Henry awoke with his underwear off and his penis stuck to his hairy stomach with dried crusted semen.
He tried to sit up, but it was painful and felt like the skin was being ripped from his cock. He examined the organ, trying to determine the best way to liberate it, before finally wetting his palm with spit, rubbing his penis and gradually working it free.
Grimacing, he sat up. The events of the dream (nightmare'?) had been fantastic, but the location was real. Of that he was sure. Although he couldn't place it, Henry knew he'd seen that spot before. He glanced up at the photo of Sarah by the beach but knew that wasn't the place. The truth was, he was not even sure it was the ocean, at least not in a traditional sense. Yes, the water extended as far as the eye could see, but the waves were microscopic, barely up to his ankle. That could have meant that the whole thing was some type of symbol or metaphor for something else, but he didn't think so. He was sure he'd actually been to that site, though the harder he tried to recall it, the more knowledge of it seemed to slip away.
He found his underwear balled up at the foot of the bed. He had no idea how his briefs had gotten there or how they'd gotten off his body. He hoped he'd done it himself in his sleep, but he couldn't be sure and that worried him. Henry went into the small bathroom, tossed his underwear in the hamper and took a long shower, crubbing his skin until everything was gone, then letting the hot water hit his back until it began to run out. He got dressed, made and ate breakfast, then» paced around the inside of his cabin, glancing out ocasionally at the overcast sky. It was his day off again, and the superintendent had made it clear that until further notice, all rangers and park employees not on duty were to remain in their cabins. Henry understood that this was a precautionary measure, that a lot of strange, unexplained, dangerous things were going on||» out there ... but the thought of staying indoors all day still made him stir-crazy.
He glanced over at his bookshelf. Next to there Canon, the collected works of Edward Abbey and E Wallace Stegner-were a handful of books from his past, along with a few newer volumes lent to him by friends that he hadn't gotten around to reading. He chose one of these and settled down on the couch. Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. He'd been a big Tom Robbins fan back in the days when books had meant something to him, when fiction and literature had provided him with a road map for life, and he was looking forward to visit once again with an old trusted friend. But he was put off by the author photo on the dust flap. This was Tom Robbins? His heart sank as he looked at the black-and-white shot. Gone was the happy hairy hippie with the wide, open smile pictured on the back of Still Life with Woodpecker or even the grinning New Age loon from Skinny Legs and All. In his place was a sober pretentious yuppie wearing the expression of someone too preoccupied with himself to give anyone else the time of day.
Henry put the book down without reading a single word of it. He was getting to be an old fuck. Music made him sad now, too, songs he hadn't heard for a long time filling him with an almost unbearable melancholy. Just last night, he'd heard an old John Prine song carried on the wind from someone else's cabin, and all of a sudden he'd started crying. Of course, he'd been half drunk, so that might have had something to do with it, but still ...
He'd been drunk a lot lately. It was the only way he seemed to be able to deal with what was happening.
They'd found Laurie Chambers yesterday in a ravine in the Maze. Or, rather, a hiker had found her. He'd called it in on his cell phone, and a helicopter had had to retrieve her body. She'd been mauled and half-eaten, most likely by predatory animals after the fact, and authorities were still waiting for an autopsy to determine the cause of death.
Henry already knew the cause of death.
The twins.
Laurie had been found in a remote environmentally sensitive area, but all about her the cliff walls had been defaced, the sandstone carved and etched with nonsensical drawings: top hats and train tracks, horses, guns and suns. What did it mean? Henry wondered. What was the point of it all? For there was a point, and it did mean something. Of that he was sure.
He felt the way he had as a teenager in algebra class, where, try as he might, he simply could not grasp the concepts his teacher was trying to impart to him; no matter how much he studied, understanding remained frustratingly out of reach.
A shadow passed over the sun, bathing the room in darkness.
Shadow? Sun?
It was heavily overcast and had been since he'd awakened.
Henry got up from the couch, walked to the window. The dark translucent object that had been shading the already filtered sunlight moved away from the glass onto the narrow porch, standing free. It was, as perhaps he should have known, a shadow of human size, the silhouette of a naked woman. One of the twins? From the other window in the kitchenette, another human shadow detached itself. This one, to his surprise, was that of a man. <&>
He turned around. The entire cabin, he saw now, II was aswarm with shadows, both inside and out. On |the porch, a small crowd of swirling shapes seemed to be circling the building, jostling for position as they circumnavigated his home. In the bathroom, the small frosted window appeared to be winking at him as a| shadow near the sink bopped back and forth in front of it. In the kitchenette, the form of a man wavered near the refrigerator.
What the hell was going on?
He was not as scared as he could have been or perhaps should have been, and that was good. Rather than standing there frozen in place, he opened the front door and strode out on the porch, ready to do battle. The caravan of shadows passed over him, around him, through him for all he knew, but he felt nothing. "Get out of here!" he ordered. He lashed out at the moving band, hoping to scatter them, but the shadows continued on, unwilling or unable to stop.
Henry looked out at the desert leading up to his door.
And saw the twins.
They were darker than the other shadows, more substantial, almost three-dimensional, and they were standing in the same spot they had been in his first dream of them.
He was starting to get scared now, but he stepped off the porch and walked toward them anyway. As he did so, the other shadows fled his cabin, dispersing into the air, into the ground, until only the sisters were left. It was as if the others had come to the house to get his attention, to direct his focus toward the twins. There were no features visible on those black blank faces, but he knew they were watching him nevertheless, and they waited until he was within spitting distance before they glided across the sand away from him. To his surprise, they headed not back into the desert but toward the other rangers' cabins.
He wanted to shout at them, wanted to tell them to stay away, wanted to keep them from his friends and coworkers, but he was afraid to speak up. Besides, he knew it wouldn't do any good. He had no control over them.
He wondered if he really wanted to protect the other rangers-or if he simply wanted to keep the twins to himself.
He realized that he already had the beginnings of an erection.
He followed the flowing shadows to Ray Daniels' cabin, where alarm bells went off instantly in his brain. The cabin's shades were drawn, but the front door was wide open-and Ray never left his front door open. The two forms blended with the darkness of the interior, disappearing from sight, and Henry slowed his pace, an instinct for self-preservation warning him not to rush in. Hoping the twins would reemerge, he waited a moment, squinting into the gloom, trying to see any sign of movement, but within the dark doorway all remained still.