Familiar Spirit

Chapter Thirteen

The next morning they were as polite and indifferent to one another as strangers. Tension hummed beneath every word and gesture, and none of them dared break the surface.

Instead of lingering to talk, as she usually did on mornings when she didn’t have an early class, Beverly was brisk and efficient, out the door after only half a cup of coffee. Pete hurried after her as if afraid of being alone with Sarah.

Sarah had no appetite for breakfast. When the Mar­chants had gone, she made herself a cup of tea and sat watching the steam rise from the cup. She told herself that it would pass. Beverly would listen to her, and understand, and the wounds would quickly heal. Their friendship would survive. It was very hard, now, to be so alone, but the misunderstanding—the hurt in Beverly’s eyes and the guilt in Pete’s—was not the worst of it. Much worse was Pete’s defection, his disbelief and retreat to the role of rational, uninvolved observer. She understood, recalling her own initial refusals, that he had found forgetting to be the simplest way of coping with his experience, but understanding made it no easier to bear. She felt abandoned.

She pushed her untasted tea away and stood up. Feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t change anything. She had something to do, and she might as well do it now.

During the night, lying awake and brooding, Sarah had realized that the cellar was not the only possible hiding place for Jade’s statue. The image of the two red-brick chimneys, chimneys without fireplaces, had leaped vividly to mind. The fireplaces which had been there in Nancy Owens’ day must still exist beneath sheetrock and plaster. There might have been a loose brick, or a hidden ledge within the chimney, where a small carved figure might have been hidden away. There was also, she reflected, that built-in cabinet in the dining room, and the drawer where she had found the old photograph. But it was the image of the fireplace that drew her.

She would need tools to smash through the wall to the old fireplace. Brian had tools.

Sarah was nervous and excited as she left the Marchants’ apartment, but less with the thought of the battle ahead of her than with the prospect of seeing Brian again.

The morning was bright, clear, and warm, the promise of more heat in the air. The chill of the previous week was gone as if it had never been, and it was summer once more. It would be another hot Halloween, Sarah thought, remembering the year past. She and Brian had gone to a costume party held at a house out on the lake. The heavier, more elaborate costumes were early sacrifices to the heat, and around midnight there had been a mass exodus into the water. Sarah could still almost feel the cold water and the soft night air on her naked skin. She remembered how she and Brian had teased each other, playing like dolphins in the water, and later dragging an air mattress up the rocky slope into the woods, where they had played other games.

Why think of that now? And why did she feel so ridiculously hopeful, like a woman going to meet her lover? Melanie would probably be there, Sarah told herself, being deliberately cruel. Melanie would be lying late abed with Brian, as she had used to do.

But Brian’s truck was parked alone. He answered the door a brief while after she knocked, such a familiar sight in his old red plaid bathrobe, his hair still tousled from bed, that Sarah wanted to kiss him. She bit her lip.

A smile spread across his face, slow and sweet. “Hello,” he said softly, sounding pleased.

She smiled back in spite of herself. “Hello.”

“Come in? Have some coffee?”

“I came to borrow some tools.”

“Oh, O.K., fine. But coffee first?”

“If it’s made.”

“It always is.”

The look they exchanged felt almost like old times. He turned, and Sarah followed him up the stairs. So close behind him, she caught a whiff of his unwashed, sleepy, morning smell, and tenderness surged up in her like sickness. She wanted to grab him and hold on for dear life. She wanted things to be normal and ordinary again.

“Sit down,” Brian said. “I’ll just be a minute.” They were both aware of the awkwardness of this game of host and guest. Sarah remembered their first date, the first time she had come to this apartment. She looked around at the walls, at the familiar Utrillo street scene, and at a print she hadn’t seen before: kittens on a rug. Her mouth quirked in a condescending smile. Melanie, of course.

Brian emerged from the closet-sized kitchen with two mugs and set them down on the low table. “I didn’t put any sugar in the blue one,” he said. He hesitated a moment, then sat on the couch. Sarah could feel his discomfort at the fact that she was still standing, so, after a moment’s uncertainty, she walked around the table and also took a seat on the couch, although at the far end from Brian.

“So how you doing?” she asked.

“Oh, fine. You?”

“Fine. Great.”

Things had suddenly become unbearably awkward. They both nodded at coffee which was too hot to drink, and avoided each other’s eyes. Sarah searched desperately for something to say, something neutral. But all she wanted to do was to shout at him to stop being awkward, to stop pretending they were strangers. She wanted to grab him, and burrow into his side, and pull off his bathrobe, and tickle him until his warm, rich chuckle flowed out and he responded, and hugged and kissed her as she wanted, and was hers again.

“What sort of tools do you need?” Brian asked. “You need something fixed? I can do it—I don’t have a class until after lunch.”

She stiffened. “I can do it myself.”

He smiled. “Sarah,” he said, in his gentle, pleasant voice.

The sound of her name, spoken like that, paralyzed her, and she stared at him helplessly.

Brian dropped his eyes, blushing slightly, and bent down to fish a pair of tennis shoes from under the table.

“I didn’t mean you couldn’t do it yourself,” he muttered. “Whatever it is. I just meant . . . I’d be glad to help, you know.” He busied himself putting on his shoes.

For a moment Sarah was tempted to take up his offer, to tell him all about the house, and about Jade. But only for a moment.

“It’s only a small thing I wanted to do,” she said coolly.

“It looked like a nice house,” Brian said. “I envy you all that space.”

“Oh? I thought you liked it here.”

“I do. But it is a little cramped. There’s nowhere to put the records, for one thing.”

It would be so easy, Sarah thought, to move a little closer to him on the couch. To slip her hands up under his robe—she could almost feel the warmth of his flesh now. Looking at him, watching the way he sat, the way he raised his cup of coffee to his lips, she knew how easy it would be to seduce him.

“Now you know the truth about me,” he’d whispered close to her ear some time during the first night they had spent together. “I’m easy.” It had been a joke, but it was true. He was easy. He never said no. He liked to please her. And she’d never had to seduce him, before—before, he’d always picked up her earliest signals, responding almost before she knew she wanted him, before—

Before Melanie.

Now, after Melanie, things were different. She could sit here all day willing him to touch her, and he would not respond. Had that special channel between them been jammed, or was he just pretending not to hear?

“So what tools did you want to borrow?”

Sarah looked at him, meeting his gentle brown eyes. She didn’t speak. She concentrated all her thoughts, all her will, on making him speak to her. Let him say something, or do something that could not be misunderstood. Let him make the first move, as he always had before. Surely the passion she felt couldn’t be one-sided—he couldn’t have forgotten her, and forgotten how he had felt about her, so soon. If he still wanted her, he must know he could have her, for an hour or a day or forever. All he had to do was make a move.

He set his mug down too hard, splashing coffee onto the table. He stood up, not looking at her, and said, “Let’s go get those tools you wanted.”

Through her bereavement, staring at his back, Sarah managed to speak in something like a normal voice. “Don’t you want—shouldn’t you get dressed first?”

But he mistrusted her now—or, she thought, with a glimmer of hope, he mistrusted himself. “No, it doesn’t matter. There’s no one to see.” He started down the stairs without looking back.

He wants me, Sarah thought, but there was no triumph in the thought, because he was still rejecting her. He was hurrying away to safety, not daring to take a chance.

How long would I need alone with him, Sarah wondered, to break through his defenses, to make him forget Melanie?

It was a useless question, because the moment was past. Wearily, Sarah got to her feet and went after him.

She found him standing in the narrow doorway of the storage shed, looking in, and she stood beside him, feeling the heat of his body all along one side as intently as if they were actually touching. He moved uneasily away, and Sarah took a painful pleasure in moving after him, maintaining the closeness he was afraid of. She was physically hungry for him. Standing beside him, greedily feasting on his presence, did not satisfy her any more than a starving man is eased by the odor of baking bread, but it was all she had.

“What do you want?” he asked, impatience sounding like self-pity in his voice.

She restrained herself. “I’ll need a crowbar and a hammer.”

He moved away from her into the dimness of the shed and returned with the items she had asked for.

“And I guess I’d better have the shovel, too, just in case.”

Now he looked at her. “What are you going to do? Smash somebody in the head and bury him?”

“Yeah, you got it.” She waited for him to repeat his offer of help. This time she would accept it.

“Well, good luck,” he said. “Have fun.”

Walking away from him was like pulling tape off tender skin. “Thanks for this stuff. I’ll get it all back to you in a couple of days.”

“There’s no hurry.”

She felt the pressure of his gaze on her back. Call me back, she thought fiercely. Tell me you still want me. I know you do. It isn’t too late. Call me back. Don’t let me go, you bastard.

“Sarah.”

She turned to face him, her mouth dry, wondering if she should drop the tools and rush across the grass that separated them, into his arms.

But his arms were folded tight against his chest. “Sarah, I’m glad you came by. I know it’s hard . . . I’ve felt you’ve been avoiding me, and I never wanted that. I know you have every right to be angry, to hate me, but I want us still to be friends.”

Her throat and stomach hurt. She couldn’t even swallow.

“I just want you to know that if you need anything, you can always come to me. I hope we can be friends.”

She waited for something more. Surely he knew what she needed from him. He wouldn’t have been able to express such pious sentiments if she had been standing close enough to touch him. Suddenly she was furious with him. She shrugged, her throat still too tight for speech, and turned and walked to her car. The weight of the tools she carried made her stagger slightly, but Brian did not come rushing after to offer his assistance. From the car she watched him go back into his house. Tears blurred her vision for a moment.

“I can’t be your friend,” she muttered. “I don’t want to be. Because I don’t like you. I just love you.”

There was a dead bird at the foot of the steps.

It had been a big, black grackle, now silenced forever. It had been violently killed, the head nearly wrenched off, and feathers speckled the pale, dusty ground, dark as spilled blood.

Sarah stared down at it. Another death, she thought. What did this one mean?

She looked around uneasily, feeling watched. But if there were eyes glaring at her out of the tall weeds at the side of the house, she could not see them. Was the dead bird a warning? Had Jade gained new strength from this act?

She leaned the shovel against the house and cradled the crowbar and hammer awkwardly in one arm. As she let herself into the house she was tense, already anticipating some attack.

But the house felt empty. Sarah went through it nevertheless, holding the crowbar like a weapon as she looked inside closets and peered under furniture. But she was being silly, she thought, looking for some physical danger. It was being alone that made her so nervous. If Brian were here—

She remembered how he had looked at her, and how he had avoided looking at her. The thought of that sleepy, seductive glance and the sound of his voice saying her name made her weak with desire. She leaned against the bedroom wall. She remembered how charged the atmosphere between them had been, and she cursed the missed opportunity. Why had she waited? I could have had him, she thought. He wanted me.

She wondered if he was thinking of her now. She could almost see him as he must be, still in his bathrobe, slouching on the couch, his coffee grown cold while he brooded.

It would have been so easy, she thought, there in that apartment where shared memories conspired to bring them together, to forget the recent past and heal all the hurts by the movement of their bodies together.

Dazed, half in a dream, Sarah walked slowly into the kitchen and stared at the bright red telephone. It wasn’t too late. He would come if she called him.

Call him. Call him now. Get him over here.

Swallowing hard, Sarah crouched by the telephone. She had to call Brian. He could make things right. He wouldn’t reject her again, he couldn’t, not here in her own house. Here, she would be the strong one, and she had desire enough for both of them. She knew how to please him, she knew what to do. And she would do anything, say anything to have him again, to be able to wrap her arms and legs around him, and feel him inside her, their two bodies straining to become one, just as it had been before, as it should be now.

All she had to do was to get him over here. Sarah drew a long, shuddering breath and picked up the telephone and dialed the well-remembered number.

The telephone rang in her ear.

She tried to think of what she could say: something plausible, not too threatening.

“Hello?”

“Brian,” she said. Her mind had gone blank. She couldn’t even remember why she had called him.

“Oh, Sarah, hello, is anything the matter?”

“I wondered if you’d help me. You said you’d help me.”

“Sure,” he said cautiously. “What did you want?”

“I need you . . .” Her imagination balked, and she couldn’t think beyond that simple fact.

“Sarah? Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“You sound strange.”

“Could you come over?”

“Why?” There was a sharp note of suspicion in his voice.

Sarah balanced the receiver between chin and shoulder and wiped sweaty palms on her jeans. “Look, I can’t really explain on the phone . . . if you could just come over . . .”

“Can’t you give me some idea of what you want me to do?”

She chewed her lip with frustration. “Look, I need you to help me. It’s complicated to explain . . . I need to knock in a wall.”

“Wow, does your landlord know?”

“I don’t want to get into all that—I told you, I’ll explain after you’re here. It’ll be easier.” When he did not reply immediately she said, “You did offer to help.”

He sighed. “All right. When . . .”

“Now.”

“Now? Oh, look, Sarah, I’ve got a class this afternoon . . .”

“That’s hours off. It won’t take long.”

“I could come over tomorrow afternoon, or Saturday morning . . .”

“I want to do it now.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Sarah, but—”

“Brian, please.” Her frustration, her sheer physical need blazed out of the word, and across the distance Sarah sensed his withdrawal.

“I just can’t manage it today, Sarah.” A door had closed.

“Oh, Brian, please, please.” She was crying. “Please let’s try again. I can’t stand it without you. I’ve tried, and I can’t.”

“Sarah, don’t. You’re just making it harder.”

It was hopeless. The telephone was the worst possible connection: it allowed him a safe distance, and deprived her of all weapons except naked words. She didn’t have a chance. She hung up without saying goodbye.

Trembling with frustration, Sarah remained sitting on the floor, staring at the telephone. If only she’d kept her cool, she thought, she might have had him, she might have tricked him into coming over.

With a sudden, shocking sense of dislocation, Sarah saw her thoughts as if they belonged to someone else. Why this desperation? Why such a frantic need for Brian here, in this house, immediately?

Reason shone with a cold, hard light. It wasn’t she who wanted Brian that badly. It was Jade.

It was Jade who wanted Brian here, who wanted them to make love within these walls, to fill the air with sexual tension and sexual satisfaction, providing the power he needed. He had failed with Pete, and so he was using Sarah even more deviously, still trying to turn her desires to his own benefit. If she had been successful, how would Jade have used that power, she wondered. Would it have provided the last key he needed to unlock Sarah’s mind, to allow him to possess her utterly?

Sarah shuddered and stood up, appalled by how willingly she would have gone to her doom. Even now her body wanted Brian, and would have risked all Jade’s terrors for him, would have risked hell.

But she wasn’t going to. She was going to destroy Jade now, forever. She picked up the hammer and walked into the living room. At the sight of that oddly jutting wall came the image of a carved statue wrapped in silk, hidden beneath a loose brick—it was so vivid that for a moment Sarah almost thought she had already found it. But no, it was waiting for her, waiting to be found.

Her own certainty made her hesitate. How did she know? How could she know—unless Jade had put the knowledge in her mind. Could it be that he wanted the statue to be found? Was he tricking her again, playing some subtle game of control?

Staring at the wall, Sarah agonized over the problem, hesitating and fidgeting and rationalizing until finally, annoyed by her own uncertainty, she stopped thinking and simply acted.

Sarah took the hammer firmly in both hands and swung at the wall. At the last minute, unconsciously, she pulled her swing, and the blow merely dented the wall, sending a few cream-colored chips flying. Sarah clenched her jaw angrily and swung again, this time giving the blow everything she had. The hammer cracked into the wall, spraying out fragments of powdery white sheetrock, and leaving a jagged hole.

She grinned, feeling a rush of power. There was something remarkably satisfying about smashing a wall; something liberating in the act of destruction. Jade couldn’t stop her now. She felt powerful and pleased with her thoughts, all doubts vanished. She swung again, splintering the wall and enlarging the hole.

After three more satisfying blows, Sarah put down the hammer and lifted the crowbar. She thought of the darkness behind the wall, and fetched her flashlight. Then she thrust one end of the crowbar into the hole and used it as a lever to pry away the shattered section of wall. She was panting and dripping sweat in a matter of seconds, but finally, with a groaning of nails, the newer section came away from the original wall, and Sarah could look into the cavity.

Her work had revealed a small brick fireplace filled with dust, white flakes of gypsum, dead insects, twigs, and the tiny, fragile bones of birds. Sarah picked out the details in the beam of the flashlight, not quite daring to stick her head inside for a better look. She saw a hairy, brown tarantula and nearly dropped the flashlight. On closer inspection, it was clearly dead—but nearly as big as her hand. When she felt fairly certain that nothing living waited for her in the rubble, Sarah used a broom to sweep out the fireplace.

She found nothing of value and the feeling of having been cheated began to rise within her when common sense intervened. Of course the jade figure wouldn’t have been left in the open fireplace. Whoever had blocked it up had almost certainly done so years after the little statue had been hidden. If it was indeed in the fireplace, the only possibility was a loose brick, or perhaps a ledge within the chimney. So when she had swept the hearth clear, Sarah got a butter knife from the kitchen and began to test the spaces between the bricks with it, searching for a brick that could be moved.

She had finished with the floor and started on the brick-lined walls when she found it: a brick gave slightly under the probing blade. Sarah caught her breath and poked the brick more aggressively. It shifted. She ran the knife blade all around the edges and then used the blade to pry the brick up. Finally she had to drop the knife and grasp the protruding brick with her fingers, pulling with all her strength. She ignored the gritty shower of mortar in her face.

A hollow was left, a space deeper than the brick alone could fill. And in that recess was something wrapped in a fraying, yellow cloth; something perhaps six inches long and two across. Scarcely breathing, Sarah reached into the hole and her hand closed about the treasure. She withdrew it and moved away from the fireplace, squatting on her heels and staring at the thing she held. She was afraid to unwrap it. Then she caught a piece of the old, fraying silk between two fingers and unwound it.

An ancient, evil face leered up at her.

The thing was warm in her hand; she felt it move. All over her body the tiny hairs rose, electrified. It was alive. As she stared at it, she saw the tiny face change, just like a living face. The expression now was one of gleeful lust.

“So you’ve seen me at last. What do you think of me?”

A man’s voice, right behind her.

Sarah almost fell over in surprise. Her fingers closed tightly over the little figure and she stood up and whirled around. There was no one there.

“You hold my immortality in your hand. Does it please you?” asked the same silky voice.

Sarah felt the thing she held change within her grasp. Her fingers recognized it first, but she stared down in disbelief and saw that she was holding a man’s penis: alive, engorged with blood, attached to nothing.

She cried out at the sight of it and almost flung it away in repugnance. But she stopped herself. It was a trick. A trick to make her drop it. And she did not intend to let Jade trick her again. Now that she had found the statue she would not let it go until she destroyed it, and destroyed him.

“Don’t you like me? Isn’t this what you wanted? Surely I don’t shock you, my Sarah. You must remember your dreams of me?”

Something flashed in her mind at his words, a kind of déjà entendu, memory without details. Yes, she had dreamed of Jade, she had dreamed of a stranger who knew her better even than she knew herself, and who made endless, potent, intoxicating love to her. Feeling herself blush, Sarah shook her head stubbornly. She didn’t have to admit to her dreams.

“You remember me, Sarah,” said Jade, and she felt his hands caressing her breasts. Sarah caught her breath sharply and looked down in disbelief. There were no hands. No one touched her. And yet she felt the teasing, pleasurable stroking and she could see her nipples stiffening against the fabric of her shirt.

“Stop it,” she said sharply, stepping back. It made no difference to the invisible hands. The thing she held throbbed within her grasp and, absently, she caressed it with her thumb. An instant later she realized what she was doing, and she stopped, but her hand tightened around what still felt like a man’s erect penis. She wouldn’t look at it; she told herself it was illusion, just as when Pete had seemed to become Brian. She tried to remember what the piece of carved jade had looked like and what it should feel like.

“Sarah.” His breath was hot in her ear and she shuddered. “Sarah, I want you.”

The invisible hands moved down to caress her hips, to insinuate themselves between her legs to caress her inner thighs. Even through blue jeans their touch was arousing. Sarah tried to move away, to escape, but there was nowhere to escape to. It wasn’t fair, she thought. Jade was just distracting her, playing on her desires as he had once played on her fears, dividing her body from her mind and leading her astray.

“You want me, Sarah. If you didn’t want me, I wouldn’t be able to come to you like this.” She felt lips on her neck, the grazing nibble of teeth, and jerked away.

“No! I don’t want you! Leave me alone!”

“You want me, Sarah. Your breasts are aching to feel my touch. Undo your blouse and let me suckle.”

Sarah’s empty hand went to her breasts, but it was not to obey Jade but to shield herself. “No.”

“Why do you tremble, if not with desire? You are empty, Sarah, and I can fill you.”

“No!” she cried again. “I won’t let you—you want to destroy me!”

“Ah, no, Sarah,” the voice chided. “Do you think that still? After you have fought me off so bravely, and proved yourself worthy of me? I want more than your body, Sarah. I want more than your shell. I want you. I want you as my bride.”

Her legs were suddenly too weak to hold her. Abruptly, Sarah sat down on the couch. “I don’t want you,” she said stubbornly.

“Your body tells me another story.” He chuckled intimately. “How lovely to feel you respond!”

It was true, she was responding, her body betraying her. Sarah clamped her thighs together and twisted back and forth on the couch. The hands were everywhere, unavoid­able, and her attempts to avoid them seemed useless.

Sarah looked down at the thing in her hand. It was horrible: a naked, ugly organ attached to nothing, out of context, alive when it should not be, like some fat, blind worm. The distaste she felt tempered her body’s excitement. Newly hopeful, Sarah went on staring at it, concentrating. The outlines of it blurred, and suddenly it was only an old, oriental stone carving that she held.

The groping fingers took on more urgency—he must realize he was losing her, Sarah thought—but now she could feel their touch more as a nuisance than as a danger. She had been tempted, but she wasn’t going to fall. She could hold out by thinking of other things. By thinking, for example, of what she meant to do. She held the statue in her hand; the hammer was across the room.

“Don’t, Sarah. Don’t fight me.” Lips at the back of her neck, hands that knew her body. “I won’t hurt you. As my bride, you can have everything you have ever wanted. Power, and strength, and pleasure, and fulfillment. We’ll share such a life—”

“I don’t want to be your bride,” Sarah said. She stood up and looked across the room at the hammer. She could smash the statue—that was what she must do. The deep reluctance she felt was Jade’s inhibition, not her own. This pleasure was too seductive. The sooner she ended it, the safer she would be. Afterwards—

But the thought of afterwards was so bleak and empty and lonely it didn’t bear thinking of. There would be no reward for her then, no pleasure, no one waiting. If she went to Brian he would only reject her again. There would be no fulfillment like the one the stroking, teasing fingers promised, if she would just relax, just give in . . .

“Stop it!” she shouted, and whirled around, trying to pull away from the sensations. She must not think, she must not feel—everywhere there were traps. She had to act. Find the hammer, smash Jade’s statue now.

The room went dark.

I know where the hammer is, Sarah thought. It’s in the same place. The room is the same, everything is the same, even though I can’t see. She took a careful step ahead into blindness.

“Sarah,” said Jade’s soft, caressing voice. “Stop and think. Don’t be hasty. Think of what I’m offering you—think of the power, the passion, the immortality.”

“No.” She took another cautious step forward. In a moment, she knew, she would bump the hammer with her foot.

“At least know what you are giving up. Know me first, and then decide.”

She took another step, and then couldn’t move any more because she had run into someone. A man, who put his arms around her. She gasped, and would have cried out, but his lips met hers. Then she wasn’t afraid anymore. He was real, whoever he was, and she belonged here in his arms. It felt so right that she could only relax against him, almost melt into him as his tongue teased at her lips and his hands moved down to fondle her bottom.

And then she realized who held her, and what this embrace meant, and she began to struggle. She broke away. Tears sprang to her eyes, and her body throbbed with frustration. She had wanted to give in. To let herself be seduced by a ghost.

“You’re not real,” she said bitterly. “It’s a trick.”

“I am real,” said the voice. “You know me. I am Jade.”

Jade. And Jade was not the monster she had thought, but a man, a real man. She had felt his hands, his lips, his breath in her ear . . . his mind in her mind.

Sarah shuddered. Nothing had changed except the tenor of his attacks. He was still the monster she had first thought, even if he had once walked as a man. And he wanted her. He would destroy her if she didn’t destroy him first.

“No, Sarah, I have no wish to destroy you. I have other plans for you, if you’ll only be sensible. You can’t destroy me. You must realize that even if you smash that bit of stone I will live on. I have more than one home for my soul, even now.”

“But the statue is your only hope of immortality,” Sarah said. “If I smash it, you’ll die.”

“Eventually, as everything on earth dies . . . not immediately. I’ll find you again, Sarah, whatever you do. I’ll come to you in another body.”

“Then I’ll kill that body, too,” Sarah said bitterly. “I’ll kill them all.”

“Why, Sarah? Why this hatred? Why won’t you let me please you? Have you forgotten so soon how you loved me?”

The hands seemed to be everywhere, caressing her, parting her legs, urgently stroking and kneading her flesh. Sarah cried out and slapped at herself, trying to brush away the intangible fingers. The small statue fell from her open hands. She heard it strike the floor.

The teasing hands were unimportant compared to that piece of jade. Sarah dropped to her hands and knees, gasping as the probing hands touched her even more intimately, and scrabbled around on the floor. She found it, but as she grasped the smooth stone she felt it turn in her hands to warm flesh. The touch of it sent a rush of sheer desire through her. In the darkness it did not seem so horrible. In the darkness, she could believe she grasped a part of her lover.

How could she smash it, even if she could find the hammer? How could she destroy this . . . thing . . . which throbbed in her hands, promising joy?

She shivered, responding to his caresses like a cat. In this total, suffocating darkness the only thing that tied her to life, the only proof that she existed, was her body’s response to the hands that petted and tickled and teased, soothed and aroused by turns.

She rocked back and forth in response. Coherent thought had fled. In such darkness, only the body was real, only touch mattered. Hands fumbled at her jeans, and unzipped them. Sarah gasped as fingers touched wetness. Were they her own fingers? In the darkness, it did not matter.

Her clothes chafed and stifled her, and she longed to be naked, to be enveloped by the soothing darkness, to let the fingers touch her everywhere.

Someone unbuttoned her blouse. Sarah tugged down her jeans, stumbling back until she fell onto the couch, feeling herself pushed back onto it by the welcome weight of a man’s nakedness.

Somewhere, beyond the thick, slow, greedy thoughts of flesh and touch which preoccupied Sarah, somewhere deep within her mind, a small voice was screaming, warning her.

But the sound of the voice did not penetrate, as the hands did, making her gasp. She could not hear her own voice above Jade’s wicked whisperings in her ear. She had no more will to fight. In the battle between body and mind, mind had too often had its sterile victories. Now, let body win. She would be satisfied, for once. She wanted to forget everything, and simply be. This was a dream, not life. The darkness absolved her.

Hands stroked her, made her liquid. Pleasure was infinitely prolonged.

“Kiss me, Sarah.”

Moving slowly, feeling as if she was floating in black water, Sarah brought Jade’s penis to her lips. It was warm and smooth and alive, the only thing she knew of Jade and the only thing she wanted to know. Was this the thing she had feared? It inspired affection in her now, and desire. She pressed her lips to it, and her tongue found and licked away the one salty, bitter drop at the tip. She slipped the warm, throbbing flesh into her mouth and held it there, her tongue learning and savoring the contours as her body arched and twisted in response to the hands that played her.

She parted her legs for him. She thrust with her hips and strained to meet something that wasn’t there. Why wouldn’t he take her, why wouldn’t he end it? She was no longer afraid he meant to destroy her—she no longer cared. Her single-minded concentration on achieving her body’s pleasure was so intense that she didn’t care if she died attaining it. Let the fire consume her utterly—so long as it consumed her.

“Now,” she muttered through dry, parched lips. “Damn you, now.”

Why did he torture her? Why did he delay and leave her empty?

The darkness had lifted, but Sarah didn’t want to see. She kept her eyes tightly closed, concentrating only on what she could feel, on the tides that rocked her body. Her ears were filled with the sound of her own ragged breathing as she twisted and sweated and begged for release.

If you want me, you know what to do.

Had he spoken, or had she imagined those words? It didn’t matter—she knew. She held Jade in her hand, cradled between her breasts. Jade. A man. A small, carved stone. A penis. She could feel it throbbing. She had seen it smile. She had heard him speak.

She brought the thing to the juncture of her thighs, and opened her body for Jade. She gasped and bit her lip, feeling the head of the penis butting against her, seeking entry. For one clear moment she was terrified, aware of the terrible danger she was in, and she twisted away.

“No,” she said. “I won’t let you. You can’t make me.”

But her body twisted back, eager for the penetration, giving the lie to her words, and, knowing herself in mortal danger, feeling both terrified and ecstatic, Sarah jerked her hand up, and stabbed herself with the weapon Jade had given her. She gasped as she felt him enter her, and thought she might faint, and lay very still.

Jade took control, pounding against her, thrusting and withdrawing again and again. Lost, Sarah’s body moved to his command in that ancient, demanding dance. All thoughts were gone, and with them all feelings of terror or anticipation. There was only the moment. There was only the need. There was only the will. The room flew away, and there was nothing left but her body, the world, and that became one tiny, glowing, flickering flame of being, of feeling. She was motion, she was fire, she was water, a tide that rose and fell and rose, and she was torn apart, painlessly, stretched and scattered, her body flung into the ocean. She was the ocean. She was molten, liquid, flaming, searing, and she exploded.

Cast ashore, the waves still lapped at her body, warming her, rekindling her, reminding her in ever-diminishing rushes of the pleasure she had known. Her muscles were water. She could not move. Finally, she opened her eyes.

White ceiling. Sunlight and shadow. The room was empty and silent around her. She turned her head slightly and saw the wrecked wall, jeering at her like an open mouth. Gradually, her breathing and her heartbeat were slowing to normal. Soon, she thought, they might stop altogether, and she wouldn’t ever have to think again. She didn’t want to think. Her hand still lay loosely between her legs. Sarah shifted to a more comfortable position after a moment, withdrawing her hand. She saw what she held.

It was the likeness of a nude, oriental woman, carefully carved from a piece of dark green jade. It was slick, slimy to the touch, covered with—

Self-disgust twisted Sarah’s face, and she hurled the stone figure across the room, shuddering. She heard it strike the wooden floor.

She ached. Moving slowly, afraid she would be sick, Sarah raised herself on her elbows. Her jeans were lying pooled on the floor and her blouse hung open. She had done it all herself, to herself. He had made her do it. She could imagine how it had really been: lying there, masturbating, lost in a fantasy of his devising, at his command. The peace and pleasure were all gone now; even the memory of them made her feel feverish, made her skin crawl and her stomach cramp with self-loathing. Forcing herself to move against the gravity pull of misery, Sarah sat up and dressed herself. She looked across the room at the jade figure, lying now among the chips and shards of sheetrock. Jade had kept her from destroying it, she thought—he had done that much. But what else had he done to her? How much had she lost?

She could still think, she could still move, she could still plan—perhaps it wasn’t too late. She could still destroy the little figure. She wanted to destroy it, to turn her hatred against that one thing and smash it. She wanted never to see it again. Hammer-blows, reducing the thing to green dust, could set her free, she thought.

She meant to stand up and cross the room, to pick up the hammer. She remembered the last time she had risen to do that same thing. Her muscles failed her. She could not rise. She began to shake, and her teeth chattered. She lowered her head in her hands and began to cry.

Somewhere, someone was laughing.