Jim stared mesmerized as the woman glanced once at the motionless, bee-covered figure and then walked to the fireplace and halted, looking down into the flames. He was sure that somewhere, somehow, he had seen her before, either lifeside or in the hereafter, but he was unable to dredge time, place, or circumstance from his fragmented recall. His first thought was of the strange and hazily recalled woman in the hallucination during his alien sex encounter, but no, it couldn’t be her. He knew instinctively that she had been fundamentally different.
The woman inside the room contemplated the fire for a few moments, then straightened her shoulders and turned. Jim was just able to catch the expression of weary sadness that preceded this visible hardening of her resolve. She moved with the air of a woman following orders. In the exact center of the room, she positioned herself facing the fire and stood very erect. Her hands moved in a series of ritually complex motions. The air in front of her shimmered and then a dark circular walnut table suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The table was a pretty neat trick on its own, even without the simultaneous materialization of a number of objects arranged on its surface in what looked like a symbolic pattern. All the kinetic materialization Jim had ever managed was a less than reliable ability to pluck the odd, usually stale cigarette out of thin air, and that didn’t always work. The woman in red leather was clearly a past mistress in the art of raising objects from nowhere.
The stuff on the table struck even Jim as a little strange, although hardly out of character with what he’d seen of the place so far. A long rapier, resting on a needle point and with ornate hilt, bisected the table. To one side of it lay a coiled cat-o’-nine-tails, with a Lucite handle, made from translucent optical fibers and with a tiny glowing sphere at the end of each individual lash. A branding iron in the shape of a curlicued letter S reposed on the other side of the sword, along with three square-headed iron nails at least nine inches long, a cell phone, and a clamplike device constructed from solid chrome. Jim had no idea of the purpose of this last object, except a suspicion that it was intended to cause some manner of protracted pain, likely as not to human male genitals. An earthenware jug of the kind that traditionally contained corn liquor was set slightly apart from the other items. The woman considered these objects for a few moments, then picked up the whip and flicked it experimentally, spreading the plastic thongs. As the scourge swished in the air, the tiny spheres glowed brighter, but the effect didn’t seem to please the woman. She recoiled the whip and returned it to the table. Now she picked up the sword, and as with the whip, she swung it testingly. The cold steel seemed more to her liking, and with the sword still in her right hand, she reached for the cell phone, at the same time glancing toward the door through which she had entered. Jim could hear her clearly as she spoke into the phone. “Inform Morrison that the Lady Semple has readied herself for his attendance.”
Jim twitched. Morrison? Was she talking to him? He quickly looked around, but no sign indicated his presence had been detected. He turned back to the window and saw that a third figure had come into the room. This one Jim recognized instantly. It was him. Out of shape, with half a beard, a flabby beer gut hanging over the concha belt of his leather jeans, and the ravages of depravity and dissolution clearly showing, it was unmistakably an older version of himself.
The older Morrison halted beside the table and stood looking down at the floor. The woman in red put down the cell phone and flexed the blade of the rapier into a tempered steel arc. “So you haven’t changed your mind?”
The two so clearly knew each other that Jim, outside the window, wondered if his foggy recognition of the woman was some kind of displaced front-end memory at work. Inside the room, the older Morrison raised his head and met the woman’s gaze. “No, I haven’t changed my mind.”
“There’s still time.”
“I know that.”
“But you’re determined to challenge my cruelty?”
“Do I really have any other choice? We’ve come too far to turn back now.”
The woman shrugged slightly. “Then you’d better remove your shirt.”
The older Morrison was wearing an embroidered Mexican wedding shirt and, as he slowly stripped it off, any doubts that Jim might have had that this temporally advanced version of himself drank too much and got virtually no exercise were put to rest by the sight of his bare torso and fish-belly flesh. The woman in red again flexed the sword. “Then you know what to do, don’t you?”
The older Morrison sighed with almost overwhelming world-weariness and reached for the jug. As far as Jim could gather, the upcoming ceremony was now so routine it was approaching a tedious normality. “Yes, I know what to do.”
The woman flicked the sword, creating an impatient staccato whoosh. “Then you don’t need a drink first. Just do it.”
The older Morrison put down the jug and moved to face the fireplace. He placed his hands well apart on the mantel, his arms all but fully extended. He leaned forward slightly so his pants legs wouldn’t be scorched by the flames. In that position, the mantel came to just below his chin. He moved his feet slightly apart as though starting to brace himself. His head was lowered; he might have been staring down at the flames, or perhaps his eyes were closed. Jim couldn’t quite see. The woman put the sword down on the table again, then picked up the branding iron and examined it, turning it over in her gloved hands. “My first thought was that at last it was time for me to brand you.”
The older Morrison’s shoulders tensed. “So brand me. You, if anyone, should know enough to follow your instinct.”
Two Viet Cong appeared in the doorway and stood silently watching. One was wearing a THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE T-shirt; Jim could only assume it was the same Charlie he had seen in the swamp, unless X-Files shirts were a trend among the Jurassic VC. Either the woman was ignoring the two guerrillas or she was unable to see them. She returned the branding iron to the table. “But then I changed my mind. I decided branding was a little too, shall we say, final. It would constitute a fresh benchmark in our relationship.”
“Avoid fresh benchmarks at all costs.”
The woman picked up the sword again. “Are you being funny?”
“As funny as it’s possible to be in this position.”
“Then that settles it.”
Jim on the outside and the VC on the inside watched as the older Morrison turned his head slightly. “Settles what?”
“I’m going to carve my initials on you.”
“You’ve done that before.”
The woman extended the point of the blade so it was not quite touching the skin of Morrison’s back. “So it’s no benchmark.”
The older Morrison’s flesh crawled visibly as though anticipating the slicing kiss of cold steel. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as jaded as he first seemed. He sighed, either in sadness or surrender. “That’s true.”
For a moment the woman sounded almost as wistful. “It’s sad, really. The mark of the last time is all but healed. You can only see the faintest white shadow of a scar.”
“Maybe you didn’t cut it deep enough or write it big enough.”
Her voice hardened. “Then this time it’ll be written large, you son of a bitch. Are you ready?”
The older Morrison lowered his head. “Yes, I’m ready.”
The woman in red took a deep breath. “Close your eyes. Don’t look at me until I’m finished, and don’t make any noise.”
With a swift, deft movement, she traced an arching curve with the rapier point all the way from slightly below one shoulder to slightly below the other. Blood immediately welled through the lacerated skin, holding the shape of the mark for a moment and then trickling downward. The older Morrison bit his lip but, as instructed, made no sound. Outside the window Jim felt his own spine tingle. Without faltering, the woman in red reversed the path of the blade and brought it diagonally across the small of the older Morrison’s back. Then the blade curved back once more, just above the waistband of his jeans, and she finished with a small circular flourish. It was the mark of Zorro in reverse, all in a single complex stroke.