Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

LOCKED DOORS ALTERNATE ENDING

There's a saying about writing without an outline that's attributed to E.L. Doctorow: "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Yeah. That sounds real nice and writerly, and I used to subscribe to this theory. In fact, all the way up to my book, Abandon, I made it a practice not to outline the last half of my books.

The result was disastrous. It haunted my writing process, leading to massive rewrites.

The upshot (for you, gentle reader) is that sometimes the original endings to my novels were pretty cool, or at least had their moments.

In the summer of 2003, I reached the end of the Portsmouth section of Locked Doors, with an unfortunately vague idea of how I wanted to conclude the book.

What follows is that 29,000-word original ending (roughly 140 printed pages). Be warned—this is quite possibly the darkest stretch of fiction I've ever written, and that's saying something. What I was attempting to do with the last half of Locked Doors, was to show how a man and a woman (in this case, Andy Thomas and Violet King) could be systematically turned into psychopaths.

While the original ending of Locked Doors has its flaws, the Epilogue is one of my favorite things I've ever written. It's wild, it's out there, but in some ways, really fits the theme of the story.

Again, with the advent of ebooks, I can bring this 140-page alternate ending of Locked Doors to my readers. Enjoy!

# # #

This alternate ending takes its turn into left field after the conclusion of chapter 49 and the end of the Portsmouth section, right after Violet has been clubbed in the head by Maxine Kite:

Rufus pulled it from his back pocket, pressed the talk button, said, "Yeah, son, we got her. See you back at the house."

Vi’s brain told her arm to unzip the poncho and take out the gun but she remembered that she didn’t have it and besides the arm wouldn’t move.

"Now that’s what you call a good ol’ fashioned wallop," Rufus said and chuckled.

Then the old man kissed his wife on the cheek and leaned down toward Vi, all gums tonight.

"Her lips are still moving," he said. "Go ahead and clonk her again, Beautiful."

ALTERNATE ENDING

Elizabeth Lancing has lived in pure darkness for forty-one days.

Around Thanksgiving, she stops taking her meals. For forty-eight hours she refuses to eat or drink.

Then, on the verge of death, god saves her.

"Elizabeth."

The voice booms from the darkness above, masculine, calm, almost robotic.

"Elizabeth, I know that you can hear me."

She tries to sit up on the cold hard floor but has no strength.

"Elizabeth? Respond to me…are you wondering if you’re really hearing this voice?"

"Yes."

"You aren’t hallucinating."

"Where am I?" she croaks.

"Where is not important. You want to die don’t you?"

"Who are you?"

"You know, my child."

"I have children. Their names are—"

"I know their names. I created them. I’m going to free you. But first, can you do something for me, Elizabeth?"

"What?"

"Eat. You’ll die otherwise, and I won’t be able to help you. Next time I come, I’ll tell you many things. Prepare yourself. Oh, Elizabeth?"

"Yes?"

"Jenna and John David are safe. I can see them now."

# # #

god returns the next day. He’s spoken to many people in this small stone cell. Some believed. Some laughed. One told god to go fuck himself in the ear. Most had already gone mad and half-brained themselves on the rock by the time he came.

god finds Elizabeth Lancing asleep on the floor. The voice wakes her and speaks to her, though not of the fuzzy, comforting things she expects. It speaks of illusions she has accepted her whole life. god says he speaks truth—truth with teeth and big sweaty balls.

He doesn’t ask her to believe. Only to muse. Particularly on evil. He says that evil is a misnomer for the diamond core of man’s soul.

In parting, god says, "Consider how you might rid yourself of that definition, Elizabeth. Next time I come, I’ll tell you how you might do it, and if you’re interested, I’ll free you. If not, you may continue with your plans to die in the darkness you now inhabit and never see Jenna or John David again."

# # #

Pain divided by cushions of beautiful numbness…

# # #

I can see the sound from my bed. Blue sky. Navy water. A thread of green running between. Sometimes the leg throbs. Sometimes it burns. Sometimes I don’t feel a thing, not even my eyes.

Those are the blissful times, and I stare out the window and watch clouds gather over the sound and do not wonder or care where I am.

# # #

Orson keeps vigil at my bedside. He says I’m going to die. I tell him I don’t care one way or the other.

# # #

I lie in a windowless stone-walled room, a bare light bulb shining above my head.

An old man I’ve never seen before is stitching up my leg below the knee.

He glances at me and stops, his arms red up to the elbows.

The old man wipes his brow, says, "Give him some more gas, Beautiful."

# # #

Sometimes I see a strange sky. Cloudless. Sunless. Bright blue but without depth, almost as though I were staring into a blue television screen. While I stare at this sky, a voice speaks into my ear. Then I see things. I see the things it tells me to see.

# # #

Violet King has begun to splinter. Solitude can do that to you. Silence and unending darkness will most certainly do that to you. Her eyes have not seen light in fifteen days, her world now six by six by eight, enclosed by cold stone walls.

Her last memory is of a lavish yacht. She doesn’t recall how she earned the fracture along the top of her skull. Though it is healing, stitches would’ve helped, and the headaches have not let up.

She is still being fed and watered. One square meal a day. And though she thinks she wants to die, she continues to eat the slop that is put before her, ravenously. She believes if she doesn’t eat, she will die. The possibility grows more enticing each day, and though the idea of starving herself to death is occurring with increasing frequency, she has not yet taken the first step, which would be shoving the plate of food back under the door.

Vi was raised to think that if you commit suicide, you go to hell. It is the belief of a Catholic, not a southern Baptist, but for some reason her father believed it, so she believes it, too. However, as her notion of hell is eclipsed by her reality, she may reconsider her conviction.

# # #

The meal is always the same: an apple, steamed broccoli, browned hamburger meat, and two slices of white bread. Sometimes she keeps it down. Usually she doesn’t. Her morning sickness rages on. Incredibly, she has not miscarried.

# # #

The baby growing inside her is the only reason she’s still alive, the only reason she continues to eat. Vi has taken to talking to her stomach. She also sings. But the sound of her voice makes her cry. She hears the brokenness of it. A person she doesn’t know.

# # #

Today is Thanksgiving, but Vi has lost all concept of time. Lately, she can’t distinguish between sleeping and consciousness. It’s all that same quiet darkness. Hope has ceased to exist even in her dreams.

# # #

One day she decides that she’s in hell, and that the world of light and love and a man named Max was something she had imagined to pass this black eternity. She had become so good at dreaming, at conjuring that pretend, perfect life, it had alleviated her torture here. But something has snapped her back into hell. She will try to dream it all up again.

# # #

She fails. Her mind is leaving her. She hasn’t eaten in two days, because she doesn’t think she’s pregnant. Becoming a mother was a part of that lovely dream. Her deepest fear now is that she won’t die. Souls don’t require sustenance. She is unbreakable and will go on forever, a bottomless container, capable of holding oceans of pain.

# # #

I drift so far back. Is this a memory? A dream?

It’s a Saturday in late June. I’m nine or ten. Daddy wakes us up at 6:00 a.m. and tells us to get dressed. Mom’s at the beach with her sisters. Just the boys this weekend.

We climb into the station wagon and ask Daddy for the fifth time where we’re going, but he only grins and says, "Have to wait and see." He’s a great lover of surprises.

We ride in the front seat, me in the middle. At a nearby bakery, Daddy buys a dozen doughnuts, and I hold the box in my lap. By the time we reach the visitor parking lot of Stone Mountain State Park, the box is empty and our fingers sticky, our faces stained with chocolate icing and jelly and custard fillings. I’m a little mad at Orson, because he ate all of the crème-filled chocolate ones.

We reach the summit of Stone Mountain a little before 11:00 a.m., and Daddy throws a blanket out on the rock. With one strong warning not to go beyond the ledge of stunted pines, where the dome of granite begins to slope precipitously, he sets us loose—something Mom would never have done.

Orson and I spend the next hour chasing each other across the acres of sunlit rock. The June sunlight is strong, and the water collected in the small craters of the mountain is warm as bathwater. We take off our shoes and socks and dip our feet in and pretend we’re on the moon.

After lunch, we lie down on the blanket beside Daddy. Orson drifts off, but I stare out across the folds of Appalachian forest rippling off into the horizon. June bugs zip by, clicking noisily, and a yellow jacket seems interested in the uneaten triangle of Orson’s peanut butter and honey sandwich.

I glance over at Daddy and see that he’s asleep, too. I lay flat on my back and stare up at the sky which has begun to fade from the crisp blue of morning into the bleached baby blue canvas that may birth thunderstorms in several hours. I feel a prick. The yellow jacket must have stung my arm.

And I stare at the sky and stare at the sky and it turns bluer and flatter and the mountains disappear and Orson and Daddy disappear and then a voice speaks out of the heavenly pixels.

"That was a lovely memory, Andy. So nice to hear you speak of Orson. Your brother was very special."

I feel like I’m floating. I try to speak, but now my words come out mangled.

"Don’t talk, Andy. You couldn’t possibly form a coherent sentence. The pain was coming back, so I gave you another injection. Shall we go deeper this time? How about I talk and you listen?"

"Muuh. Ah. Muuh."

"Don’t try to speak anymore, Andy. I just want you to absorb my voice. I know you’re still a little disoriented. Not sure where you are. Maybe you’re afraid. Well, you’re going to let go of all of that. Fear has its place, but not here, not now.

"You ever been driving somewhere and you suddenly became alert and realized you didn’t remember the last twenty miles? I’m going to bring you to that state, Andy. I want you to lose all context and focus solely on the sound of my voice.

"You’re behind the wheel of a luxury sedan on a long, boring stretch of road. The dotted line moves beneath the wheels. Engine hums hypnotically. Sun shines in. You’re nice and warm, the seat soft and comfortable beneath you. And your eyes begin to lower and lower…and lower. And now your eyes are closed and the sound of my voice is all you hear. And we go deeper and deeper, and the sleepiness feels so good, so warm, that you want to go deeper and deeper…and deeper.

"My voice is now the only thing that exists. Squeeze my hand, Andy."

I squeeze the voice’s hand.

"We’re going to talk about values, Andy. Right and wrong. Good and evil. I want you to picture a row of great stone tablets. The rules of man have been chiseled into these tablets, and all your life you’ve abided by them and been put upon by them.

"These tablets stand on the edge of a cliff. And now there’s a man lurking behind them. Do you see him? Squeeze my hand if you can see him."

I see the man behind the tablets. I squeeze the voice’s hand.

"Now that man is pushing the tablets over the cliff. One by one. And they’re shattering, Andy. They’re shattering into millions of pieces on the ground. Squeeze my hand if you see them shattering."

I see them shattering. Hear the rock breaking. I squeeze the voice’s hand.

"That man standing on the cliff is you, Andy. You have just broken those terrible tablets that have been imposed upon you. You’re free now, Andy. Free to make your own right and wrong. Free to create your own values. Good and evil, as you’ve known it your entire life, does not exist. Evil is an illusion. Good is an illusion. You’ve broken those awful tablets.

"So now, when you see something, violence for instance, you will laugh and laugh and laugh, because it’s hysterically funny. Do you know why it’s funny? Because it’s meaningless. It’s so utterly meaningless, and people have attached to it such grave meaning. When you see an act of violence, Andy, you will laugh and say ‘How meaningless.’ Values no longer concern you, Andy. You are above them. They are falling away beneath you. You have just taken the first step toward becoming something better."

# # #

god comes to Vi after she pushes her third meal in a row through the slot beneath the door. god always waits until they try to starve themselves to death. It is a sign of their malleability.

When she hears the voice from the darkness overhead, she thinks she’s crossed into delirium. Weak, starving, she has hardly the strength to sit up, so she rolls over onto her back and stares into the blackness above.

"What’s up, God?" she says.

"Are you mad at me, Violet?"

"You do this to me?"

"’Fraid so."

"Then I’m mad at you."

Vi laughs in god’s invisible face. god laughs, too. The sound of god’s laughter is the most disturbing thing she’s ever heard. Her subconscious image of God is one of those oil paintings of a hippie, blatantly Caucasian Jesus in a clean, white robe, staring out of the canvas with sad, penetrating eyes. God isn’t supposed to laugh. Her God is holy and solemn, and if Vi were honest with herself, perfectly boring.

Under most circumstances, Vi would disregard any voice that intimated it was God. But after thirty days in soundless, pitch black isolation, when a voice suddenly speaks to you and tells you he’s God, you have no perspective from which to refute it.

"Everything you’ve been told about me is wrong," god continues.

"I couldn’t agree more."

"You want to die here, Violet?"

"No."

"You’d like to see your husband again? Max?"

She lets that name and what it could do to her bounce off her like a rubber ball.

"Of course I would."

"Then I need you to eat, Violet. Can you do that for me?"

"Why?"

"We have things to talk about, and you’ll be dead soon at the rate you’re going."

"Why can’t you just save me?"

"I’m doing exactly that, Violet. Only the things I’m saving you from, you may not want saving from."

"Like what?"

"Values. Comfortable illusions. Lies you’ve been told all your life by cowards."

"I don’t un—"

"You will understand. If you trust me. Do you trust me?"

"No."

"Then you’ll die here alone."

"Okay, I’ll try."

And she means it, and so begins the process of lying to herself. God has come to her. He’s come to save her. It’s so much easier to believe than the truth—whatever that may be.

# # #

And the captives sleep—two in darkness, dreaming of god, half-mad with sensory deprivation, one in bed, out of his mind on painkillers. They are being mindfucked each day. Whether the things god tells them will stick remains to be seen. Suggestion is powerful coupled with narcotics and exhaustion and isolation. But it can’t loose what isn’t there. god is looking for his diamond core. Where it is, he will nurture. Where it isn’t, or rather, where it can’t bear itself, he will make a brutal end.

But now god is sitting on a couch with his wife, a fire blazing in the hearth, Bing Crosby filling the musty corridors of his great stone house.

As he watches his son decorate the Christmas tree, his old wife rises to replenish her hot chocolate.

Would Rufus care for some more? He certainly would.

Luther hangs the final ornament, a wooden airplane he’s had since childhood, then comes and sits beside his father.

It’s a raw December evening beyond those drafty windows, and the cold fog spilling in from the sound has begun to enwrap the two live oaks in the front yard.

But they are warm, the logs hissing, popping, just the boys now. Rufus puts his arm around Luther, thinking of Christmas, fast approaching, his boy being home, the three souls now under his care, and the miserable little wretch named Horace, writing for his life upstairs.

You would think such a man did not know happiness, that his life of darkness would make him a creature of anger and melancholy and fear.

"Merry Christmas, son. Came together beautifully, didn’t it?"

And they sit watching the fire together, Rufus reflecting on the days to come. He’s quite joyful for someone whose passions direct them to go spelunking in the shunned caves of human psyche. It would be comforting to say that Rufus did not know happiness, that he was swallowed up in misery and self-hate.

But it would be a lie.

# # #

Next comes Christmas Eve. Maxine Kite carries the last casserole dish of candied yams up the staircase to the third floor cupola of the ancient house. Her guests have been dressed and seated. The long table is candlelit, moonlit. Through the west wall of windows, a thin moon lacquers the sound into glossy black. Through the east wall of windows, the Atlantic gleams beyond the tangle of live oaks and yaupon. The tourists gone, the island silently twinkling, the evening is cold and glorious and more star-ridden than any night in the last three years.

Breathless, Maxine sets the yams on the tablecloth beside a platter of steaming crab cakes. Then she takes a seat at the end of the table, opposite her husband, and releases a contended sigh. "Mrs. Claus" is spelled out in rhinestones across the front of her bright red sweater.

Dressed up as Santa Claus, Rufus occupies the head of the table. To his left sit the spasmodic Andrew Thomas, Elizabeth Lancing, and Violet King, their faces twitching involuntarily. At Rufus’s right sit Luther and Horace Boone. Luther also wears a Santa hat but does not look happy about it. Horace holds a leather-bound journal in his lap. His legs and torso have been duct-taped to the chair, and he trembles.

"Beautiful," Rufus says, addressing his wife, "I think I speak for everyone when I say this looks absolutely scrumptious."

Rufus rises and steps behind Andy, Beth, and Vi—a haggard-looking bunch. The ladies have been helped into two of Maxine’s faded house dresses. Andy wears one of Rufus’s tattered leisure suits—too tall and too narrow in the shoulders.

"Would Miss Violet care for some cranberry relish?" Rufus asks.

Vi looks up over her shoulder and smiles at the vibrating three-headed god.

"Ha-ha-ha, yes Miss Violet would."

Rufus scoops a spoonful of relish onto her plate and inquires if she’d care for a serving of mashed potatoes and gravy.

"Oh please. I’m eating for two, you know."

"Is that right?" Rufus says. "Well, I’ll be."

Vi’s head seizures intensely for five seconds.

"Thhhhhhhhhhhhhhhat was fun!"

Luther reaches for the broccoli casserole.

"Boy!" Maxine yells. "Not until the guests are served!"

When Rufus has finished serving the twitching threesome, he returns to his chair at the head of the table, removes his Santa hat, and says, "Dig in, everybody."

As the platters are passed around, Horace watches the three tremblers across the table try to feed themselves. Roughly one out of every three attempts ends in someone missing their mouth and shoving the food directly into their face. When Beth inserts a spoonful of yams down the neck of her dress, Vi giggles, then chokes and snorts mashed potatoes through her nose. The entire table laughs, and Rufus says, "Boy, the Christmas cheer is just palpable."

Then the party goes quiet and the room fills with eating sounds. Luther’s plate is covered in raw oysters on half shells. He lifts one after another, shaking a few drops of Tabasco sauce onto the cool oyster, and sucking it down his throat like a swallow of briny spicy snot.

"Oh my God!" Andy suddenly exclaims, peering at something under the table.

Rufus finishes off a hushpuppy and gently takes hold of Andy’s arm.

"What is it, Andy?" he asks.

"What happened to my leg?"

"Oh," Rufus chuckles. "Had to do a little surgery. That bear trap nearly took it off. I told Luther it was too big a snare. You almost lost the leg. Thought I might have to saw it off. Yeah, that’s about ninety stitches there."

Andy glares at Rufus, his head convulsing violently, then bursts out in laughter.

"Thank you!" Andy shouts.

Rufus lifts his fork, smiling, "Merry Christmas, Andy, you get to keep your leg!"

Again, the table erupts in laughter, everybody but Horace, who just stares at his plate, food uneaten, tears welling from his bloodshot eyes.

"Why the long face, boy?" Maxine asks. "You ain’t hungry?"

"He’s just nervous, Beautiful," Rufus says. "Totally understandable. He’s waiting for the verdict. Show everybody your book, Horace."

The boy lifts the slim leather journal up from his lap for everyone to see.

"That right there is Horace Boone’s Philosophy of Evil."

"I didn’t know you were a writer," Vi says.

Beth has passed out in her food.

Andy stares at a grouping of peas on his plate, mesmerized.

"That’s wonderful," Maxine says, "what you got to be nervous about, boy?"

"It’s shit," Rufus says. "That’s what he’s got to be nervous about."

Horace buries his face in his hands.

"I told him the first night he was here, ‘Horace, I didn’t invite you. If you want to stay, convince me you’re worth it.’"

Rufus takes a half shell from his son’s plate and sucks out the oyster.

Wiping his mouth, he continues, "I told him about my collection of treatises. I explained what would happen if I didn’t find favor with his, and he accepted the risk. So Horace, look at me you big crybaby."

Horace looks across the table at the hideous Santa Claus.

"For the record, I have not found favor with your treatise. Your rage is great, but your mind is small. You long to burn people. To smell cooked flesh. Eat human ash. Interesting cravings, sure, but Horace, you would murder without calm. You’d do it out of fear and confusion and rage. It would be brutal, but it would serve your deficiency, not your strength. You’re a kitty-cat who wants to be a lion."

"Rufus, just give me—"

"You were told not to speak. In short, you aren’t what I’m looking for, Horace. Few are. I saw your heart in your words, and it’s a broken, desperate organ, for which I have no use."

"Pop," Luther says, "why don’t we just let him burn one of the girls?"

Rufus turns and smiles at his son. He lifts his hand, scratches his nose, and backhands Luther across the face.

Vi giggles.

Andy licks peas, one by one, off his plate.

Beth snores.

Maxine shakes her head.

Horace weeps.

Luther glares.

"You go on and take him downstairs, son. I don’t care what you do with him. I might be down later. Better say goodbye to your idol, Horace."

Crying hard now, Horace glares at Andy and his peas.

"You misjudge your former hero," Rufus says. "I knew his brother. That’s the stock I’m looking for. That’s a lion who wishes to God he were a kitty. Leave your pathetic book on the table. I want it for my collection. Merry Christmas."

Luther rises, discards his Santa hat, and pushes his long black hair behind his shoulders.

Horace begins to beg.

Maxine pinches his cheeks as Luther slides Horace’s chair back from the table.

"You give a shit about this chair, Mama?" Luther asks.

"No, why?"

Luther drags the chair to the edge of the staircase and kicks it down.

Bones crack. Screaming ensues.

Maxine tilts her head back and laughs long and low.

"Thanks for dinner, Mama," Luther says.

Then he kisses her cheek and heads down the steps toward the whimpering boy.

"I tell you Andy…Andy, quit it with the peas already."

Andy looks up and grins at Rufus. His long hair and beard have been trimmed haphazardly, both now streaked with gray.

"You really let that boy down. You know, he followed you all the way out here from Canada. In the Vancouver airport, he overheard you calling for information on ferries to Ocracoke. Showed up at my front door the night before Miss King came knocking. I mean if it hadn’t been for him, you might have pulled one over on us. You used to be that boy’s hero until he read your manuscript. If he’d had it his way, you’d be dead right now. You don’t know how much he begged me to let him set you ablaze."

A series of clunks is followed by a scream as Horace and his chair descend another flight of steps.

Maxine giggles. "That Luther—he’s so funny."

"That boy thought you were the biggest fraud he’d ever seen. Called you a gentle spirit in his treatise."

"Oh, no," Andy says. "I’m very mean. I killed a guy once in the desert. Put a hole—BANG!—right through his head. And I shot your son! Ha! Ha! Did you know that? I tried to kill Luther, but he didn’t die."

Rufus smiles. "You’re a hoot, Andy."

"I’m a hoot, too," Vi says. "Hoot. Hoot."

"Yes, you are. You know a strapping young man named Max dropped by about a week ago."

Vi takes a sip of sweet tea, gurgles it, and spits it back out onto her plate.

"He came with your former sergeant, Barry something. A big bear of a man. Apparently, the whole police community of North Carolina is searching for you, young lady. They think Andrew Thomas, the Heart Surgeon," Rufus winks at Andy, "kidnapped you and buried you somewhere on Portsmouth."

"That is a riot!" Vi exclaims. "I’m right here!"

"Your husband looked absolutely heartbroken. He sat down in the living room, in the very chair you parked your caboose in when you stopped by in early November. He misses you terribly."

"He’ll get over it."

Beth wakes up suddenly from her nap, yams clinging to the side of her face.

"Feel rested, Miss Lancing?" Rufus asks.

"Lancing?" Andy says. "I knew a Lancing once. I killed a Lancing once. BANG!"

Andy slams his fist down on the table. Maxine chuckles.

"We were sitting in a car together. Then BANG! Blood everywhere."

Beth looks at Andy. She grabs the back of his neck, pulls him in close, and plants a sloppy kiss across his mouth.

"Hey, I knew your husband," Andy says. "What was his name?"

"Walter," Beth says dreamily.

"You know, he was an all right kind of guy."

Beth giggles. "He’s dead now."

"Oh, sorry to hear that."

"Well, it was for the best."

"Honey, do you have any kids?" Maxine asks as Horace’s chair thumps down the final flight of steps.

"Um, yeah."

"Where are they?"

"Who gives a flying fuck? I abandoned them."

"Why’d you go and do that?"

"Cause I didn’t want to be a mother anymore. Anything else, Miss Nosy?"

Rufus raises his wineglass of sweet tea.

"I’d like to propose a toast," he says. "To Andy, Elizabeth, and Violet. May our time together not end in your death."

A scream resounds from the lower recesses of the house, but Rufus continues, unfazed.

"May you break your tablets. May you find your way into the darkness and out again. And may you learn true freedom. Freedom from values. Drink with me."

The threesome clumsily locate their glasses and the party drinks.

Then Rufus and Maxine help their guests to a room on the third floor and shoot them all full of Ativan.

Leaving the supper dishes until morning, they walk hand in hand downstairs to the first floor. Rufus unlocks the small door under the staircase and holds it open for his wife.

As they progress together down this last rickety flight of steps to join their son in the basement festivities, Maxine inquires, "What’s that smell, Sweet-Sweet?"

They reach the bottom of the staircase and stand on the dirt floor amid the dim labyrinth of stone rooms.

Rufus chuckles.

"That’s gasoline, Beautiful. Old Horace is gonna get his wish after all. It’s a Christmas miracle!"

# # #

Winter on Ocracoke Island is a season of desert beauty—the lonely beaches ravishing and ravaged by the cold belligerent sea. The village streets are empty, the tourists having long since fled, wanting no part of a truly wild place. Nor’easters blow through, one after another. There is only wind and rain and skies of slate and the ongoing defiance of these eroding ribbons of land called the Outer Banks, daring the great Atlantic to consume them.

In February, two men walk up the beach north of Ramp 72, amid driving rain and spindrift and the deafening crush of surf. No other soul has ventured out into this raw gray madness, and on such a morning this barrier island feels like more than just the fringe of eastern America.

The slower of the two men stops walking, stoops down, and pries an enormous conch shell out of the sand. He turns it over several times, finding it perfectly intact.

"Here." Rufus hands the shell to Luther. "We’ll take it back to Mom."

They continue on up the beach, the wind to their backs, whipping the sea oats, the old man musing on what it will be like after the Great Regression. Luther has heard it a thousand times, and what he once suspected, he now wholeheartedly yet secretly believes: his father is full of shit.

But Luther dutifully listens.

The wind reverses, now howling out of the north, spitting rain into their faces. They turn and walk back toward the access road.

"I love it like this," Rufus says. "Look at the chaos."

He points out into the rabid sea, pulverizing the beach.

"How’s your treatise coming?"

"It’s good, Pop," Luther lies.

"Can’t wait to read it. See what four years in those Manhattan libraries taught you."

Rufus playfully bumps shoulders with his son. Luther musters a dead smile.

They walk awhile without speaking, over kelp and driftwood and the footprints of sandpipers and myriad shells and all that the waves have flung ashore. Rufus puts his arm around Luther and grins against the knowledge that he’s losing his son.

# # #

They’ll have no linear memory of the winter they are spending in the belly of the house. Only slivers to haunt the people they become. Slivers of darkness and silence and faceless voices and hilarious violence. They won’t remember the space between injections and gas, when the fogginess lifted just enough to let the inhuman horror of it all sink in.

# # #

"Breath deep, young lady." Vi inhales the gas. The world floats down and sinks through her and woooooooooooow.

"Now I want you to watch this tape."

"Okey doke."

As Vi fixates on the home video, the television screen begins to pulsate. It’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen. The star hangs upside down by his feet, and he keeps screaming and screaming.

From the other side of the room, Andy yells, "How meaningless!"

Another shot of NO₂ and now Vi laughs hysterically.

That quiet man with the long black hair is in the movie, too, and he’s the one making the star scream. When the screaming stops, the movie ends.

Vi tries to give a standing ovation but keels over on the dirt floor.

"I see you enjoyed that."

"Oh, so much. Can I watch another one?"

"Of course you may. We have many. But first…"

Here comes the mask of joy.

# # #

Sometimes the three captives watch the movies together, filling the basement with their strange laughter and rolling around like idiots in the pile of spent whippits.

Their favorite is Headless Harry. Luther graciously plays it for them again and again.

# # #

One night, Luther sits on an old couch in that dim screening chamber of the basement, watching Beth and Vi, sprawled out on the floor, engrossed in the tape he made of Horace Boone.

Andy sits rocking in a corner. The gas hit him wrong tonight, so he’s shaky and panicky and having a conversation with his dead brother.

Beth turns suddenly and looks up at Luther as Horace’s screams reverberate off the stone walls. Even through the fantastic haze, she registers the black absence in his eyes.

"Can I have one?"

She points to the bag of Lemonheads in Luther’s lap. He hands her one.

"Here," she says cheerfully and offers him a condom swollen with nitrous oxide. "Why don’t you come down here and watch Flamin’ Boone?"

Luther reaches forward, pinches the lips of the condom above Beth’s fingers, and leans back into the couch. After hyperventilating for twenty seconds, he brings the mouth of the prophylactic to his lips and inhales the gas. When he’s done, he flicks the limp rubber across the room, and his eyes fix on Horace, now charred, smoking, and softly groaning.

Beth still eyes Luther, so high on gas that the sounds from the television throb through her like waves.

"Quit looking at me," Luther warns.

"Why are you so sad?"

"I’m not sad. I’m not anything. Watch the tape."

# # #

Maxine Kite unlocks the door and enters the small, dark cell. She sets the candle on the floor. Its flame throws shadows and light upon the stone.

Vi sleeps on the floor. Maxine kneels down beside her and jams the needle into her backside. Vi stirs, moans softly, and turns over to face the old woman. Her eyes barely open. She’s hung over horribly from the nitrous oxide, as she has been every night for the last two weeks.

"What are you doing?"

"I came to read to you while you sleep," Maxine says. "Rufus thinks it helps."

"Will you promise me something?" Vi asks.

"No promises here."

"Please."

The lucidity of the young woman alarms Maxine. Rufus would be furious. She should’ve injected the sedative into a vein.

"What is it?" Maxine asks.

"Don’t give me the drugs when I have my baby. I want to feel it. I want to remember it. Please. You’re a mother aren’t you?"

The old woman hardens, her weathered face beautiful and haunting in the candlelight.

"I said no promises here."

# # #

Once more, Andy’s eyes close at the urging of the hypnotic drug. Though he’s conscious, he doesn’t feel Rufus slip on the headphones and the light frames. The soundtrack consists of a binaural beat—two pure tones, close in pitch, one amplified into each ear. Every seven seconds, the diodes emit a burst of red light. This goes on for nearly an hour, seducing his alpha waves. Then he sees things.

# # #

Orson occupies a rocking chair on the porch of his cabin in the desert. Andy approaches, having walked here from some great distance. The day is brilliant, sweltering. He’s sunburned and thirsty.

"Hello, Orson," he calls out.

No answer.

"Could I have some water?"

No answer.

Andy steps up onto the porch. Orson is beyond still. Andy reaches out and palms his brother’s shoulder. Orson’s entire frame shifts slightly—he weighs nothing, a rigid dried-out shell, as hollow as the exoskeleton of a cicada.

# # #

"Mom, me and Orson want to play in the woods."

Jeanette stops cutting the onion and wipes her eyes.

"Orson’s dead, young man. But you’re welcome to go."

# # #

The rapist, Willard Bass, chases little Andy and Orson through the tunnel. In the distance, the circle of light at the end grows larger and brighter. Andy stops suddenly and spins around. Willard stops running, too. Filthy, wide-eyed, and breathless, he stares at the boys.

"Our turn!" Andy yells, and now the twins chase Willard back into the darkness.

When running in this direction, the tunnel has no end.

"Guilty, Your Honor. So very guilty."

# # #

Andy stands behind a lectern in an infinite bookstore. The crowd goes back for miles and miles. Every face in the audience glares at him. He looks down at the page he will read from, but the words are gobbledygook. He turns the page. More nonsense.

"I can’t read this," he says into the microphone. "It doesn’t make any sense."

"Read it anyway," someone shouts.

"But it’s meaningless."

Several boos emanate from the crowd.

"All right, all right, I’ll try."

Sweat beads on his face. He looks down at the page and reads aloud, slowly and with great difficulty.

"smf ejprbrt ,idy nr s vtrsypt om hppf smf rbo;. brto;u. jr ,idy gotdy nr sm smmojo;sypt smf ntrsl bs;ird/ yjid yjr johjrdy rbo; nr;pmhd yp yjr johjrdy hppfmrddz’ niy yjod od vtrsyobr/"

The crowd roars with affirmation. Now people are standing and clapping and shouting, "More! More!"

# # #

A giant onion stands in a kitchen, chopping up Andy’s mother, its eyes watering profusely.

# # #

Andy enters the study of his lake house. A man sits at his desk, typing on his computer. Andy stands behind the writer, listening to the patter of fingers on the keyboard and trying to read the text on the monitor. The writer glances back, just a small boy now.

"You better not read it," Orson warns and then goes back to typing. Andy leans forward and squints at the computer screen. The words are gobbledygook.

"What are you writing?" Andy asks.

"It’s a story. About you."

"What happens in it?"

"You go insane."

# # #

They lower me into a squeaky leather chair. The warmth of a fire laps at my face.

"Thank you, son. I’d like to talk to him alone now."

A door closes. The quiet pandemonium of the fire fills the room. I cannot recall the last time I’ve had such presence of mind. The recent past holds all the clarity of a coma, and the shards of memory I do have are not worth keeping. I wonder if it’s Christmas yet. I wonder many things.

As I lift my head, the textures of the room begin to materialize and vivify.

It’s night. Beyond the windows, I hear the tinkling of ice pellets. I recognize this room—the empty bookcases, the hearth, the satellite photograph of the Outer Banks, the oil painting of Luther Kite. I don’t remember when or why, but I’ve been in this room before.

Luther’s father sits across from me in an identical leather chair, legs crossed and stately in his black, satin robe.

"Don’t be afraid, Andy," Rufus says, smiling. "It’s my great joy and privilege to be sitting here with you."

I manage to home in on the details of his face. Rufus Kite must be at least seventy-five years old. But aside from a field of wrinkles and a few liver spots, he appears to be in phenomenal physical condition. He possesses the eyes of a young man—hard, vital, and thrilled with his place in the world. I can see the reflection of flames in them. His white hair is combed back and damp, as though he just stepped out of the shower.

"When is it?" I ask.

"You mean what month?"

His voice echoes. I wonder if it’s the room or my brain.

"Yes."

"It’s late March."

"No, but…" It takes a great effort to speak, and I have difficulty keeping my eyes open. "How long—"

"You’ve been with us for a hundred and forty-one days."

"No, it can’t be that—"

"You know what they say. Time flies."

I suspect he’s lying to me. It seems impossible that almost five months have elapsed since I came to this island. It feels more like a week.

"Where are the girls?" I ask. "Did I dream they were here?"

"Andy, let’s hold off on the questions for now, okay? Humor me, and I’ll fill you in on everything afterwards. Agreed?" I nod. "Wonderful. So how are we feeling?"

"Like I’ve just woken up from a long nightmare. But I feel like I know you very well."

"Oh, you and I have spent lots of time together."

Rufus reaches down and lifts a piece of paper from underneath his chair.

"I’m going to show you a picture. I just want you to react."

He holds the photo up in front of his chest. For some strange reason, laughter wells up inside of me. But I stifle it, because the photo shows Luther, tearing into someone with an ax. Rufus sets the photograph facedown in his lap.

"Answer me honestly, Andy. When you saw this picture, did you fight the urge to laugh?"

"No."

"No?"

"No."

He grins. "Bullshitter. May I assume you believe in good and evil?"

"Yes."

"And to whose value system do you bow down?"

"I don’t bow down to anything. A universal standard of behavior exists, and whether or not you choose to follow it, everyone who isn’t insane knows there’s an accepted right way and wrong way of treating each other."

"Accepted? I don’t accept it. Just because the majority of human beings believes something, does that make it so? Let me ask you this. Do you believe in God?"

"I um… No."

"No? Well, then if you’re an atheist, please explain to me who created this ‘universal standard of behavior’ as you call it?"

"I don’t know."

"Let me help you. I’ve spent my life probing this question, and far as I can tell, a person can honestly believe one of two things. Either that there’s a God who created in all of us this innate universal standard of right and wrong. Or that there is no right and wrong except that which you fashion for yourself."

"And you believe the latter."

"Oh yes."

"Because that helps you rationalize the disgusting things you and your family do to people?"

Rufus smiles.

"Sadly, I speak only for myself when I say this. The infliction of pain is hardly the goal. What you would deem evil—the taking of life, the creation of suffering—these things are not the goal. Recreating values, thinking beyond good and evil, overcoming illusions so that we as a species can continue to evolve—that is the goal."

Rufus leans forward and pats my knee.

"I want to share with you my vision. We may never see it in our lifetime, but it will happen. I call it the Great Regression.

"Imagine: suddenly, unexpectedly, war breaks out on every level. International. Interstate. Intercity. Interfamily. Madness, hell, horror, and all that constitutes evil erupts and overspreads the globe like a virus of rage. Most of the world’s population dies as mankind unleashes every urge that has been suppressed over the span of its civilized evolution. Cities burn. Men murder their families and themselves. Armies attack their citizenry. The Regression could last years, but I have a hunch that the rage will be such that a month’s time is sufficient to bring mankind to the brink of extinction.

"But in the end, when the smoke has cleared, a small core of human beings will remain. They’ll have survived not only the malice of others, but the malice of themselves. They’ll have been the hardest, sharpest, cruelest, wisest. And amid the devastation, they’ll start a new world, no longer based on the fear of what lies in man’s heart, but on the elevation of man and his ideas. They will be magnificent, they’ll be gods, and the things they do will be wondrous and beyond our understanding."

Rufus leans back, glowing.

"Think you’d survive the Great Regression?" I ask.

"I’ve thought about that, and I don’t think I would. I’m not hard enough. But I want you to know that I’m very hopeful for you, Andy. I think you have it in you to see beyond the illusions. You know, as much as I tinker with your mind, I really can’t reprogram your value system. God knows, I’m trying. But I’ve got a good feeling about you."

Rufus puts in his teeth and pulls a pipe from his breast pocket. Then he rises and walks across the room to a small bookcase beneath the window that I hadn’t noticed before. He stoops down, lifts the glass lid from a jar of tobacco, and pinches just enough to pack his pipe.

"I’m surprised you haven’t asked about these," he says, motioning to a row of leather-bound journals. "Orson’s treatise is here. I should let you read it some time. You know, your brother was my only success story."

He’s puffing away, blowing smoke rings through smoke rings, as he returns to his chair. The room fills with the rancid sweetness of tobacco smoke. My heart pounds.

"What are you talking about? Orson—"

"Happened to Luther? Oh, no. We most certainly happened to him."

I straighten up in my chair. The grogginess evaporates. My hands tremble. Head throbs.

"I can see this is upsetting you, Andy. Should we talk about it another time?"

"Don’t fuck with me."

Rufus exhales a long stream of smoke.

"It’s been almost twenty years," he says. "It was summertime. My God, Luther was only fourteen. Maxine and I were walking along the beach south of Ramp 72, headed toward the southern tip of Ocracoke. It was windy. Sand blowing around like crazy, the sun liquid red as it sank into the dunes. It’s gorgeous out there. Soft white sand, far as the eye can see.

"At the end of the island, we came across this young man sitting in the sand, staring out across the inlet toward Portsmouth. He looked thoughtful and lonely, and I walked up to him and asked if he’d take a picture of Maxine and me. He obliged us. Your brother was such a sad young man, Andy. We got to talking. He told me he’d just quit college. I don’t know what was wrong with him. Depression probably. Whatever it was, I don’t think he’d have lasted much longer.

"I asked what he was doing on Ocracoke. Said he didn’t know. That he’d just been driving around from place to place, had never seen the Outer Banks, and so decided to come here on a whim.

"My wife, being the sweet angel that she is, invited him for dinner. He said no at first, but I could tell he was desperate for the company. We finally convinced him.

"Had a lovely dinner that night. Afterwards, Orson and I retired to this room. Sat in these very chairs. We were drinking black coffee and he was telling me about your father dying of cancer.

"Of course Orson’s coffee contained a substantial dose of Rohypnol. Boy, it’s always fun to watch them realize that something’s not quite right. Orson was chatting away, and all of the sudden he stopped and jumped to his feet. His legs just turned to milk chocolate and he staggered back into the chair and sat down, his chest heaving away. I explained that he would be staying with us indefinitely. He pissed in that chair you’re sitting in."

Rufus smiles. He sucks on the pipe but his flame has extinguished. He relights it and smoke clouds around him again like a foggy halo.

I’m fighting tears when I tell him, "But I read Orson’s journals. That’s how I found your house. I read about him kidnapping Luther."

Rufus shakes his head.

"You’re telling me Luther never attended Woodside College?"

"My boy never finished high school, Andy."

"I don’t understand. Why would Orson make that—"

"It isn’t necessary that you understand. Besides, it wouldn’t be the first thing Orson made up."

Rufus rises and walks over to the window. The sleet has turned to rain.

"I know Orson took you to his cabin several years ago," Rufus says. "He told me all about it. Please understand. That was a poorly rendered model of the experience you’re having with me."

I cannot ignore the horror that statement inspires in me. Rufus sets his pipe on the windowsill and runs his fingers through his hair. Then he nods at something behind me and a needle stabs into my shoulder.

Maxine stands behind my chair in a nightgown.

"Come on, boy," she says as the drug begins to envelop me. "Time for beddie-bye."

"Where are the girls, Rufus?" I ask. "Please. Are they dead?"

"Come on, boy," Maxine urges, pulling on my shoulder.

I rise to my feet, face the tiny old woman.

Then I punch her fucking lights out.

She hits the floor, unconscious. I hope I broke her jaw.

Rufus claps his hands and laughs and laughs.

"She is a pushy bitch, isn’t she? I’ve wanted to do that for forty-nine years."

I start limping toward him, intending to rip him the fuck apart with whatever strength I can muster. But the drug overpowers me and I sit down on the floor.

Rufus stands over me now, grinning and shaking his head.

"Hope you killed her, cause Maxine’s gonna want a little payback after that sucker punch, and I’m not sure I can blame her."

Rufus blurs.

The back of my head smacks the hardwood floor and I stare at the ceiling.

It’s sleeting again.

There’s no greater horror than knowing your mind is softening back into clay, and the potter is a psychopath.

# # #

Several weeks later, at sunset, the Kites take their class on a fishing fieldtrip to the ocean. It’s the first time Andy, Beth, or Vi have seen daylight in more than five months, and they emerge from the stone house as frail and sun-shy as astronauts returning to Earth after months in space.

Everyone except Maxine and Rufus piles into the back of the old pickup truck.

The class is giddy, and as the teacher cranks the engine and they roll down the driveway through the thicket of live oaks, Luther passes around the mask and gives everyone a hit of gas from the silver tank between his legs.

Through gaunt, sunken eyes, Beth looks over the edge at the path speeding beneath the tires. Vi leans her head against Luther’s shoulder, and Andy lies on the rusted bed, staring up through spindly, leafing branches at pieces of a cobalt sky.

He wears a silly grin on his face. They all do.

At the end of Old Beach Road, Rufus turns north onto Highway 12, and they cruise the strip, passing realties and B&Bs and motels and gift shops. The tourists are back, out in force on this cool spring evening.

Just beyond Howard’s, Rufus makes a right turn onto the dirt road called Ramp 72. For three miles, over tidewater creeks and marshland, it winds toward the ocean. When the dirt road turns to soft white sand, Rufus stomps the gas pedal, and the truck hauls through a gap in the dunes straight for the sea. Upon reaching the harder, tidesmoothed sand, Rufus turns south, the old pickup truck now hurtling to the end of the island.

The sky is endless out here, the ocean stretching east into approaching darkness, the sand reaching south and west into the horizon, where the falling daystar, now halfway below the dunes, deepens from red into oxblood.

The incoming tide runs up under the truck, and the tires spray cold saltwater on everyone. Laughter abounds. Gleeful shrieks. Even Luther smiles.

Headlights of other Jeeps and trucks are visible far in the distance, cutting their own trajectories across the beach. Rufus veers up into the softer sand to avoid a fisherman marching in waders out into the surf.

At the end of the island, Rufus parks the truck beyond the reach of the tide and kills the engine. With the vegetation of Ocracoke hidden beyond distant dunes, there is nothing to see but acres upon acres of white beach, the inlet and sand spits to the south, and the sea, now shimmering and crimson as it catches the parting rays of sunlight.

Rufus and Maxine step down into the sand.

"Off with the shoes!" Maxine declares. Though the bruise on her jaw is fading, she still speaks predominantly from the right side of her mouth.

The class climbs out of the truck and the barefooted party lumbers off together toward the sea, like a flock of psyche patients.

"Gas ’em up!" Rufus says, and Luther, toting the heavy tank, calls Andy, Beth, and Vi over and hits them again with a ridiculous dose of nitrous oxide.

"Let’s run into the ocean!" Vi screams, and she sprints toward the sea, followed by Beth and then Andy, limping on his bad leg.

Not until he’s knee-deep in saltwater does Andy register the stinging. Though it’s been more than a week, the wounds on his back and legs are still fresh and raw from his hour-long whipping session with Maxine. But they’re friends again. Because they’re even.

After a cold frolic in the ocean, Andy and Beth stagger down the beach toward the rest of their party. In the distance, Rufus and Maxine have stopped to talk to someone, and Luther has left the tank in the sand and gone running after Vi, who has taken it upon herself to hike to a rise of dunes a half mile away.

Beth and Andy fall down in the sand and laugh until it hurts.

Andy stops laughing when he doesn’t remember what he was laughing about.

"I’m so happy," Beth says. "I’ve never been so happy."

"Oh fuck, my buzz is fading."

They scramble to their feet and head for the tank. Andy puts the mask over his mouth and inhales several deep breaths.

"I think you have to turn it on!" Beth yells.

"Why are you yelling?"

"Oh, sorry. Hey, old fart!" Beth hollers at Rufus. "Come show us how to work this thing!"

Rufus jogs over, opens the valve, and gives them so much gas that Beth and Andy both lose all motor coordination and collapse in the sand.

Side-by-side, they lie there, staring up into the sky. The first stars and Mercury twinkle in the heavens, throbbing like tiny glowing hearts.

"I feel like I knew you in another life," Beth says.

"Me, too."

"I feel so good."

"Yeah."

"Oh, God I feel good!"

Beth rolls over on top of Andy.

"I love you."

She kisses his mouth.

"Oh, God I love you so much I want to."

"Okay."

Rubbing against him now.

"Love me, oh, love me right up!"

"But I can’t feel my eyes."

Then Andy is sitting in the bed of the moving truck. It’s full blown night. Cold and starry. The man who Rufus and Maxine befriended is sitting next to Luther, talking his ear off. Andy catches a fragment of the one-way conversation.

"…don’t know if you’ve ever been out of the country, but when you come back, it’s so difficult to buy into all this capitalist bullshit, especially when you’ve lived six months in a third world country where people don’t even have fuckin’ clean water to drink. Hey, could I get a little more of that?"

Luther helps the world-traveler to another lungful of laughing gas.

Andy leans against the side of the truck as they bump along the dirt road, back toward the village and the House of Kite. Even through the haze of gas, he can see the fate of the world-traveler in Luther’s face, gone absolutely horny for violence. And Luther sees that he can see it and offers the mask to Andy.

Andy takes the mask and lies flat on the truck bed, staring up into the night sky. He breathes deep and long. Beth and Vi have lost consciousness. He isn’t far behind. It briefly dawns on him—the sheer horror of it all—and he wonders what he is becoming.

Then the last lungful of gas hits him, and the euphoria is back, thank God, and the numbness and the all-is-forgiven now and perhaps Rufus is right you are not a bad person you are not really here but now nothing matters and thank you God thank you God and the sky is throbbing again, and the stars twirling then exploding into a thousand flinders of light.

# # #

On a late afternoon toward the end of July, the screams of a woman filled the stone house. You could even hear her from the front yard, standing in the wet, mosquito-ridden heat between the two live oaks. Andy and Beth certainly heard it, locked in their cramped dark cells underneath the house. They’d heard screams down here before, but this time was different. They recognized the young woman’s voice, and even through the antipsychotic fog, both reached the same conclusion: the Kites were killing Violet.

In the candlelight of Vi’s cell, amniotic fluid glistened in the dirt between her legs. Her hands had been balled into fists for more than an hour. Her larynx ached with strain.

Maxine Kite knelt beside her as Rufus leaned against the doorframe smoking a pipe.

"Take me to a hospital!" Vi begged. "It’s not coming."

"It is coming," Maxine said. "This is just—"

"No it’s not! It hurts so much!"

Another vicious contraction.

She screamed again.

Rufus chuckled.

"Pretend it’s the olden times," he told Vi between groans. "Just got to tough it out there, little lady."

Luther came down the creaking steps and peered over his father’s shoulder.

"Miracle of life, son," Rufus said.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"With what?"

"Ahhhhhgg!"

"The baby."

"I don’t know."

"What does that feel like?" Luther asked Vi.

"Fuck you!" Vi roared.

"Boy, she’s a tad busy right now," Maxine said.

Vi looked up at the Kites, their faces eerily grotesque in the firelight. This must be hell.

"Get out!" Vi screamed. "Get out all of you!"

No one left, and the contraction intensified. Lifting her head off the pillow, she grabbed her thighs and groaned for all she was worth.

A bloody head emerged.

When it was out up to its bellybutton, the little boy screamed "what the fuck?" at the world—a scared, fragile bawling that filled Vi with the purest joy she’d ever known.

She pushed the rest of the baby out.

It lay facedown in the dirt, crying.

"What is that?" Luther asked, pointing at the bloody mass beside the infant.

"It’s the placenta, boy. What feeds the baby."

"They eat that in some cultures," Rufus said. "It’s a delicacy. Mm, boy."

"Would somebody cut the cord?" Vi asked, crying now. "I need to hold him."

"Luther, go fetch a pair of scissors from the kitchen."

Vi sat up. She reached down, lifted the tiny, wailing creature out of the dirt, and brought him into her chest. She kissed his slimy head and whispered to him.

"What’s today?" Vi asked Maxine.

"I don’t know."

"Please. I want to know his birthday."

Luther returned with a pair of scissors. He pushed by his father and told his mother to get out of the way.

"Boy, you let me—"

"I want to do it."

Maxine relinquished her place beside the young mother, and Luther knelt down.

"Turn him over," he said.

Vi held her son up under his arms, facing Luther. The infant and the monster stared at each other, the baby’s eyes rolling around in its head, Luther’s black orbs taking in this bloody little miracle.

"Be careful, please," Vi said.

Luther took hold of the umbilical cord and clipped it a half-inch from the bellybutton. Vi pulled her baby back into her breast.

"What’s its name?" Luther asked.

"Max," Vi said.

"After my mother?"

"After my husband. I need to nurse him now. Can I have some privacy please? Please."

Luther got up and walked out of the room. Maxine followed him and Rufus closed and locked the door behind them all.

Alone in the candlelight, Vi wept. She removed her T-shirt, wiped off the baby, and pushed back her blond hair that clung to her sweaty face. Then she took Max into her swollen breast and began to nurse.

The sucking of the infant produced the only sound in the cell.

Vi closed her eyes.

The soreness between her legs was nothing now compared to those contractions. Loneliness, joy, and horror came in equal measure. She looked down at her infant son, eyes open and shining, sucking away. She stroked his cheek, the firelight dancing across his face. All she wanted now was her husband, looking down on them. She was certain of it—Max would’ve cried.

Vi started to pray, but stopped herself. The fuck had He done for her? She should be grateful that He allowed her to give birth before an audience of psychopaths? Did He need to hear her say she wanted her child to live? How could He not know that?

Count your blessings. Look on the bright side. Fuck the bright side. This should’ve happened in a hospital with my husband. We missed sharing this together.

For the first time in her life, it occurred to her that she was all alone and always had been. She’d bought into the God of suburbia. Comfy, predictable, and manmade to revolve around man. The God of her Baptist upbringing was clearly unconcerned with her current predicament. He’d denigrated the birth of her son by allowing it to occur in a basement that she’d probably never leave.

Her God was fine on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings when all was hunky-dory. And it was even possible to write off the tragedies that befell others as "part of God’s plan." But hold that sentiment up to the flaming knowledge that your newborn child will never see his father, that he might die horribly before he’s even a week old, and see if it doesn’t burn.

When life turns into a real horrorshow, the God she knew was about as useful as a water gun in a war. She felt blasphemous for thinking it, but He was no comfort to her now. She was drowning. He was watching. Either impotent to deliver her, or unwilling. And especially if it were the latter, she had no use for such a god.

# # #

Luther’s room stands at the south end of the third floor, unchanged for more than twenty years. His toy chest still occupies the corner, filled with the playthings he treasured as a lonely child. Even his stuffed animal collection remains—hanging from the ceiling in a rusty wire fruit basket. Dolphie the dolphin, Birdie the blackbird, Polar Bear, and Clementine the barn owl were the major players.

Luther enters his bedroom and closes the door. He approaches the window. Across the sound, a line of late day thunderstorms clobbers the mainland. Zigzags of lightning strike the water a few miles offshore, but their thunder never reaches Ocracoke.

Luther glances back at the desk beside his bed. He’s written only half a page in that leather-bound journal, and it’s utter shit.

"You’re no different from the rest of them," his father told him last night. "Best figure out what you believe and why. Time’s a wastin’."

Luther feels very peculiar. He hasn’t encountered the emotion of fear since childhood, though it isn’t fear of his father and what he may do to him if Luther doesn’t write an exceptional treatise. He could give a remote shit about Rufus. Fuck Rufus. Fuck the goddamn old codger of a bastard. What Luther fears is his own expanding emptiness. He thinks of Baby Max, the moment the infant’s head broke free into the world, and acknowledges it for what it was: the most powerful thing he’d ever witnessed.

Luther lies down on his bed and stares up at the cracks in the ceiling as the storms pass over the island.

It’s dusk when he rises out of bed, takes Dolphie from the fruit basket, and walks downstairs. His mother and father are in the kitchen, flirting and cooking dinner for the guests. He smells wafts of browned hamburger meat and steamed broccoli. As he opens the small door under the staircase, he overhears Rufus say, "Why don’t you grab holt of my stick and see what you’re in for tonight, you old stinky woman."

The downstairs runs the length and breadth of the hundred and eighty-six year-old house, unique to the island as the vast majority of residences sit several feet above ground to protect them from the flooding nor’easters and the storm surges of hurricanes. Consequently, this basement has been underwater numerous times since its construction.

It served as slave quarters in the 1830’s. Servant quarters at the turn of the century. And one of the most extensive wine cellars in North Carolina in the 1920’s. Ten years ago, Rufus wired two of the rooms for electricity.

The rest are lit by candle or not at all.

The stone in one of the rooms is charred black all the way up to the ceiling.

In another, the rock is stained burgundy.

Though Luther has spent many hours down here, he’s still prone to losing his way, especially when he ventures beyond the cluster of rooms near the stairs. Two thirds of the basement lies behind the staircase, a maze of confusing passageways that were lined with wine racks eighty years ago. Broken glass and pieces of cork can still be found in some of the alcoves.

One of the Kites’ favorite pastimes is playing hide and seek with the failed converts. The game is started by turning the guest out of their cell and spotting them a two minute head start into the labyrinth. Then the entire Kite family sets out in search of them. Sometimes they play with headlamps or candles. Sometimes they play in the dark.

Because Rufus has never trusted a body of water to keep a body hidden, all of his failed experiments are stored down here.

It’s deathly silent as Luther arrives at Vi’s cell and unlocks the door. She sits naked against the wall, snoring, the baby asleep on her chest, wrapped in her T-shirt, the candles all but melted away.

He drops the stuffed animal on the floor.

Vi wakes, startled.

"I want to hold Max," Luther says.

"Why?"

"I just want to."

"He’s sleeping."

"I won’t hold him long, and I’ll be careful."

Luther steps forward, leans down, and lifts the baby out of her arms.

"Support his head," Vi says.

Luther cradles the baby’s head in the crux of his arm.

Vi takes the pillow from behind her back and hides her nakedness.

"What’s today," she asks.

"Why?"

"I want to know my son’s birthday."

"July twenty-ninth."

"Thank you."

Luther stands there for several moments, gazing into the face of the sleeping infant.

"You’re never going to let us leave, are you?" Vi says.

"That’s up to my father."

Luther bends down, hands Max back to Vi.

"That’s for him," he says, motioning to the stuffed dolphin on the dirt floor.

"What’s his name?"

"Dolphie."

"Thank you, Luther."

He nods, turns to leave.

"I saw what you did to that family in Davidson," Vi says. "And their two boys. Why are you nice to my baby?"

"I don’t know."

It is one of the rare truthful moments of Luther’s life, and he leaves, trembling.

# # #

On a humid summer night, just before bedtime, Rufus walked into the kitchen of his silent house and poured himself a glass of buttermilk. Then he strolled the narrow hallway between the kitchen and the foyer and unlocked the small door beneath the staircase. As he descended into the basement, sounds of retching and agony emanated from the inhabited cells. He took a seat on the bottom step, the dirt floor cool beneath his feet, and sipped his cold, thick milk.

That would be Andy groaning and Beth sobbing between bouts of nausea. Their heads probably felt like they were imploding. Nothing to do for them really but let them ride it out. They’d be good as new in a few days.

Rufus wiped his milk mustache.

Baby Max was screaming now, fighting mad at having been woken again.

Yesterday, the first of August, Rufus had stopped dispensing drugs. The haloperidol, Ativan, nitrous oxide—it all abruptly ended. Vi had been weaned off the narcotics during the summer leading up to her delivery, but Andy and Beth had, with brief exceptions, been very fucked-up since mid-November. Rufus had never kept anyone on the needle this long, and though he’d anticipated this brutal withdrawal, the payoff would be well worth the risk.

For the last nine months, he’d dedicated a minimum of six hours per day to working with his patients, and their sessions with the mind machine and drug-enhanced hypnosis had been wonderfully productive. In addition, they’d all watched countless hours of home movies, and with the aid of laughing gas, had begun to see the humor and innocuousness in violence.

Andy in particular seemed to be moving beyond the illusions that plagued him.

As Rufus climbed the stairs back up to his bedroom on the second floor, where his angel, Maxine, was already fast asleep, he realized he hadn’t been this excited and hopeful since Orson.

# # #

I woke to a gentle, rocking motion. There was light here, more warmth than that awful darkness. I detected the cry of gulls, slap of water falling back into itself, and the imperceptible whisper of wind moving through open space.

My eyes opened. I found myself sitting in the cramped cabin of a boat, Violet King across from me, a baby in her arms, Beth Lancing at my left.

Duct tape had been applied to our mouths.

Vi was awake, Beth still unconscious, her chin resting against her collarbone. I went to shake her awake but couldn’t move, my wrists, ankles, and torso having also been thoroughly duct-taped to the high-backed chair.

I looked across the table at Vi and raised my eyebrows. She responded with a headshake—she knew as little as I concerning where or why we were here.

We sat there, immobilized, confused, watching the time on the stove clock creep toward noon. Through an ovular window above, I could see the tinted blue of the sky. Sleeping bags and wrinkled clothing had been stowed in the V-berth.

Barely audible voices emanated from the deck.

I tried to think back, to claim some recent memory, but could not.

The cabin door opened. Luther ducked and stepped down inside.

"Gonna need a hand with them, Pop!"

One by one, we were lifted in our chairs and carried up onto the small deck.

The day was brilliant and hot.

Maxine Kite lounged in a beach chair, in unabashed oiled nakedness, her face hidden beneath the brim of a straw hat, so emaciated a breeze could’ve lifted her into the sky like a dandelion seed. She was engrossed in a book called At Home in Mitford and seemingly oblivious to our presence.

Our chairs were arranged three abreast and portside on the deck of the twenty-four foot Scout Abaco 242.

The clouds—puffy white monsters—went back innumerably into the horizon, land nowhere in sight.

Luther watched from the cockpit, stretched out in the bucket seat behind the steering wheel and sheltered from the breeze by the wraparound windshield, a bag of Lemonheads in his lap.

Sweat trickled into my eyes.

The pasty chicken legs of Rufus Kite propelled him toward us. He grinned, toothless, his pale, hairless chest exposed by a chaotic Hawaiian shirt. We could see ourselves in the huge mirrored lenses of his sunglasses.

"Been a pleasure knowing you three," he said. "I swear it has."

I thought I sensed our fate in his tone of voice.

"Y’all are sitting there looking at me, cognizant for the first time in months, and don’t think I can’t feel your hatred. You think I’m a monster. That I’m cruel and indifferent. Think I don’t have your best interests at heart."

The sun beat down from its meridian, the air still, salty, so wet it could choke you.

"Hurts me that you think that. Really does. Can’t you see, I’m letting you operate on free will? I could’ve turned you into little robots. You spent nine months with me. I could’ve kept you in that basement five, seven years. Your minds would’ve gone to mush after two. Think what you want about me, but you can’t say I don’t respect free will. You can’t say it."

"Sweet-Sweet," Maxine whined, looking up from her book. "I’m so hot. Put up the Bimini top, will you?"

"Kind of busy, Beautiful."

It hit me—Rufus was anxious about something.

"You three," he continued, "you see the world through good and evil glasses. Least you did when I found you. I’ve only tried to help you take them off, and now it’s time to see was I successful. I’ll be honest—I’m nervous. Big day for us all."

Maxine closed her book and took notice.

Rufus approached Vi, her baby grasped tightly to her chest. He reached to rip the tape from her mouth.

"What about the baby, Pop?" Luther asked.

"What about it?"

"If she doesn’t—"

"The baby stays with her, whether that’s back to the house, or down to the ocean floor."

"But—"

"Luther, please. Deal with it."

Rufus removed the tape from Vi’s mouth. There was a hardness in her eyes she had not possessed when I’d first met her back in November. She’d grown rough edges.

"Violet, you have a very important choice to make. Will you—"

"I’ll do anything you want," she said. "Just don’t hurt my baby."

"Good girl. But know that I’m gonna call your bluff tomorrow, Violet. And let me say this. Should I find that you’ve lied to me today, it’ll be bad for you, worse for little Max there."

She pulled a blanket over her son’s head to shield him from the sun.

"I’m telling you this for your own good. If you don’t think you’re capable of doing whatever I ask you to do, it would be better for you both to be thrown overboard right now. Because, if you fail, you’ll see things no mother should ever have to see."

"Said I’d do it."

He re-taped her mouth, then pulled the tape from mine.

I drew in a lungful of thick air.

Saying "no" never even occurred to me. We would get back ashore with our lives and go from there.

Luther got up and came over. He looked down at me, pushed his long black hair behind his shoulders, and spit the white pit of the Lemonhead over my head into the water.

"Well, Andrew?" he said.

"I’ll do it. Whatever you want."

"That’s right. You know the drill from the desert. I saw the video of you and that cowboy in Orson’s shed. Maybe this time you’ll do it with a smidgen of composure."

While Luther silenced me with a new piece of tape, Rufus stepped forward and ripped the duct tape off the soft mouth of Elizabeth Lancing.

I turned my head, gazed at Beth. Light nourishment and the havoc of narcotics had drawn her once lovely face into a gaunt suggestion of a skull. I doubted if she were even in her right mind. Part of me hoped she wasn’t.

"Mrs. Lancing," Rufus said. "Tell me—was our time together successful?"

"I don’t know."

"Well, there’s a real easy way to find out. Would you take someone’s life if I asked you to? Take it with indifference? Without guilt or remorse? Take it in the face of all those ridiculous values that have been imposed on you your whole life?"

Beth looked at me. It broke me to see her like this. I thought of all those late nights at my house on Lake Norman, drinking, playing cards, laughing with her and Walter. How did we ever reach this moment? Just tell him what he wants to hear, Beth. Come on.

"Andy doesn’t have the answer," Rufus said. "Beth, look at me."

She stared up at the old man, said, "I um…know I’ll never see my kids again. I know that. I don’t remember much of the last nine months. But I remember enough to know what you tried to turn me into. Who gave you the right?"

"Actually, Beth, I gave—"

"Well, you failed with me, Rufus. I won’t hurt anybody for you. So now it’s time for you to be a big fucking coward and throw me over."

Rufus smiled.

"Course, I’m extremely disappointed to hear you say that. Luth, give me a hand with her."

The two men lifted Beth’s chair up onto the gunwale.

She began to cry, and that ignited Vi’s baby.

"If I were you," Rufus said, still gripping her chair so that it balanced on the side of the boat, "I’d inhale that saltwater just as soon as I went under. I mean you’re going to inhale it eventually, after a minute or two. It’s just a natural response when your lungs are starving for air. Why spend ninety seconds, holding your breath in sheer terror, when you can begin drowning immediately and get it over with?

"You know, you’re the first person I’ve ever thrown into the sea. So don’t go washing up on the beach a month from now and make me regret not taking care of you in the basement."

Beth looked at Vi and me.

"Don’t be afraid to follow me in," she said, crying now. "I’ll be with Walter soon, won’t I?"

Her chair splashed into the Atlantic. I craned my neck and looked over the edge of the boat. She bobbed in the water, struggling to keep her head above the surface.

"Andy!" she called out.

She was on her back, the chair beginning to sink, water rising above her ears. She swallowed a mouthful and coughed.

"I forgive you," she said and went under.

Because the sea was calm, I could see her descending, writhing violently, down, down, past five feet, ten. Then the Atlantic swallowed her into its warm navy darkness. Fifteen seconds passed, then a herd of air bubbles ascended to the surface and broke beside the boat and died.

They left Vi and me to roast in the sun, stunned and horrified for Beth, for whatever was coming tomorrow.

Maxine returned to her book.

Rufus and Luther fished off the bow for several more hours, catching three sea bass and a baby shark.

# # #

That evening, Vi and I reclined in lawn chairs in the Kite’s backyard, in the shadow of the great stone house, sunburned from a day at sea. Across the Pamlico Sound, we could see storms ravaging the mainland. It was cool now, going dark, the tree frogs screaming.

We’d been allowed to change into fresh shorts and T-shirts prior to being chained to the lawn chairs. Torches and citronella candles perfumed the air with a pungent smoke that did little to protect us from the plague of mosquitoes. While Rufus dumped charcoal into a grill, Luther finished cleaning the last sea bass. Tonight was for us, they’d said. A celebration, a sendoff for tomorrow.

When the meat was cooked, Maxine (now mercifully clothed in a hot pink sweat suit) brought me a paper plate, steaming with ivory steaks of grilled shark and coleslaw and potato salad. Luther handed me a bottle of Dergy’s beer and sat down beside me with his plate.

The shark was excellent. Night came on before I finished eating. It was very still, the sound as smooth and black as volcanic glass. I did everything I could not to dwell on Beth, sitting in her chair, several hundred feet down on that ocean floor.

When Luther got up and walked toward the rotten dock, I glanced over at Vi who was nursing her baby.

"When did you have him?" I asked.

"Couple weeks ago."

"Jesus. Where’d you get baby clothes?"

"Hand-me-downs. Used to be Luther’s. Isn’t he beautiful? I named him Max, after my husband."

"You gave birth in that basement? On that dirt floor?"

"Yeah."

"And he’s okay? You’re both okay?"

"I think so."

"I’m sorry you had to—"

"I left you stuck in that trap on Portsmouth. My fault."

Rufus had been roasting a marshmallow over the remnants of the glowing charcoal. He glanced back at us and said, "Who’s up for some s’mores?"

"None for me," Vi said.

"Andy?"

"I’m full."

"Alrighty then. More for me."

He lifted the flaming marshmallow out of the grill and joined it with the graham cracker and Hershey square. When the s’more was assembled, Rufus strolled over with his dessert and plopped down beside me in Luther’s lawn chair. He took a large bite and groaned with pleasure.

"Tell you what, Andy," he said, a string of marshmallow dangling from his bottom lip, "tomorrow’s either going to be the very best or very worst day of your life. Goes for you, too, little lady."

"Rufus, you’ve got some marshmallow on your face," I said.

As he wiped his mouth, I gazed down at Luther, sitting at the end of the dock, staring off into the cooling darkness.

"Tell me about Orson," I said.

Rufus beamed proudly, as if I’d inquired after one of his children.

"You think you made him into that monster, don’t you? Well, I hate to piss in your coffee, but my brother was fucked-up long before he ever met you."

Rufus laughed and laughed.

"What’s funny?"

"I think I know where you’re going with this, Andy. You’re on the verge of telling me how Orson was raped when he was twelve. And you, too, perhaps. Did he include you in that fantasy?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You can imagine how guilty your brother felt at first, in light of the things I asked him to do. I was afraid he’d kill himself. So I sat him down one day, said, ‘you were raped when you were a child.’

"He looked at me like I had four heads. I told him, I said, ‘Imagine how good it would feel if you could hurt people the way you like to, and it wasn’t your fault. If you only did these terrible things because someone hurt you a long time ago.’ I didn’t think he’d go for it, but he got this sly little grin—I’m sure you know the expression—and he told me the story of, ah, what was his name? Oh, yes. Willard Bass."

"You’re a liar."

"Andy, Mr. Bass did exist. And he was found dead in a tunnel under the interstate behind your house when you were twelve years old. But he didn’t rape you. He was just a homeless drunk. You and Orson, you never even saw him. You only glimpsed the policemen running through your backyard on the Fourth of July, the day they found his body. I have the newspaper article somewhere in the library if you’d like to read it."

I reached into my shorts, whipped out my dick.

The old man’s eyes widened.

I pointed at the head.

"That scar is from a cigarette. I branded myself after that fucker burned Orson."

"No, that’s a birthmark. Orson had one, too. It was his idea that the man burned his penis with a cigarette afterward. How imaginative, him including you in all this. You really bought it, didn’t you?"

I pulled my shorts back up, head swimming.

"What interests me most of all," Rufus continued, "is that you’re upset your brother wasn’t raped. That you need the comfort of knowing something awful made Orson what he was, you what you are. It’d be the end of the fucking world if someone were evil, purely from their own stock, own volition, and no external influence was to blame. I think that would truly frighten you."

"If Willard didn’t, then you happened to Orson. I know you made him do terrible things."

"But I didn’t make him love it."

Rufus took another bite of the s’more and wiped his mouth. I heard Maxine washing dishes in the kitchen. Vi gazed down at her son.

"About Orson’s journal," I said. "You told me Luther never attended Woodside College. That Orson never kidnapped him. Why would Orson make that up?"

"I’m afraid your brother was fantasizing again. He did take Luther to the desert ten years ago, but only because I asked him to. Toward the end, I think he wanted to feel that he was his own man. It injured his pride that he was such a pussycat before I found him. That it took me to show him who he was. But all in all, Andy, considering the journal and Willard Bass, I’d say Orson’s imagination is a helluva lot more vibrant than yours. And you’re supposed to be the writer."

Rufus stood up and plucked a pipe from the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt.

"I have to tell you though, Andy," he said, glancing over his shoulder at his son at the end of the dock, "Luther and Orson are ultimately failures. Evil is something to be overcome and redefined. It overcame them. Orson was torn between his love of blood and his self-hate. My boy," Rufus sighed, "has only a love of blood. It’s the great sadness of my life. I love the Great Regression for what comes after it. Luther loves it for the warfare, and he would have it go on without end. Do you see what I’m saying?"

I nodded, because surprisingly I did. In that moment, the philosophy of Rufus Kite made perfect, terrifying sense. Not that I sympathized. I just…understood.

Vi said, "What fucked you up, Rufus?"

He took the pipe out of his mouth and howled with laughter.

"Little lady, I was raised by loving, God-fearing parents. Worst thing ever to happen to me was my cocker spaniel, Rusty, getting mange when I was fourteen. Broke my heart."

"But what made you into this—"

"Violet, I’m not the product of abuse, molestation, neglect, abandonment, mental disease, pick your excuse. The things I believe and do are the result of a man who has looked unflinchingly at the human heart and rid himself of the lies he’s been told about it."

"There’s no goodness left in you?"

"God, I hope not. Goodness? I should wish for goodness? Morality is not man’s Godlike quality. The search and acquisition of truth is. You think God’s moral? He’s beyond moral. He created the concept. Made the rules you play by. I reject those rules because I have free will, because I have that kind of vision. I’m starting a new game."

Baby Max had dozed off. Now he stirred, eyes rolling around in his sockets like shiny ball bearings. Rufus knelt down and grinned at the infant, stroking his ancient crooked finger against the silky cheek.

"Max," he said, "a self-centered, mercurial little monster. I love it. He hasn’t been brainwashed with your morality yet. He’s an original thinker, more Godlike than we’ll ever be, until mommy and daddy poison him with notions of right and wrong."

Rufus rose, started for the backdoor.

"If there was no right or wrong," Vi called after him, "this world would implode. We’d all kill each other. There’d be no one left."

He glanced back.

"A few would survive. And they’d be the creators. I’m sorry you don’t understand."

Rufus disappeared into the house.

Luther still sat motionless at the end of the dock.

Vi reached over, took hold of my hand.

We were quiet for awhile. I tried to see my brother in the new light of him never having been raped. Tried to flush the taste of Willard Bass from my mouth.

"Did that woman on the boat, Beth, have children?" Vi asked.

"Two," I said.

Vi shook her head. "I can’t believe she didn’t…"

"I know. But don’t pity her, Vi. Envy is the appropriate emotion. You have no idea what tomorrow will be like. If you and Max live through it, you won’t be the same person who’s sitting beside me tonight."

Maxine emerged from the house and walked down through the grass toward our colony of lawn chairs.

She stopped beside Vi’s chair, knelt down, and swiped the baby out of her arms.

"No!" Vi screamed, jerking against the chain. "What are you doing?"

Max wailed.

The old woman rocked and hushed him.

"You can have him back tomorrow evening," she said, "long as you, and Andy, do what’s asked of you. If not, I’m going to hold Max by his little feet, and swing him into the stone walls of the basement till there’s nothing left."

# # #

Kim and Steve woke early Thursday morning in their suite at the Harbor Inn. They dressed in clothes purchased specifically for this trip—Kim in a cream rayon skirt and matching sleeveless V-neck that tied at the waste, Steve in royal blue shorts and a canary polo shirt. He’d never sported such vibrancy in his life, but this was appropriate dress for honeymooning. He didn’t feel foolish. He felt grown-up. He was twenty-three now, a college graduate, married, and tingling with what he thought was maturity.

They crossed Silver Lake Drive and walked into the small office of the Harbor Inn, where they scavenged the meager continental breakfast. With their greasy pastries and Styrofoam cups of orange juice, the newlyweds stepped outside onto the pier and dined in the presence of the harbor, glittering in early sun.

They bogged down discussing plans for the day. Kim wanted to go shopping again at the craft and antique stores. She was insistent on buying more gifts for their parents and friends and mailing them back to Wisconsin.

"They’ll have to be in the mail by tomorrow at the latest," she told Steve for the second time in the last half hour. "Tomorrow at the latest."

He wondered fleetingly if he’d married an obsessive-compulsive.

"Well, I’d like to go to Portsmouth," he said. "See the ghost village. On the weather, they said there’s only a twenty percent chance of rain this afternoon."

Steve was certain she’d oblige him. He’d been a model husband thus far. It was Thursday. They’d been in Ocracoke since Sunday, and they’d shopped mercilessly every day of their honeymoon. Perhaps he’d have to put his foot down on this one.

"Kimmy," he said. "I really want to see Portsmouth."

"Steve, it’s soooo hot. I don’t want to be outside all day."

"Case closed," he said sternly, a line his father had used to much success with Steve’s mother. "We can shop all you want when we get back, and we’ll shop all day tomorrow. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. Do you?"

She turned away from him, watched the ferry bound for Cedar Island chugging out of the harbor. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet and she wiped sweatbeads from her forehead. She glared at Steve. He looked like such a little boy.

"Fine. We’ll go to the stupid island."

She started back down the pier toward Silver Lake Drive.

Steve called after her.

It felt so good to keep on walking.

# # #

Kim started talking to Steve again an hour later, on the walk over to the Community Store and the boat docks. The day was blue and intensely humid, and the novelty of their marriage and this quaint island, so far from their Wisconsin home, cleansed the rancid taste of their recent quarrel. They were lovebirds again and held hands while they walked.

When they arrived at the parking lot for the Community Store, Steve motioned toward the shack at the end of the dock, pointing out the TATUM BOAT TOURS sign mounted on the side.

"That’s it," he told Kim. "Guy said to be there at eleven."

"How much is it?"

"I think twenty dollars a person."

"Oh, jeez that’s expensive."

He chose not to point out that she’d already spent over four hundred dollars on gifts. Kim would certainly have a well-reasoned argument for each and every expenditure.

They walked into the Community Store, a modest, eighty-six year-old grocery offering a modicum of staples, beer and wine, local jams and canned peppers, even several shelves of videos for rent.

Potato chips and beef jerky seemed sufficient to tide them over until evening. Steve paid for the snacks and ten postcards that Kim required immediately. Loading everything into a small backpack, they crossed the burnished wood floor and walked back outside into the ever-thickening heat.

It was nearly eleven, so they headed for the steps leading up onto the dock.

Kim stopped suddenly on the weatherbeaten planks and peered down at the water.

"Will you look at that?" she said, pulling a disposable camera from the front pouch of the backpack she’d recruited her husband to carry. "He’s not even scared of us. Mom will love this picture."

She took several photographs of the tattered pelican.

"Look at its wing," she said. "I’ll bet it can’t fly anymore."

"It wants food," Steve said. "Should I give him a piece of jerky?"

"Jerky?" She sighed with immeasurable annoyance. "It would choke him."

"No, I don’t think it would—"

"Fine, Steve. You want to kill this sweet old bird, go right ahead. I’m walking to the end of the pier."

Footsteps clanked toward them. They both turned and watched a tall frail man painfully ascend five steps to the dock. When he reached the top, he stopped and leaned against the railing to catch his breath.

"Sir, you all right?" Kim asked.

"Yeah, I’m just old as shit," he said, grinning. "But I’ll make it." The man took a deep breath and said, "Whew. Glad I caught you two. You here to take the boat over to Portsmouth with me?"

"We sure are," Steve said. "You the gentleman I spoke with on the phone this morning?"

"Well, I don’t know about the gentleman part. What was your name again, young man?"