The light in the scene on Monarch Street was getting brighter with every passing moment. She could feel its corrosive energies on her skin. What would the angel's luminescence do to her if it touched her? Cook her marrow in her bones? Boil away all her blood? Oh, God in Heaven. This wasn't a game: it was life or death. She had to find something to break the loop, before the light of the angelic projector got so hot it cremated her.
There was to be no help from Maxine, that was clear; so she was left with Todd. Where had he been the last time she'd seen him? Her thoughts were now so chaotic she couldn't even remember that.
No, wait; he'd been upstairs, hadn't he? She couldn't picture him (the loop was too demanding, the brightness too sickeningly strong: it overwhelmed every other image in her head, real or imagined) but she remembered that he'd been up in the master bedroom.
Oh, and he'd been naked. She remembered that too. Todd the naked ghost, slapping his hard dick around as though it were a toy that he'd suddenly discovered was unbreakable. For a moment the image of Jessica on the doorstep juddered, as though the sprockets had become caught in the gate for a moment. Her mind had found a tool to thrust into the mechanism. Actually, Todd's tool, bobbing at his groin, giving her its slit-eyed gaze.
Yes! She could almost see it—
Aunt Jessica's smiling image juddered a second time, then the brightness behind the picture started to press through her eyes, burning away the pupils, making her look momentarily demonic.
"Yoyo yoyo you-your-Papas-as-as-as-atat-atat-atat-the-the-the-the—"
The woman was jerking round like a puppet being manipulated by someone in the early stages of a grand mal. The loop flipped back, and she was beckoning again, with the first syllable of her speech caught on her tongue.
Tammy ignored it. She had Todd's beautiful rod in her mind's eye, and it was strong enough to break the angel's back.
"Go away" she told Aunt Jessica.
"Yo-yo-yo-yo—"
"I said: Go away!"
There it was now: Todd's erection, clear as day. She made an intellectual assessment of it, to give solidity to the memory. It was a good eight inches long, circumcised, with a slight left-hand drift.
The light behind Aunt Jessica grew blindingly bright, burning away not only the old lady's figure, but the stoop and the summer tree. The image of Todd's manhood was getting stronger all the time, as though Tammy's pulse beats were feeding it blood; fattening it, glorifying it.
The angel's brilliance still made her skin itch, but she had the better of it now. Two, three more seconds and Monarch Street had disappeared completely, overtaken by the image of Todd's manhood.
"Maxine!" she yelled again.
There was still no reply. She put her head down, so when she opened her eyes she would be staring at the ground, not at the angel's light. She half-expected to see Maxine sprawled on the ground at her feet, overcome by the angel's power. But no. There was nothing below her but the cracked pathway that led from the front door.
She turned on her heel and lifted her gaze a little. The front door was open; the light the angel shed washed the entire scene before her, taking its color out, and throwing Tammy's shadow up against the wall.
She felt a perverse imperative to glance back over her shoulder; to put the weapon she'd summoned to the test one more time. But she turned herself away from such nonsense, and stumbled back the way she and Maxine had come just a little while before.
Even before she reached the steps she heard Maxine sobbing inside. Enraged that she'd been left to face the enemy alone, but at least grateful that Maxine was alive, she climbed the steps, pushed the cracked front door closed as far as it would go, and went back into the house.
Maxine was sitting on the stairs, shaking.
On the floor above, Todd had just emerged from the master bedroom. He'd put on the jeans Tammy had fetched for him, and he was carrying a large gun.
"It won't do you any good," Tammy said, slamming the door behind her.
"I'm sorry," Maxine said. "I left you out there."
"So I noticed."
"I was yelling for you to come, but you wouldn't move. And that thing was just getting closer and closer."
"It wants me. It doesn't want you two."
"Well then," Tammy said, staring at the front of Todd's straining jeans and giving up a silent prayer to the efficacy of their contents. "We have two options. We either give you to the angel, and let it take you wherever the hell it intends to take you—"
"Oh God no. Please. I don't want to go with that thing. I'd rather die."
"Stop waving the gun around and listen to me, Todd. I said we had two options."
"What's the other one?"
"We make a run for it."
NINE
It wasn't really a choice, given their circumstances.
They had to make a run for it, and the way Tammy looked at it, the sooner they did so the better for everybody. The angel could afford to play a waiting game, she assumed. Did it need nourishment? Probably not. Did it sleep or take private little moments in which to defecate? Again, probably not. It could most likely afford to lay siege to the house for days, weeks, even months, until its victims had no strength left to outwit it or outmaneuver it.
Maxine had gone to the guest bathroom to wash her ashen face. She didn't look much better when she got back. She was still pale and shaking. But in her usual straightforward manner she demanded that everyone agree to what was being contemplated here, in words of one or, at most, two syllables.
"Let's all get this straight," she said. "The thing outside is definitely an angel. That is to say, an agent of some divine power. Yes?"
"Yes," Todd said. He was sitting at the top of the stairs, only partially visible in the light from the dining room, which was the only light that now worked.
"And why's it here? Exactly. Just for the record."
"We know why it's here, Maxine," Tammy said.
"No, let's just be very clear about this. Because it seems to me we are playing with fire. This thing, this light—"
"It wants my soul," Todd said. "Is that plain enough for you?"
"And you," Maxine said, glancing at Tammy to see how she was responding to all this, "are blithely suggesting we try to outrun it?"
"Yes."
"You're crazy."
Before Tammy could reply, Todd put in a final plea. "If we fail, we fail. But at least let's give it a try."
"Frankly, I realize I'm outvoted on this, but I think this is insanity," Maxine said. "If you really believe in your immortal soul, Todd, why the hell aren't you letting this divine agent come and get you?"
"I'm not saying I don't believe in my soul. I do. I swear I do. But you know me: I've never trusted agents," he said, chuckling. "Joke. Maxine, lighten up. It was a joke."
Maxine was not amused.
"Suppose it's the real thing," she said. "Suppose it's God, looking at us. At you."
"Maybe it is. But then again, maybe it isn't. This Canyon's always been full of deceits and illusions."
"And you think that's what it is?"
"I don't know. I just don't trust it. I'd prefer to stick around here a little longer than go off with it."
"Here? You want to stay in this dump? Todd, it's not going to be standing for more than another week."
"So maybe I'll set off across America, I don't know. I just got more living to do. Even though I'm dead."
"And suppose we're pissing off higher powers?" Maxine said. "Have you thought about that?"
"You mean God? If God really wants me, He'll find a way to get me. Right? He's God. But if He doesn't... if I can slip off and enjoy myself for a few years . . ."