Perhaps I’ve died and gone to hell, and this is how I am to spend eternity, driving forever in darkness.
Then the big green road sign flashed in the headlights, a beacon to his relief.
LOCKWOOD, 15 MILES.
The moon shimmered beyond the sign, beyond the night.
Beyond the world.
And beyond the eye of Dr. Harold’s mind, the dark sketch of the creature seemed to turn to flesh and smile.
—
Chapter 35
The dream is vivid, hot—it always is.
“Dooer, dooer “
“It’s always the same: the back arching up, and waves of moans. The tense legs spread ever wide, the swollen belly stretched pinprick tight and pushing…pushing…pushing forth…
Then the image of the cup, like a chalice, and the emblem on its bowl like a squashed double circle:
She senses flame behind her, a fireplace perhaps. She senses warmth. Firelight flickers on the pocked rock walls as shadows hover. A larger version of the emblem seems suspended in the background, much larger. And again she hears the bizarre words:
“Dooer, dooer.”
She’s dreaming of her daughter’s birth. Birth is painful, yet she feels no pain. All she feels is the wonder of creation, for it is a wonder isn’t it? Her own warm belly displacing new life into the world? It’s a joyous thing.
Joyous, yes. So why does the dream always revert to nightmare?
The figures surround her, they seem cloaked or enshadowed. Soft hands stroke the tense sweating skin. For a time, they are all Ann’s eyes can focus on. The hands. They caress her not just in comfort but also—somehow—in adoration. Here is where the dream loses its wonder. Soon the hands grow too ardent. They are fondling her. They stroke the enflamed breasts, the quivering belly. They run up and down the parted, shining thighs. The belly continues to quiver and push. No faces can be seen, only the hands, but soon heads lower. Tongues begin to lap up the hot sweat which runs in rivulets. Soft lips kiss her eyes, her forehead, her throat. Tongues churn over her clitoris, and voracious mouths suck milk from her breasts.
The images wrench her, they’re revolting, obscene. Wake up! she commands herself. Wake up, wake up! She cannot move. She cannot speak.
Her orgasm is obvious, a lewd and clenching irony in time with the very contractions of birth. Behind her she senses frenzied motion. She hears grunts, moans—
—then screams.
Screams?
But they aren’t her screams, are they?
She glimpses dim figures tossing bundles onto a crackling fire. Still more figures seem to wield knives or hatchets. The figures seem palsied, numb. She hears chopping sounds.
The dream’s eye rises to a high vantage point; the circle moves away. Naked backs cluster about the childbirth table. Now only a lone, hooded shape stands between the spread legs. It looks down, as if in reverence, at the wet, bloated belly. The belly is pink.
Moans drift up, and excited squeals. The firelight dances. The chopping sounds thunk on and on, on and on…
“Dooer, dooer,” bids the hooded shape.
The belly shivers, collapsing.
A baby begins to cry.
«« — »»
“Ann, Ann?” queried the familiar voice.
Ann’s eyes opened, but at first she saw nothing. Soft murmurs seemed to hover about her like vapor. Color shifted—orange—and she sensed a pleasant pulse of heat. Again she’d had the nightmare of Melanie’s birth…but where was she? She knew she couldn’t be in bed. Beneath her felt cold, hard, like stone. Then, as suddenly as her realizations—
Slup-slup-slup…
Her vision blanked again, bringing the image of crimson vertigo.
The wide knife plunging down—
Slup-slup-slup…
“Ann. Wake up.”
The face formed, a reverse dissolve. It was Dr. Heyd.
Her eyes at last came into focus. Cloaked and hooded figures surrounded her, looking serenely down. Ann’s gaze panned. One by one she recognized the ovaled faces: all of Lockwood’s elderwomen. Around each of their necks hung a pale pendant, like a piece of stone on a white cord. At Ann’s feet stood Maedeen and Milly, and standing between them, in a cloak not of sackcloth but of black silk, was Ann’s mother.
Ann couldn’t move from where she lay, though she felt no lashings of any kind. She was completely naked before them all. It felt as though ghosts squirmed over her, holding her down.
In the background, more figures busied themselves. Shadows bent to stoke the flames within a great brick furnace. They were all men, she could see, and they seemed faltering, devoid of all will. Another man poured some dark fluid from a vessel into a large earthen cup. A chalice.
The women lowered their hoods, their eyes wide in some deep intent. The man passed the cup to Ann’s mother. The man was Martin.
He did not look at her at all.
“Blud fo cuppe,” the wifmunuc intoned. “Nis heofonrice, bute nisfan.”
The coven responded: “Us macain wîhan, o Modor. Us macain fulluht with êower blud.”
The chalice was passed around, each woman mouthing a silent prayer, then sipping. When the chalice had made the entire circle, the wifmunuc, Ann’s mother, consumed the rest of its contents.
Engraved along the cup’s rim, the glyph could be seen—the weird double circle. And when Ann’s mother bent to set the chalice down, Ann saw the glyph again, a much larger version, behind the circle. It was not a carving, she noticed, but a large slab of flat stone hanging from the rear wall. Ann’s eyes could only remain fixed ahead. The wifmunuc turned around, her hands splayed. Then she leaned forward and kissed the great rectangular slab of stone.
“O Mother, Holy Sister, Holy Daughter—”
“Bless us on this holy night.”
Now the heat swelled to a prickling intensity. Ann felt sweat gather liberally between her breasts and trickle down her sides. Her sex felt tingling, but from what? Her breasts felt enflamed with desire.
“Receive this offering…”
But there was no desire in her heart, only a misshapen terror. Receive this offering… She shivered in the heat as she realized what it was she lay upon: a stone altar.
Receive this offering—
A stone altar, a sacrificial slab. The kin sacrifice, she remembered Tharp’s words just before he’d died. This rock slab was what Ann was to be sacrificed upon, by her own daughter.
It’s like a trigger to the whole ritual, Tharp had said. The final offering to the Ardat-Lil.
The coven grinned down at her. From either side, Milly and Maedeen touched her daintily, as though her naked flesh were iconic. Her mother remained at the foot of the altar. Her silken mentel was so fine as to be partly transparent. The woman’s body showed through the sheer material. Though close to sixty now, her large dark-nippled breasts scarcely sagged at all. Her body had remained firm, robust.
“You’ve been dreaming, haven’t you?” the wifmunuc inquired.
Now the recurring nightmare came together: Melanie’s birth as a foreshadow to this night. Through her mother’s malefic ploy, Ann had given birth to a child destined to become a monster.
“Yes,” the woman said. “You’ve been shown all along. Do you understand now? You are a keystone to history. Do you understand how important you are?”