The complete inappropriateness of this was what made it appropriate. He wasn’t even surprised. She stood up and turned off the light. In the darkness he saw her skim off the nightshirt. He held the sheet up for her, and she got in. He put his arm around her.
“It’s been a long time for me,” she said.
“Me too.”
Her hair smelled faintly of soap. She lay right up next to him. “We can if you want to,” she said. “But—”
“Let’s just sleep. I think that would be better.”
“Yeah, we’ll just sleep. It’s nice, you know, to just sleep with someone.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I like you.”
“I like you, too.”
“I guess I just—”
“Shh,” he whispered. “I know.”
She lay her head on his chest, her breasts pressing. Her body felt so warm; the gentle heat lulled him. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
She was asleep. Jack drifted off a minute later, caressed by the softness of her body and her heat.
Their dreams would be better this time around.
Chapter 14
The mirror was a wall, proffering a thousand reflections of himself and things greater than himself.
The mirror was more than a wall. It was more than a mirror.
The mirror was the future and the past. It was the whisperer of insuperable truths and the face of all man’s lies. It was uteri and bones, incubators and coffins, semen and grave dirt. The mirror was the open arms of history, and he, its son, gazed back in wait of its hallowed embrace.
Again, he thought. Again.
The mirror opened. He stepped into black, descending.
He held a candle in one hand, and a black silk bag in the other. In moments, the narrow steps emptied into the nave.
He moved slowly, lighting each candle with his own. Soon the nave came alive in flickering light. There were one hundred candles in all.
Below, the floor bore the sign: the starred trine. He mused a moment, and thought of the beauty that awaited the faithful. Father of the Earth, he thought. Carry me away.
Suddenly the man was very tired. Wisdom had a price. So did the truth of real spirit. He was a strong man made stronger by the truths that the world had buried eons ago.
He approached the chancel and bowed.
Black candles stood on either side of their altar. Their tiny flames looked back like the Father’s eyes. So close, he thought. He was nearly sobbing. The distance between two worlds reduced to a kiss.
He felt joyously light, buoyant.
He picked up the jarra, a stone cup. My love, he thought obscurely. I give thee my love. Then he opened the silk bag.
He removed the dolch.
It gleamed in the dancing light: long, sharp. Beautiful.
Father of the Earth, we do as you have bidden. We give you flesh through blood, we give you body through spirit.
He raised the dolch as if in offering.
Flesh though blood, body through spirit.
He closed his eyes. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
Walk with us, O Father of the Earth. We beseech thee.
He placed the dolch upon the altar.
To thee I bid my faith forever.
He stepped back. He opened his eyes.
Baalzephon, hail! he, Erim Khoronos, thought.
“Aorista!” he whispered aloud.
Chapter 15
“You should have heard yourself,” Amy Vandersteen said.
And Ginny: “Yeah, we thought someone was murdering you.”
The entire account made Veronica feel foolish. They were seated now at the big breakfast table by the pool deck. Last night Ginny and Amy had shaken her awake; she’d been screaming. Even now the nightmare lay like bilge in the bottom of her mind: Jack’s corpse making love to her, ejaculating maggots into her sex. At once she felt pale, and pushed her breakfast away.
Ginny delved into her plate of cantaloupe, pineapple chunks, and cottage cheese. Amy Vandersteen picked at hers. “This stuff tastes awful,” she remarked of her carrot juice. Veronica agreed.
“But you know,” Ginny commented, “we’ve only been here a few days, and I feel a thousand times more creative. Don’t you?”
“Not really,” Veronica said.
“I’m always creative,” Amy Vandersteen asserted.
Ginny ignored her. “It’s the environment, I think. Good food, clean air, serenity. It purifies the soul.”
“Where were you all day yesterday?” Veronica asked.
“That’s what I mean. Creativity. I was just making some notes for my story, but all of a sudden I felt — don’t know — elevated, I guess. I just started writing. Next thing I know it’s midnight. I’d wound up writing the entire first draft.”
“I did some sketches,” Veronica said lamely. Two nights in a row she’d dreamed of the fire-figure, and she was determined to paint the mood it evoked, the emotion that the figure courted. Passion — pure, unadulterated. It was this same figure of flame, in fact, that had saved her from the nightmare of Jack. She hadn’t been able to tell Ginny and Amy that those final screams, just as the figure had touched her, were not screams of horror but of ecstasy. She felt driven now, as an artist, to translate that ecstasy onto the canvas. But how?
The Ecstasy of the Flames, she thought. The project enthralled her. So why couldn’t she get started?
She decided she’d talk to Khoronos about it.
“I’m not hungry,” Amy Vandersteen complained. Abruptly she stood and slipped out of her terry robe. The white bikini against her white flesh made her look nude. Immediately she dove into the pool. The tiny splash swallowed her.
“Asshole,” Ginny muttered.
“Last night she was freebasing coke,” Veronica recalled.
“I did it a few times several years ago until a med student I was dating showed me all these research articles on it. Long-term use deregulates your sex drive, sometimes permanently. If there’s one thing I can’t live without, it’s my sex drive.”
“She said Khoronos doesn’t own the house; it’s some friend’s of his. Oh, and she said he’s from Yugoslavia.”
Ginny grinned. “I wonder if he’s hung.”
“I’m serious. Isn’t this whole thing a little funny to you?”
“Funny like how?”
“I don’t know. He invites us to this retreat, but we barely ever see him. Yesterday he and his two sidekicks were out on ‘business.’ They didn’t get back till past midnight. Business, till midnight? Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“No. He’s an eccentric.”
“And where does he sleep?” Veronica kept on. “I only counted five bedrooms. Me, you, Amy, Marzen, and Gilles.”
“Oooo, what intrigue,“ Ginny mocked. “Five bedrooms, six people. I could write a best-seller. Hasn’t it occurred to you that this is a very big house and that there are probably other bedrooms in it? Or do you suppose Khoronos sleeps in a coffin?”
“Shut up, Ginny,” Veronica suggested.