The witching hour

Fifty-two

HE WAS TRYING to wake up, but every time he came near the surface, he went down again, heavy and drowsy and sinking into the soft feathery covers of the bed. The desperation would grip him and then it would go away.

It was the sickness that finally woke him. It seemed forever that he sat on the bathroom floor, against the door, vomiting so violently that a pain locked around his ribs each time he retched. Then there was nothing more to heave up, and the nausea just lay on him with no promise of relief.

The room was tilting. They had finally got the lock off the door, and they were picking him up. He wanted to say that he was sorry he’d locked it, reflex action, and he had been trying to get to the knob to open the door, but he couldn’t make the words come out.

Midnight. He saw the dial of the clock on the dresser. Midnight of Christmas Eve. And he struggled to say mere was a meaning to it, but it was impossible to do more than think of that thing standing behind the crib in the sanctuary. And he was sinking again, as his head hit the pillow.

When next he opened his eyes, the doctor was talking to him again, but he couldn’t recall just when he’d seen the doctor before. “Mr. Curry, do you have any idea what might have been in the injection?”

No. I thought she was killing me. I thought I was going to die. Just trying to move his lips made him sick. He only shook his head, and that too made him sick. He could see the blackness of night still beyond the frost on the windows.

“ … at least another eight hours,” said the doctor.

“Sleep, Michael. Don’t worry now. Sleep.”

“Everything else normal. Clear liquids if he should ask for something to drink. If there’s the slightest change … ”

Treacherous witch. Everything destroyed. The man smiling at him from above the crib. Of course it had been the time. The very time. He knew that he had lost her forever. Midnight Mass was over. His mother was crying because his father was dead. Nothing will ever be the same now.

“Just sleep it off. We’re here with you.”

I’ve failed. I didn’t stop him. I’ve lost her forever.

“How long have I been here?”

“Since yesterday evening.”

Christmas morning. He was staring out the window, afraid to move for fear of being sick again. “It’s not snowing anymore, is it?” he said. He barely heard the answer, that it had stopped some time before daybreak.

He forced himself to sit up. Nothing as bad as before. A headache yes, and a little blur to his vision. Nothing worse than a hangover.

“Wait, Mr. Curry. Please. Let me call Aaron. The doctor will want to see you.”

“Yeah, that would be fine, but I’m getting dressed.”

All his clothes were in the closet. Nice little traveler’s kit under plastic on the bathroom vanity. He showered, fighting an occasional bout of dizziness, shaved recklessly and fast with the little throwaway, and then came out of the bathroom. He wanted to sink down into the bed again, no doubt about it, but he said:

“I gotta go back there, find out what went down.”

“I’m begging you to wait,” said Aaron, “to take some food, see how you feel.”

“Doesn’t matter how I feel. Can you give me a car? I’ll hitch if you can’t.”

He looked out the window. Snow still on the ground. Roads would be dangerous. Had to go now.

“Look, I can’t thank you enough for taking care of me like this.”

“What do you mean to do? You don’t have any idea what you’ll find. Last night she told me that if I cared about you, to see that you didn’t come back.”

“Hell with what she said. I’m going.”

“Then I’m going too.”

“No, you stay here. This is between me and her. Get me a car, now, I’m leaving.”

It was a big bulky gray Lincoln Town Car, hardly his choice though the soft leather seat felt good, and the thing really cruised when he finally reached the interstate highway. Up until that point, Aaron had been following in the limo. But there was no sight of him now, as Michael passed one car after another.

The snow was dirty at the sides of the road. But the ice was gone. And the sky above was that faultless mocking blue which made everything look clean and wide open. The headache gripped him, throwing a curve of dizziness and nausea at him every fifteen minutes. He just shook it off, and kept his foot on the gas pedal.

He was going ninety when he cruised into New Orleans, going up past the cemeteries of Metairie and through the rooftops and then past the ludicrous surreal spectacle of the Superdome amphitheater, like a space saucer just touching down amid skyscrapers and church steeples.

He braked too fast, nearly skidding as he took the St. Charles Avenue turnoff. Traffic crawled amid the frozen strips of soiled snow.

Within five minutes, he made the left turn onto First, and then the car skidded dangerously again. He braked and crept his way over the slick asphalt, until he saw the house rising up like a somber fortress on its dark, shady snow-covered corner.

The gate was open. He put his key into the front door and let himself in.

For a moment, he stood stock-still. There was blood all over the floor, smeared and streaked, and the bloody print of a hand on the door frame. Something that looked like soot covered the walls, thinning out to a pale grime as it reached the ceiling.

The smell was foul, like the smell of the sickroom in which Deirdre died.

Smears of blood on the doorway to the living room. Tracks of bare feet. Blood all over the Chinese carpet, and some viscous mucuslike substance smeared on the boards, and the Christmas tree with all its lights burning, like an oblivious sentinel at the end of the room, a blind and dumb witness who could testify to nothing.

The ache was exploding in his head, but it was nothing compared to the pain in his chest, and the rapid knocking in his heart. The adrenaline was flooding his veins. And his right hand was curling convulsively into a fist.

He turned around, went out of the parlor and into the hall, and headed towards the dining room.

Without a sound, a figure stepped into the high keyhole door, peering at him, one slender hand moving up on the door frame.

It was a strange gesture. Something distinctly unsteady about the figure as if it too were reeling from shocks, and as it came forward into the light from the sun porch, Michael stopped, studying it, straining to understand what he was seeing.

This was a man, clothed in loose disheveled pants and shirt, but Michael had never seen a man like him. The man was very tall, maybe six feet two inches in height and disproportionately slender. The pants were too large, and apparently cinched tight at the waist, and the shirt was Michael’s shirt, an old sweatshirt. It hung like a tunic on the slender frame. He had rich black curly hair and very large blue eyes, but otherwise he resembled Rowan. It was like looking at a male twin of Rowan! The skin was like Rowan’s smooth and youthful skin, only even more youthful than that, stretching over Rowan’s cheekbones, and this was almost Rowan’s mouth, just a little fuller, and more sensuous. And the eyes, though large and blue, had Rowan in them, and there was Rowan in the man’s sudden thin, cold smile.

He took another step towards Michael, and Michael could see he was unsteady on his feet. A radiance emanated from him. And Michael realized what it was, contradicting reason and experience, but perfectly obvious in a hideous sort of way, that the thing looked newborn, that it had the soft resilient brilliance of a baby. Its long thin hands were baby smooth, and its neck was baby smooth, and the face had no stamp of character whatsoever.

Yet the expression on its face was no baby’s expression. It was filled with wonder, and seeming love, and a terrible mockery.

Michael lunged at it, catching it by surprise. He held its thin powerful arms in his hands, and was astonished and horrified by the riff of soft virile laughter that broke from it.

Lasher, alive before, alive again, back into the flesh, defeating you! Your child, your genes, your flesh and her flesh, love you, defeated you, used you, thank you, my chosen father.

In blind rage, Michael stood, unable to move, his hands clutching the arms of the being, as it struggled to free itself, pulling loose suddenly with a great arching gesture, like a bird drawing back, made of rubber and steel and flexing and preening.

A low shuddering roar came out of Michael.

“You killed my child! Rowan, you gave him our child!” His cry was guttural and anguished, the words rushing together in his own ears like noise. “Rowan!”

Away from him the creature dashed, crashing awkwardly against the dining room wall, again throwing up its hands and laughing. It thrust its arm out, its huge smooth hand slamming Michael in the chest with ease and throwing him over the dining room table.

“I am your child, Father, step back. Look at me!”

Michael scrambled back onto his feet.

“Look at you? I’ll kill you!”

He flew at the creature, but it danced back into the pantry, arching its back and extending its hands as if to tease. It waltzed backwards through the kitchen door. Its legs tangled, then straightened as if it were a straw man. Again its laughter rose, rich and deep and full of crazy merriment. The laughter was crazed like the eyes of the being, full of mad and uncaring delight.

“Oh, come on, Michael, don’t you want to know your own child! You can’t kill me! You can’t kill your own flesh and blood! I have your genes in me, Michael. I am you, I am Rowan. I am your son.”

Lunging again, Michael caught it and hurled it back against the French doors, rattling the panes. High up on the front of the house, the alarm sounded as the glass protectors tripped, adding its maddening peal to the mayhem.

The creature flung its long gangly arms up, gazing down at Michael in astonishment as his hands closed on its throat. Then it lifted its two hands in fists and slammed them into Michael’s jaw.

Michael’s feet went out from under him, but hitting the floor he rolled over at once on his hands and knees. The French door was open, the alarm still screaming, and the creature was dancing, pivoting, and frolicking with a hideous grace towards the pool.

As he went after it, he saw Rowan coming in the corner of his eye, rushing down the kitchen stairs. He heard her scream.

“Michael, stay away from him!”

“You did that, Rowan, you gave him our child! He’s in our child!” He turned, his arm raised, but he couldn’t hit her. Frozen, he stared at her. She was the very image of terror, her face blanched and her mouth wet and quivering. Helpless, shuddering, the pain squeezing in his chest like a bellows, he turned and glared at the thing.

It was skipping back and forth on the snow covered flagstones beside the rippling blue water, pitching its head forward and placing its hands on its knees, and then pointing to Michael. Its voice, loud and distinct, rose over the shrilling of the alarm.

“You’ll get over it, as mortals say, you’ll see the light, as mortals say! You’ve created quite a child, Michael. Michael, I am your handiwork. I love you. I have always loved you. Love has been the definition of my ambition, they are one and the same with me, I present myself to you in love.”

Me went out the door as Rowan rushed towards him. He went straight for the thing, sliding on the frozen snow, tearing loose from her as she tried to stop him. She went down on the ground as if she were made of paper, and a whipping pain stung his neck. She had caught the St. Michael medal by its chain, and she had the broken chain now in her hands, and the medal fell into the snow. She was sobbing and begging him to stop.

No time for her. He spun round and his powerful left hook went up, bashing into the side of the creature’s head. It gave another peal of laughter even as the red blood spurted from the ruptured flesh. It tipped and spun around, slipping on the ice and careening into the iron chairs and knocking them askew.

“Oh, now look what you’ve done, oh, you can’t imagine how that feels! Oh, I have lived for this moment, this extraordinary moment!”

With a sudden pivot, it dove for Michael’s right arm, catching it and twisting it painfully back, its eyebrows raised, lips drawn back in a smile, pearly teem flashing white against its pink tongue. All new, all shining, all pristine, like a baby.

Michael drove another left into its chest, feeling the crunch of bones.

“Yeah, you like it, you evil thing, you greedy son of a bitch, die!” He spit at it, driving his left fist into it again, even as it clung to his right wrist, like an unfurling flag tied to him. The blood squirted out of its mouth. “Yeah! You’re in the flesh-now die in it!”

“I’m losing patience with you!” the creature howled, glaring down at the blood dripping from its lip all over its shirt. “Oooh, look what you’ve done, you angry father, you righteous parent!” It jerked Michael forward, off balance, its grip on his wrist like iron.

“You like it?” Michael cried. “You like your bleeding flesh,” he roared, “my child’s flesh, my flesh!” Wringing his right hand and unable to free it, he closed his left fingers around the thing’s smooth throat, jabbing his thumb into its windpipe while his knee rammed into its scrotum. “Oh, she made you really complete, didn’t she, right down to the outdoor plumbing!”

In a flash he saw Rowan again, but it was the thing that knocked her down this time as it let go of Michael at last. She fell against the balustrade.

The thing was shrieking in pain, the blue eyes rolling in its head. Before Rowan could get to her feet, it shot backwards, shoulders rising like wings, and then lowering its head, it cried, “You are teaching me, Father. Oh yes, you’re teaching me well!” A growl overrode the words, and it ran at Michael, butting him in the chest with its head, striking him one fine blow that hurled him off his feet and out over the swimming pool.

Rowan gave a deafening cry, far louder and more shrill than the siren of the alarm.

But Michael had crashed into the icy water. He sank down, down, into the deep end, the blue surface glittering high above him. The freezing temperature shocked the breath out of him. He was motionless, scalded by the cold, unable even to move his arms, until he felt his body scrape along the bottom.

Then in a desperate convulsion he started for the top, his clothes like fingers grabbing him and holding him down. And as his head passed through the surface into the blinding light, he felt another thudding blow and sank again, rising, only to be held under, his hands up in the air, free in the air, clawing futilely at the thing that held him, his mouth swallowing gulp after gulp of cold water.

Happening again, drowning again, this cold cold water. No, not like this, not again. He tried to close his mouth, but the exploding pain in his chest was too great and the water poured into his lungs. His hands could feel nothing above; and he could no longer see either color or light, or even sense up from down. And in a flash he saw the Pacific again, endless and gray, and the lights of the Cliff-House dimming and vanishing as the waves rose around him.

Suddenly his body relaxed; he wasn’t struggling desperately to breathe or to rise, not clawing at anything. In fact, he wasn’t in his body at all. He knew this feeling, this weightlessness, this sublime freedom.

Only he wasn’t traveling upward, not rising buoyant and free the way he had that long-ago day, right up into the leaden gray sky and the clouds, from which he could see all the earth down there below with its millions upon millions of tiny beings.

He was in a tunnel this time, and he was being sucked down, and it was dark and close and there seemed no end to the journey. In a great rush of silence, he plummeted, completely without will, and full of vague wonder.

At last a great splashing red light surrounded him. He had fallen into a familiar place. Yes, the drums, he heard the drums, the old familiar Mardi Gras cadence of marching drums, the sound of the Comus parade moving swiftly through the winter dark on the tired dreary edge of Mardi Gras night, and the flicker of the flames was the flicker of the flambeaux beneath the twisted elbows of the oaks, and his fear was the all-knowing little boy’s fear of long ago, and it was all here, everything he’d feared, happening at last, not a mere glimpse on the edge of dream, or with Deirdre’s nightgown in his hands, but here, around him.

His feet had struck the steaming ground, and as he tried to stand up, he saw the branches of the oaks had gone right up through the plaster roof of the parlor, catching the chandelier in a tangle of leaves, and brushing past the high mirrors. And this was really the house. Countless bodies writhed in the dark. He was stepping on them! Gray, naked shapes fornicating and twisting in the flames and in the shadows, the smoke billowing up to obscure the faces of all those surrounding him and looking at him. But he knew who they were. Taffeta skirts, cloth brushing him. He stumbled and tried to get his balance but his hand just passed right through the burning rock, his feet went down into the steaming muck.

In a circle the nuns were coming, tall black-robed figures with stiff white wimples, nuns whose names and faces he knew from childhood, rosaries rattling, their feet pounding on the heart pine floor as they came, and they closed the circle around him. Stella stepped through the circle, eyes flashing, her marcelled hair shining with pomade, and suddenly reached for him and tugged him towards her.

“Let him alone, he can climb up on his own,” said Julien. And there he was, the man himself with his curling white hair and his small glittering black eyes, his clothes immaculate and fine, and his hand rising as he smiled and beckoned:

“Come on, Michael, get up,” he said, with the sharp French accent. “You’re with us now, it’s quite finished, and stop fighting at once.”

“Yes, get up, Michael,” said Mary Beth, her dark taffeta skirt brushing his face, a tall stately woman, hair shot through and through with gray.

“You’re with us now, Michael.” It was Charlotte with her radiant blond hair, bosom bulging over her taffeta décolletage, lifting him, though he struggled to get away. His hand went right through her breast.

“Stop it, get away from me!” he cried. “Get away.”

Stella was naked except for the little chemise falling off her shoulder, the whole side of her head dripping with blood from the bullet.

“Come on, Michael darling, you’re here now, to stay, don’t you see, it’s finished, darling. Job well done.”

The drums were thudding closer and closer, battering at the keening song of a Dixieland band, and the coffin lay open at the end of the room, with the candles around it. The candles were going to catch the drapes and burn the place down!

“Illusion, lies,” he cried. “It’s a trick.” He tried to stand up straight, to find some direction in which to run, but everywhere he looked he saw the nine-paned windows, the keyhole doors, the oak branches piercing the ceiling and the walls and the whole house like a great monstrous trap re-forming around the struggling gnarled trees, flames reflected in the high narrow mirrors, couches and chairs overgrown with ivy and blossoming camellias. The bougainvillea swept over the ceiling, curling down by the marble mantels, tiny purple petals fluttering into the smoking flames.

The nun’s hand suddenly came down like a board against the side of his face, the pain shocking him and maddening him. “What do you say, boy! Of course you’re here, stand up!” That bellowing coarse voice. “Answer me, boy!”

“Get away from me!” He shoved at her in panic, but his hand passed through her.

Julien was standing there with his hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. And behind Julien stood handsome Cortland, with his father’s same expression and his father’s same mocking smile.

“Michael, it should be perfectly obvious to you that you have performed superbly,” said Cortland, “that you bedded her, brought her back, and got her with child, which is exactly what we wanted you to do.”

“We don’t want to fight,” said Marguerite, her haglike hair veiling her face as she reached out for him. “We’re all on the same side, mon cher. Stand up, please, come to us.”

“Come now, Michael, you’re making all this confusion yourself,” said Suzanne, her big simpleton eyes flashing and snapping as she helped him to his feet, her breasts poking through the filthy rags.

“Yes, you did it, my son,” said Julien. “Eh bien, you have been marvelous, both of you, you and Rowan, you have done precisely what you were born to do.”

“And now you can go back through with us,” said Deborah. She raised her hands for the others to step aside, the flames rising behind her, the smoke curling over her head. The emerald glimmered and winked against her dark blue velvet gown. The girl of Rembrandt’s painting, so beautiful with her ruddy cheeks and her blue eyes, as beautiful as the emerald. “Don’t you see? That was the pact. Now that he’s gone through, we’re all going to go back through! Rowan knows how to bring us back through, the same way that she brought him through. No, Michael, don’t struggle. You want to be with us, earthbound here, to wait your turn, otherwise you’ll simply be dead forever.”

“We’re all saved now, Michael,” said fragile Antha, standing like a little girl in her simple flowered dress, blood pouring down her face on both sides from the bashed-in wound on the back of her head. “And you can’t imagine how long we’ve been waiting. One loses track of time here … ”

“Yes, saved,” said Marie Claudette. She was sitting in a big four-poster bed, with Marguerite beside her, the flames twining around the posts, eating at the canopy. Lestan and Maurice stood behind the bed, looking on with vaguely bored expressions, the light glimmering on their brass buttons, flames licking at the edges of their flared coats.

“They burned us out in Saint-Dominigue,” said Charlotte, holding the folds of her lovely skirt daintily. “And the river took our old plantation.”

“But this house will stand forever,” said Maurice gravely, eyes sweeping the ceiling, the medallions, the listing chandeliers, “thanks to your fine efforts at restoration, and we have this safe and marvelous place in which to wait our turn to become flesh again.”

“We’re so glad to have you, darling,” said Stella, with the same bored air, shifting her weight suddenly so that her left hip poked out the silk chemise. “Surely you don’t want to pass up an opportunity like this.”

“I don’t believe you! You’re lies, figments!” Michael spun round, head crashing through the peach-colored plaster wall. The potted fern went over on the floor. Couples writhing before him snarled as his foot went through them-through the back of the man and the belly of the woman.

Stella giggled and sprinted across the floor, pitching herself back into the satin-lined coffin and reaching out for her glass of champagne. The drums were growing louder and louder. Why doesn’t everything catch fire, why doesn’t it all burn?

“Because this is hell, son,” said the nun, who raised her hand to slap him again. “And it just burns and burns.”

“Stop it, let me go!”

He crashed into Julien, falling forward the flames flashing upward in a heated blast into his face.

But the nun had him by his collar. She had the St. Michael medal in her hand. “You dropped this, didn’t you? And I told you to take care of it, didn’t I? And where did I find it? I found it lying on the ground, that’s where I found it!” And wham, the slap struck him again, fierce and hurtful, and he seethed with rage. She shook him as he slipped onto his knees, hands struggling to shove her away.

“All you can do now is be with us, and go back through!” said Deborah. “Don’t you understand? The doorway is open; it’s just a matter of time. Lasher and Rowan will bring us through, Suzanne first, then I shall go and then-”

“No, wait a minute now, I never agreed to any such order,” said Charlotte.

“Neither did I,” said Julien.

“Who said anything about order!” roared Marie Claudette, kicking the quilt off her legs as she sat forward in the bed.

“Why are you being so foolish!” said Mary Beth, with a bored, matter-of-fact air. “My God, everything has been fulfilled. And there is no limit to how many times the transmutation can be effected, and you can imagine, can’t you, the superior quality of the mutated flesh and the mutated genes. This is actually a scientific advance of stunning brilliance.”

“All natural, Michael, and to understand that is to understand the essence of the world, that things are-hmmmm, more or less predetermined,” said Cortland. “Don’t you know you were in our hands from the very beginning?”

“That is the crucial point for you to understand,” said Mary Beth reasonably.

“The fire that killed your father,” said Cortland, “that was no accident … ”

“Don’t say these things to me!” roared Michael. “You didn’t do that. I don’t believe it. I don’t accept it!”

“ … to position you exactly, and see to it that you had the desired combination of sophistication and charm, so as to command her attention and cause her to let down her guard … ”

“Don’t bother talking to him,” the tall nun snapped, her rosary beads jangling together as they hung from her thick leather belt. “He’s incorrigible. You just leave him to me. I’ll slap the fire out of him.”

“It isn’t true,” he said, trying to shield his eyes from the glare of the flames, the drums pounding through his temples. “This is not the explanation,” he cried. “This is not the final meaning.” He outshouted the drums.

“Michael, I warned you,” came the piteous little voice of Sister Bridget Marie, who peeped around the side of the mean nun. “I told you there were witches in those dark streets.”

“Come here at once, and have some champagne,” said Stella. “And stop creating all these hellish images. Don’t you see, when you’re earthbound you create your surroundings.”

“Yes, you are making it so ugly here!” said Antha.

“There are no flames here,” said Stella. “That’s in your head. Come, let’s dance to the drums, oh, I have grown so to love this music. I do like your drums, your crazy Mardi Gras drums!”

He thrashed with both his arms, his lungs burning, his chest about to burst. “I won’t believe it. You’re all his little joke, his trick, his connivance-”

“No, mon cher,” said Julien, “we are the final answer and the meaning.”

Mary Beth shook her head sadly, looking at him. “We always were.”

“The hell you are!”

He was on his feet at last. He twisted loose from the nun, ducking her next slap, and gliding through her, and now he sped through Julien’s thickening form, blind for a moment, but emerging free, ignoring the laughter, and the drums.

The nuns closed ranks but he went through. Nothing was going to stop him. He could see the way out, he could see the light pouring through the keyhole door. “I will not, I will not believe … ”

“Darling, think back to the first drowning,” said Deborah, suddenly beside him, trying to capture his hand. “It was what we explained to you before when you were dead, that we needed you, and you did agree, but of course we knew you were just bargaining for your life, lying to us, you see, and we knew that if we didn’t make you forget, you would never never fulfill-”

“Lies! Lasher’s lies!” He pulled free of her.

Only a few more feet to the door, and he could make it. He pitched forward, stumbling again over the bodies that littered the floor, stepping on backs and shoulders and heads, smoke stinging his eyes. But he was getting closer to the light.

And there was a figure in the doorway, and he knew that helmet, that long mantle, he knew that garb. Yes, knew it, very familiar to him.

“I’m coming,” he cried out.

But his lips had barely moved.

He was lying on his back.

His body was shot through and through with pain, and the frozen silence closed around him. And the sky high above was that dizzying blue.

He heard the voice of the man over him saying, “That’s right, son, breathe!”

Yes, knew that helmet and that mantle, because it was a fire fighter’s garb, and he was lying by the pool, sprawled on the icy cold flagstones, his chest burning, his arms and legs aching, and it was a fireman bending over him, clapping the plastic oxygen mask to his face and squeezing the bag beside him, a fireman with a face just like his dad’s face, and the man said again: “That’s it, son, breathe!”

The other firemen stood over him, great shadowy shapes against the moving clouds, all familiar by virtue of their helmets and their coats, as they cheered him on with voices so like his father’s voice.

Each breath he took was a raw throb of pain, but he drew the air down into his lungs, and as they lifted him, he closed his eyes.

“I’m here, Michael,” Aaron said. “I’m at your side.”

The pain in his chest was enormous and pressing against his lungs, and his arms were numb. But the darkness was clean and quiet and the stretcher felt as if it were flying as they wheeled him along.

Argument, talk, the crackle of those walkie-talkie things. But none of it mattered. He opened his eyes and saw the sky flashing overhead. Ice dripping from the frozen withered bougainvillea, as they went past, all its blossoms dead. Out the gate, wheels bouncing on the uneven flagstones.

Somebody pressed the little mask hard over his face as they lifted him into the ambulance. “Cardiac emergency, coming in now, requesting … ” Blankets all around him.

Aaron’s voice again, and then another:

“He’s fibrillating again! Damn it! Go!”

The doors of the ambulance slammed, his body rocking to the side slightly as they pulled away from the curb.

The fist came down on his chest, once, twice, again. Oxygen pumping into him through the plastic mask, like a cold tongue.

The alarm was still going, or was it their siren singing like that, a faraway cry, like the cries of those desperate birds in the early morning, crows cawing in the big oaks, as if scratching at the rosy sky, at the dark deep moss-covered silence.