"What the hell did you bring that for?" Ajax asked.
Dean was holding his old pair of horn-crankers. He looked wide-eyed to Ajax and admitted in a slow drone, "I honestly don't remember putting them in the suitcase."
"Terrific," Ajax complained. "More memory blackouts. Shit, I thought sure that would all stop once you got back home."
"But why on earth would I bring my horn-crankers?"
"Something in your subconscious," Ajax posited. "Or I should say something in your fucked-up subconscious."
Dean felt an itch of dread in his gut. This was getting serious. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I should see a shrink."
"No maybes about it."
"Maybe I should call Daphne—"
Ajax's face went creased in a scowl. "That's the dumbest thing you could do. If she's the catalyst to your fragmenting personality, the only way to know for sure is to avoid contact with her and see what happens."
"But-but," Dean stammered. "She'll be worried about me, she'll be—"
"Forget it," Ajax said. "Besides, she's probably at a work meeting right now."
But before Dean could further object, Shirley's distant voice called out from downstairs: "Boys! Boys! Come right away! More children have disappeared!"
««—»»
The 54-inch Magnavox television screen filled the darkened parlor with throbs of color. The three of them stood aghast as the local news channel related the latest details of the crisis. "... as another name is added to the otherwise quiet town's staggering body count," a brunette in a smart burgundy coatdress spoke stoically into a microphone. Behind her, state police investigators milled about in the woods, making way for a pair of EMT's bearing a covered stretcher. "Veteran DeSmet Police Sergeant A.T. Lass was found dead early this morning in a wooded clearing off Auburn Street and 38th Avenue, the victim of what local medical officials can only describe as a ‘goring' by a wild, horned animal. Thus far, eight men and thirteen children have been found dead by the same brutal means."
"Jesus," Ajax muttered.
The brunette newscaster continued, "But what baffles investigators further is that nearly all of the dead children appear to have been abducted before meeting their death, which seems to connect some manner of human involvement with the animal attacks. And to make matters compoundedly worse, local single mother Mitzy Rundstedt of the Callisto-Brownsroad Trailer Park, hysterically reported to state police that her infant twins, Ryan and Geoff, disappeared from her home earlier this afternoon. The Rundstedt Twins are only ten months old. Tune in at ten o'clock for updates of this terrible tragedy. From DeSmet, South Dakota, this is Laura Von Paulus, KSKY News."
Shirley gripped Ajax' arm. "What a horrible thing! Those poor adorable little twins!"
Ajax put a consoling arm around the buxom housemaid. "We can only hope the police'll find them before—"
"Before it's too late," Dean finished. He changed channels, searching for more coverage, then found another quick clip on CNN: "—described as the worst tragedy to befall the unassuming town of DeSmet, South Dakota," a narrator was saying. First came a still photo of the Rundstedt Twins, smiling up toothlessly and wielding rattles from their cribs. Then a clip of the mother, pallid, tears streaming down her thin meth-tramp face: "My poor little babies! Please, bring back my babies!" and lastly a live cut to the most recent crime scene where the fine and upstanding Sergeant Lass had been found gored and crushed. A white van was parked before the trees, and men roamed about in windbreakers that read STATE POLICE FORENSICS UNIT on their backs. The narrator returned, "Today, police crime-scene examiners were dispatched to search for clues but, as bad luck would have it, tonight's impending thunderstorm will likely wash away any tangible evidence—"
Dean turned off the set, horrified himself by what was taking place in his hometown. His mind whirled with names, places, sights, and sounds which all melded together to form the picture of the DeSmet he'd always known. But now the picture was different, soiled and flecked with dirt.
Shirley, in her grief, didn't seem to notice the distance that Ajax' hand had traveled down her back. "It's like some evil spirit has infected our goodly town," she half-sobbed. "A devil. God in Heaven, who could do such a thing? Who could ever want to bring harm to those lovely babies?"
Evil, Dean recanted in his mind. A devil. But she was right, something had come to DeSmet and was taking bites out of it. A maniac seething in insanity? A pagan cult sacrificing children to some imagined horned deity? A real devil, if such things could be real? It didn't matter which. They were all the same.
"Shirley, don't bother fixing dinner for us," Dean announced. "We're going out there, right now."
"We are?" Ajax asked, with more complaint in his voice than query.
"But, Dean!" Shirley gibbered away. "You can't! It's too dangerous!"
"We'll be fine, Shirley," Dean assured, drawing out the car keys. "I just want to check the place out before the storm rolls in. Come on, Ajax."
Ajax reluctantly withdrew his consoling arm from around Shirley.
"Be careful, boys!" Shirley's big tits wobbled as she waved after them.
Dean and Ajax went out the front door and down the slate-topped steps to the cul-de-sac. "Aw, man," Ajax griped. "I was getting wood. She thinks I'm hot. I was moving my hand down her ass and all she did was squeeze me tighter."
"Ajax, we're here on business," Dean reminded. "You're not supposed to be feeling up the housekeeper."
"I wasn't feeling her up. I was consoling her. I was imparting solace to her obvious state of unease."
"The only thing you were imparting was your hand up her ass." Dean unlocked the 4x4. "You were pawing on her like she was a prom date. For God's sake, Ajax. She's an old lady."
"An old lady's head on Shannon Tweed's body. Fuck. My dick's leaking."
They got in and drove back out the service road, Ajax shaking his head all the way. "And what's this shit about a storm? The sky was crystal clear when we drove up."
Over the next hill, thunder rumbled. "Welcome to South Dakota," Dean said. "Storms sneak up fast. You can be out working the fields with the sun beating on your back, and five minutes later it's pouring rain and you're dodging lightning." Even as he spoke, churning black thunderheads, like an abyssal surf, began to consume the twilight.
"So where are we going?" Ajax asked. "Your dad's ranch?"
"No. The woods along Stoddard's Mill, where the cop was killed last night. 38th and Auburn—that's what they said on the news."
"Fine, but what are we gonna do?"
"I just... want to... see something," Dean cryptically replied.
Twenty minutes later, they were there, idling slowly down the unlit street. Trailers and salt-box houses lined the left side of Auburn, while all that flanked the right side was the forest. Dean kept his eyes peeled as Ajax smoked. At the corner of 38th, Dean pulled to a stop.