It hears the commotion outside when Anneke is dragged to the hut; it watches the hut take her. It hides from the witch when she looks back down the trail, then goes back into the house and cries.
After it cries all it can cry, it decides to follow Anneke.
Magic brought it to life, so it feels magic.
It knows where the hut went.
It follows, walking by the side of the road.
Barefoot.
White T-shirt with a red circle, Japanese characters reading Looking for a Japanese girlfriend.
No bra.
Holding its blue jeans up with one hand because they are Anneke’s jeans and Anneke is two sizes bigger.
Because it is a very attractive thing walking by the side of the road alone at night, a man with a port-wine nose and an orange Syracuse Windbreaker pulls his car over and asks it if he can have a date.
“I want a ride in your car,” it says.
“Where to?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you when I get there.”
He says “I don’t know” is his favorite place.
He pulls over on a farm road near a cornfield and has sex with it.
It looks down the road where the magic went the whole time.
Shaking him and pointing.
He is taking a long time because the Zoloft delays orgasm.
Also because he is already composing the words he will use to describe this peccadillo to Father Maldonado on Sunday.
“Hurry!” it says, slapping his face, which sends him over.
“Was that even a little bit good for you?” he asks, putting his prophylactic in an empty soda cup, which he puts into an empty McDonald’s bag, which he puts into a plastic Pick & Save bag like the worst nesting doll ever.
“I don’t care,” it says. “Take me down that road now.”
“How much do I owe you?”
Frustrated, it punches his ear and points down the road.
His anger at the pain quickly morphs into guilt as he realizes he may have taken advantage of a deranged girl.
The girl-thing makes him drive slowly, pointing.
“Dog Neck Harbor, eh?” he says.
“Don’t talk anymore. I don’t like the way you talk.”
He turns on the radio.
When they get to Willow Fork Road, the feeling of magic gets strong.
It smiles, claps its hands a little, laughs.
“How much farther?” he asks, blowing his nose into a napkin from his Windbreaker.
Oily smoke from a burned war machine rises from a yard, but he can’t see it.
Snow falls on the windshield, but he thinks it’s rain.
His angle on the lower road doesn’t permit him to see the decapitated man or the ravens feeding on him.
“Here!” the girl-thing shrieks.
The man in the Windbreaker stops the car, fumbles for his wallet.
He slides two twenties from his wallet, also dragging out a saved fortune cookie slip like a small, white tongue.
She is already out of the car and running.
He reads the slip in his lap, its cheerful red letters proclaiming
BAD LUCK WILL MISS YOU IF YOU DRIVE AWAY!
He drives away.
Anneke’s creation doesn’t know where to go now.
Magic screams from the house, but also from the woods and from the burning machine. The magic here is much stronger than anything at Anneke’s house.
It feels her creator everywhere here; Anneke has saturated this place with her presence. But the magic is strongest in the house. The house with the blown-in doorway and the hole in the roof and the dimples where shells hit it and the house re-formed itself.
The pretty thing in the outsized clothes walks in the front door.
Hears a woman moaning in discomfort upstairs.
Barely notices the cold patch it walks through on its way up the stairs to the library.
The cold patch follows it.
Andrew-in-Marina moans, lying in a fetal position, when he (she) sees the lovely teenaged girl-thing walk into the library, looking confused.
It sees him (her).
“Pretty-mole-lady, where is Anneke?”
It has Anneke’s voice exactly.
Andrew (Marina) almost understands, would understand completely if he (she) were not busy breathing steadily and keeping muscles half-tensed.
Then the pretty girl jerks.
Its life essence is a fragile thing, an entirely new creation, flapping like a pillowcase on a clothesline. The wind that whips it away is a strong, cold wind indeed.
There is no fight at all.
The fledgling spirit dissolves as if it never were.
Unplugged, the girl’s body crumples, hits its head on the floor with a dull thump.
The girl’s Italianate blue eyes open again.
The eyes narrow.
The girl smiles a lupine smile, the upper lip curling a bit too much.
She vomits abundantly—the pasta shells and white cheese a staple in Anneke’s pantry.
That is Anneke’s T-shirt.
It stinks of Winstons.
Andrew-in-Marina almost understands what the girl was. Knows all too well what the girl is now. Stops breathing and clenching—the old witch has found her host.
That is Anneke’s T-shirt.
Andrew-in-Marina understands in a flash.
Tries to say, “Ah!”
It sounds more like, “Gah!”
123
Anneke has just returned from Michael Rudnick’s quarry, surging, full of power. Knows she has a limited window of opportunity to do this awful thing, knows each time she resists the temptation to do it that she eventually will, that she has to.
In the basement.
Seven statues of her teenaged lover, Shelly Bertolucci.
Most are small.
The best one is life-sized.
She knows she will have to teach it to be an actual person, not just stone turned into dying meat.
She improvises.
Burns pictures of the actual Shelly and rubs the ashes all over it.
Takes the lock of Shelly’s hair that she had saved, lays this on the statue’s head.
Burns a letter of Shelly’s, puts the ashes on the statue’s lips.
Touches her own moist sex and moistens Shelly’s.
Kisses the stone lips, leaves her own saliva on the ash.
Dabs milk on her breast, touches that to Shelly’s.
Cuts her left middle finger, touches that to Shelly’s.
When she is ready, she turns a red maple leaf to stone.
Quickens it again, blows life’s fire from the leaf to the statue, which turns maple-red at first, then to stone again.
On the third attempt, the red stone glows coal-red, driving Anneke from the basement with its heat, making her fear fire, then cools, softens, goes pink, turns flesh-colored, then turns flesh.
It breathes in a hitching breath.
Breathes out.
It sobs.
It moves its fingers.
Its eyes.
Puts its warm arms around Anneke.
Says Thank you.
Anneke laughs and cries.
Says, “Oh, fuck.”