meant for the purpose were being twisted and tortured into some fantastic shape to permit vocalization. What brought on the burst of hatred, what made her swing the bag and shower its contents against the monster's shaggy hide, was the single, frightful word that it spoke:

"Mama."