Wetbones

8

The Doublekey Ranch, near Malibu

As Mitch's body healed, his mind began to flake away. Sometimes he heard a murmur of voices when he was sure the building and the grounds outside were empty. After a while he realized he was hearing the roses outside the window talking to one another.

When the Handy Man came into the room, Mitch didn't recognize him, at first. He looked the same as always, but somehow no identity clung to his familiar face. To Mitch this creature was just a moving module of flesh and purpose; an apotheosis of the minatory presence of this place. A thing that moved about the room like a videogame character, doing this and that; beeping now and then. Then he went away. Game Over.

Eurydice's voice brought Mitch back to himself. "Mitch?"

It came muffled through the wall.

"Come and talk to me!"

They'd spoken earlier, through the crack, but Mitch hadn't been able to say much. "Oh we're just here, is all," he'd said. "I gotta lay down now. 'Bye."

How long ago had that been? Hours. He'd sat on the edge of the bed staring at the wallpaper, letting his eyes go in and out of focus. For how many hours? He shrugged, and got up from the bed, went to the wall, pushed the dresser out of the way, and crouched next to the crack.

"Mitch… Are you okay?"

Suddenly his pulse was pounding, his mouth was dry. "Eurydice," he said. "I'm geeking in here. I'm losin' it."

He could tell she was trying not to break down as she said, "How long you been there?"

"I don't know. Some days. Maybe some weeks. I'm not sure. They don't let me out at all. I go into some weird places in my head. I saw some shit in that room you're in. And outside. Eury, we gotta…"

They had to what? He wasn't really sure.

"Can't get out the window," she said. "Your room like that, too?"

"Yeah. There's no attic trap doors, there's nothing. No way to get out."

"The only way out is to jump somebody. When they come in the door."

He frowned. Did she really think that was possible? "They wouldn't let that happen. They know what you're doing. They know when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. They won't let us. No."

"There always be some way! Motherfuckers. Fucking motherfuckers lied, really trickin' us off, they…"

"We have to just stay here. Maybe they'll let us have lots of head syrup."

"Don't talk about that!" she hissed. He heard her thump the wall in her anger. "Goddamn it, why you such a limp dick? We gone get out of here, Mitchie. We…"

"I was always in love with you," he said, suddenly.

She was silent for a minute. Then she said, "You tell me when we get out."

"We can't."

"Mitch -!"

"Don't get mad. We can't. Except… Um…"

"Except how?"

"Except if we… become like them. We got to learn to be what they are…"

Watts, Los Angeles

Garner found them, all of them, in the parking lot of a corner E-Z Check Cashing place, its windows cluttered with signs. Any check cashed! Bus Passes; Money Orders; Food Stamp Pick-up; Western Union.

On the opposite corner, across from the little parking lot, was Bubba's Discount Liquors. The crowd that hung out in the parking lot filtered back and forth between the check cashing business and the liquor store. They stood around laughing and arguing and hustling one another and ignoring one another and gossiping, their restless eyes watching the street. Now and then one of the girls, the toss-ups, would take a ride with one of the men who cruised by, looking for easy pussy. There were about forty of them in the Set, when they were all there; sometimes there were as few as ten, depending on what the Mix had given them. Garner had sat in his van and watched them for a while, sipping from his bottle until one of the girls approached him. A black girl – her skin the colour of coffee with a single spoonful of cream. She was short but quite pretty, despite being nearly emaciated. Big eyes, pointy tits in a t-shirt shortened to show her flat, muscular belly, brown jeans. It was the sort of t-shirt with a cat's face on it, traced out in gold and silver paint; its eyes were plastic fake emeralds glued on at the factory.

"How are you today?" she asked, putting it like that because he was a white guy.

He shrugged and said, 'What's your name?"

"Gretchen."

"I'm…" He thought back. When he was using, the time before, they'd called him Slim, on the streets. "I'm Slim."

"So. Slim – what's happening with you today?"

She was careful not to solicit him, and she was consciously speaking in mostly white English. She probably had an educated background. A fair number of addicts did. He'd met hardcore crack whores who had two degrees. They were usually black, though, even the educated ones. Going back to visit the old neighbourhood could be dangerous, if your life was going sour.

"What's happening?" Garner snorted. "My daughter's dead. She was murdered. I want to get fucked up. Really geeked-out fucked up on rock. And then I want some pussy."

She stared at him. Then laughed. "Well, you come right to the point anyway, don't you?"

They were in a dingy box that Gretchen's cousin, Hardwick, called "my crib". It was a studio apartment with the bathroom down the hall. It had nothing in it except a mattress where Garner and Gretchen and Hardwick sat with legs sprawled onto the floor; an aluminium chair missing the back; a pile of clothing in one corner. Even the fridge and the stove had been hauled out and sold somewhere, probably for less than fifty bucks each.

Garner knew it was stupid and dangerous to be here. He heard voices in the hall. From time to time people pounded on the door and asked, ''What up?" Hardwick sent them away without opening the door but Garner knew that eventually they'd be back, and some of them would get in. And he knew that the more he was out-numbered, the more dangerous it was. Hardwick himself was a slender, muscular black man. Some weeks ago, after getting his back G.A. checks, he'd had his hair cut and shaped. There was a flat layer on top of his head, and his girlfriend's name, TASHA, was cut into the sides of his hair with calligraphic exactitude; but it had partly grown over as money went to crack instead of haircut maintenance. Hardwick wore a sleeveless, well-aged Lakers shirt, black work-out shorts and plastic sandals. Right now his yellowing eyes were focused on the crack pipe tilted off-centre and clamped between his lips.

Garner and Gretchen were staring at the pipe too. Waiting for their hits.

Garner had, of course, gotten off on the first two hits he'd taken, coached by Gretchen on how to melt the crack in the pipe with the lighter, how to draw the hit. Now, his hands shook where they clutched his knees as he struggled to keep from snatching the pipe from Hardwick.

That, he knew, would be very dangerous indeed. He hadn't seen any weapons on Hardwick but he'd seen the faded prison tattoo on the underside of his forearm, and he'd seen the old, black trackmarks on his veins from an earlier period of preferring the needle over the pipe, and, most important, he knew not a goddamn thing about

Hardwick. Nothing, except that he was Gretchen's cousin. And he knew scarcely anything about Gretchen. Except that she was a cocaine whore who had been a licensed RN who used to make 40K a year supervising a ward for a Chicago hospital before coming home on a vacation and getting hooked and subsequently forgetting her job, staying here for the next three years…

For all Garner knew, Hardwick was a murderer. For all Garner knew, so was Gretchen. Maybe they got white guys with money in here and got them fucked up and then rolled them. Or killed them.

Maybe not. Maybe she'd just wait till he was too loaded to think, and then steal his money and split. Maybe she had AIDS and syphilis which would be just too bad for him since, now that he was loaded, he had every intention of fucking her and that was understood to be part of the deal. He might be dead of AIDS in two years if he weren't beaten to death first.

All of it was possible and Garner was enjoying that possibility immensely.

With luck, he might get killed.

The pipe came around to Garner, at last. Fingers vibrating like tuning forks, he took his hit. He felt the rush; saw the room's colours drain and swirl around him; heard a humming in his ears. Then it was over.

He stared at the pipe in surprise as Gretchen pulled it from his hands. "Not mucha hit," he muttered.

"You gotta good hit," Hardwick said, absently picking at fuzz on the mattress, inspecting it between his yellowed fingers to see if it were a fleck of cocaine. Tweaking.

"No… I…" Garner shook his head. The rush had been brief and superficial. The next one, he knew, would be even less powerful. He'd never smoked crack before tonight, but in the old days he'd shot heroin and cocaine, slammed it into his mainline, and he knew what to expect from coke. A high, then a down, then a smaller high, then a deeper down, then a smaller high yet, then an even deeper down…

He wasn't feeling great, now, but still, he was stoned. Stoned and numb, which was right where he wanted to be. Constance seemed like a strange dream. An aberration in his life. Constance and the years of ministry. He had taken up the past seamlessly; he was back where he belonged, on the streets, burning himself up like a smoldering cigarette butt.

He waited impatiently for the next hit. It finally came but it wasn't much and he said so.

"What it is, we don't have the good shit," Hardwick said. "I can git it though. You front me two hunnerd, I bring you somethin' like a quarter ozzie."

Gretchen was shaking her head at Garner, but he fingered two hundred dollars out of a shirt pocket – he had the rest of his money tucked into his shoe – and passed it tremblingly to Hardwick. "Just do it fast."

"Need to borrow your van, bro," Hardwick said, shooting Gretchen a warning look.

Garner stared at Hardwick. The room swam around him. "My van? I don't know, man…"

"Hey – I leave you my I. D., and you in my place here, this is where I live, man, so you know for sure I'm comin' back."

"Oh yeah." That seemed to make sense. Sure. Yeah. He passed over his car keys and Hardwick was up and out the door.

"Motherfucker," Gretchen said. "I hope that wasn't all your money."

Santa Monica

It came to Constance suddenly, on a balmy early evening, with the sunlight turning the smog into a sluggish light-show at the horizon.

She could run away from Ephram. All she had to do was suffer enough. And what would that mean? Misery. He'd shoot her full of hurt.

So what? She looked at her maimed hand; the bandages over the stump of her missing finger. He'd cut off her finger and she hardly felt it. She was disfigured, and she didn't care. She could take it. Anyway, what could be worse than this seesawing between ecstasy and the steel rods?

She was sitting on the back stoop of the place he'd rented, looking at the wasps making dabbing motions with their bodies at the rotting lemons in the corner of the backyard. They didn't seem to want the lemons but couldn't quite leave them alone.

Maybe they get sweeter when they're rotten. She looked at the fence. The gate in it.

Ephram was in the shower. He'd be distracted, though she knew he was monitoring her somehow. But he couldn't be following her too closely. He hadn't punished her for these thoughts…

"Go on," she said. "Let him."

She stood up and started toward the gate. It was just across the yard but it seemed to take a long time to get there. Then she'd reached it, fumbled at the latch, pulled it open, stepped into the alley -

It came like black lightning. Negative lightning from the negative constellations, from the hidden cracks in the sky, searing through a thousand light years to seek out the mote that was Constance, smashing into her head, scorching down her spine, exploding in her gut. She felt as if her intestines had exploded and blasted shit throughout her.

She screamed and staggered but kept going.

Constance!

She was in a gravel alley. The mouth of the alley and the street were about forty yards to the left. She staggered that way – and then her legs stopped working. She fell, paralyzed.

He'd reached into the motor-controls of her brain. He'd stopped her cold. She was lying on her face, with the lower half of her body turned into a granite statue, shivering with sickness and pain.

Then it lifted. It was as if the wing of an angel had come between her and the pain. It was gone. The feeling in her legs returned. She felt no hurt but for the sting of a scrape where the gravel had dug her knee.

All right, Constance. You dirty little whore. Go. You don't love me anyway. You never loved me. Go. Run away. Enjoy…

The words echoed in her head – and then faded. She got to her feet. Was he really going to let her go? She jogged off down the alley. She got to the corner. She had no money – wait, she had a dollar in change, in her jeans.

A dollar was enough for the city bus that came trundling along the boulevard toward her, as if eager for a long-anticipated rendezvous.

Hollywood

She knew this was the Sunset Strip, in Hollywood, and that the crowd standing in line outside the rock club was there to hear some headbangers. She could hear some band inside thundering away. It was about eleven p.m. and getting dark, and she was hungry and tired. That's about all she knew. She'd called her dad's house, using his credit card number, and some boy answered, "Garner residence." And she'd asked, "Who're you?" He said his name was James and he was house-sitting for Mr. Garner and she told him, "This is Constance. I just wanted to tell dad I'm okay and uh, I'm… Uh…"

Then she'd hung up. She wasn't sure why. Why didn't she tell him where to find her? Why didn't she want her dad to find her?

She thought about the cops, again. But she was a murderer. Even though Ephram had forced her, she had murdered people, she had cut them up and tortured them to death, and if she turned Ephram in the cops would get her too. They'd never believe she had been forced to do all those things. They'd never believe her about how Ephram had done it. And how could she prove it? She couldn't.

Of course, she should at least turn Ephram in anonymously. Stop the killing. They'd be looking for any lead at all on the Wetbones killings. They'd check out the call.

Why couldn't she do that? She could make the report for free, by calling 911. What was stopping her?

She churned inside. Her emotions in such turmoil she couldn't move, couldn't turn this way or that. But one feeling came up, more stridently than any other. It took her a while to recognize it.

"No," she said aloud. "No, forget it, no."

She shook herself out of the stuck feeling, and walked up the line of headbangers. Not sure what she was looking for.

She found it, though: she picked them out easily. Three boys, who'd clearly come here without girlfriends.

Boys with fantastic, feathery, multicoloured haircuts and leather jackets; badges pinned between the spikes on the black lapels, military insignia, anything official-looking enough to be both glittery and out of place. "Hi you guys," she said, stopping near them as if she'd been about to walk by but had only just noticed them. "Didn't I meet you, like, somewhere in the Valley at that girl's party? What was her name?" She kept her maimed hand in her jacket pocket.

"Oh – Olivia?" one of the boys said. He wore dark glasses and fingerless black leather gauntlets. Spiked belt, like the others, and spiked straps slung around his snakeskin cowboy boots.

"Yeah," Constance said. "I think her name was something like that. Olivia. I was kind of drunk."

"Oh wow," the taller, blond one with the big adam's apple said. Buying the lie completely. "I think I remember you. Are you, like, the chick that fell into the pool?"

"Yeah. That was me."

"Oh dudette," said the smallest and, judging from his slack mouth and dull eyes, the stupidest one of the three. He had black hair and zits and eyebrows that grew together. "You don't rully get stoned unless you like fall over, you know?" He said stoned so it sounded like stooned and know so it came out knoo. "An' why fuckin bother to get stooned if you don't rully get stooned you know?"

"I know," she said, making herself smile. The line shuffled toward the door; she went with the three boys, peering anxiously at the burly doorman. "I'm not 21 – do you think I could get in this place?"

"Oh yeah dudette," the small, stupid one said. "They got it fixed so if you don't order no drinks at the bar, you can be under 21 and still get in the club, you know? You just chill in the main room. Hey, you wanna smoke a number?"

The small, stupid one paid her way in and snuck drinks to her, hovered close, touching her arm from time to time, checking out her tits, thinking he was getting over and he was finally going to get laid. The other two tried to bird-dog her too, when they could, but she stuck close to the stupidest one. She could handle him.

The place was dark but fragmented with coloured light, pierced by the small spotlights striking at the stage in perfectly straight-edged shafts of whirling cigarette smoke; the walls reverberated with the roar of the Marshall stacks behind four air-humping rockers on a beer-sticky stage. Once she saw a handful of sweat from the capering lead singer fall onto the footlight next to the monitor speakers and sizzle back up in oily steam. The bass player was kind of cute.

Huge waves of metallic sound rolled out of the Marshalls and over the crowd, so that most of the time Constance didn't have to make conversation, since it couldn't be heard anyway. The club was only a four-hundred-seater and the noise of the band would have filled an auditorium.

She felt strange. Confused, hungry but not hungry, tired but wired, teetering on the crumbling edge of a cliff unseen in the darkness of her inner world. She had been stuffing her feelings into the cat-carrier for so long, guarding her thoughts so endlessly, she couldn't quite make sense of freedom from Ephram's super-vision. Every so often, she asked herself, again: Why don't I call the cops? Why don't I try harder to find dad? Why don't I try to get home to Alameda?

She felt no guilt, not really, but a dull ache of disgust at having participated in the killings. It was like stepping in dogshit. She really hadn't had any choice. She'd tried refusing, three times, letting Ephram punish her – he could leave her lying on the floor paralyzed for hours, or move her limbs around like a puppet. Could make her part of it whether it was voluntary or not. And when he pushed her pleasure buttons, she responded automatically to do whatever was necessary to keep it going. There was no choice about that, not at those levels of pleasure. It was… programmed. Something she knew about from her dad.

Oh God. Now there was some guilt: Thinking about her dad. How could she go on like this without getting in touch with him? He must think she was dead or something…

Dead. What difference did it make who was dead, and who was briefly alive? Everyone, Ephram had pointed out, was dying: they were in a waiting room called life. When they were done waiting, their number was called and they were hustled through the door into death. Into nothingness. She'd seen so much death. It seemed so near and so easy. What did it matter if her father thought she was dead? She was near enough to it.

She hugged herself, wincing as the guitar player went into another sonic tirade. She could make out the music in the wall of sound, but it was some kind of speed-metal thing, and she didn't relate. She liked Bon Jovi and Whitesnake because those guys had something sweet about them, even if they did act like hard-rock types sometimes.

No matter what she thought about, that one feeling wouldn't go away. It was this painful pulling sensation in her gut. Like there was a crab in there, pulling on her innards with its serrated pincers, trying to get her to go somewhere. The discomfort was getting worse and worse.

She felt something else, now, and sharply. A hollow aching. A big black hole of depression. The drinks and the pot hardly helped at all. It ached deeply in her, from her stomach down into her uterus. She thought she might collapse inward on herself…

She imagined Ephram, smiling at her in an avuncular kind of way. His semi-erect little pee-pee radiating solace and waves of Reward…

Now the stupid one with the single long eyebrow was yelling something in her ear. Something about did she want to go get loaded, somewhere. He was making his move.

She had to get away from him, hanging around him just made her want to give in to that aching hunger…

Made her want to kill him. It would feel good. It would be such a relief to kill him.

She shouted in his ear: "Do you have any condoms?"

His eyes lit up, hearing that. He shook his head. "No! But -"

"They have some in the girl's bathroom here, I think. There's a condom machine. They cost a couple of dollars. Could you give me the money?"

He nodded, trying not to grin, and gave her a small wad of cash. She squeezed his arm, smiled at him, and headed for the girl's bathroom. Once camouflaged by the crowd, she broke for the exit door.

Ephram wasn't surprised to see her come back. He had known, and that was the only reason he had let her go. The inevitability of her return was almost tiresome.

He took her hand and smiled, to show he held no rancor for her, and led her into the living room. They sat down on the leased couch. ''I had to come back," she said mechanically. "Did you do something to…?"

"Did I make you come back with my mind? Not at all. You were well out of my reach. No, my dear. You came back on your own, wagging your tail behind you, ha ha." He smiled at her, trying to make it a sad smile, hoping she'd feel sorry she'd hurt him. Not wanting to force it on her psychically, if he didn't have to. "You see, your brain has been somewhat re-ordered. You are an addict now. What you felt was withdrawal. It would have gotten worse. It would have killed you." This last was a lie, of course, but a necessary one.

"I'm an addict? Addicted to the Reward?"

"Yes. I know you don't love me – but I hold no grudges, my dear. After all – only a short time ago, you were forced to submit while I cut off one of your fingers. No doubt a bit traumatic, but a necessary sacrifice, for our protection. No, I will not punish you this time. In fact -" He put his arm around her, and with it gave her a burst of Reward. She slumped against him with relief. "Did you call anyone?" he asked.

"No," she said absently, humming to herself. "No. Well – I tried to call my dad once but he wasn't home and I didn't try again… I didn't call the cops or anyone either…"

"Good. Lovely." He wondered in passing why he hadn't been more worried about that possibility. In the interim between her rebellion and her withdrawal, she might well have turned him in. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he had been behaving with a sort of recklessness lately.

He shrugged and went on, "Well now – I have some news for you. I have made a decision. I have, you see, been chewing your fate over in my mind, this last couple of weeks. Wondering if I should send you into Wetbones and have done with you, or go on as we have been – or, the third possibility. I have decided on the third recourse. That other step. I seem to have… to have become very attached to you.

"And I would like to see you feel the same about me. I know you don't, despite your pretenses. I'd rather not simply program you to be attached to me. I want something deeper. So… I thought perhaps – and this may be foolish – if I taught you what I know, up to a point, you might see me as I really am, underneath, recognize the Nameless Spirit that guides me. Understand me better. And learn some of these disciplines yourself." He hesitated, licking his lips. His mouth had suddenly become dry; the palms of his hands damp. He felt strangely off-balance – he was used to simply commanding her. He sighed, and went on, "You could become an initiate. I've never shown you my diary but… well, ah, all in good time. Understand, anyway, that this is an honour I have shared with no one else. The others are all dead. Only you have been chosen for this Knowledge…"

"I know it's an honour Ephram. I do," she mumbled into his breastbone.

"But you must promise me to be very close-mouthed about whatever you learn. Look at this…" He took a newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket and unfolded it for her; it showed a photo of three cops standing around awkwardly in the trapezoid of a yellow-tape police barricade, as a plainclothes morgue technician squatted with a bodybag. There was a row of onlookers behind the tape. Ephram tapped the image of a faintly-smiling man in sunglasses. "This is a certain Samuel Denver, my dear. Some of his followers call him The More Man." Ephram paused to read a paragraph under the photo: The remains left by a fourth "Wetbones" killing prompted Angela Herman, Assistant District Attorney to issue this statement, "We are bearing down on Wetbones' with all we have, and so far getting nowhere. But we won't ease up – this killer has taken the final step that only the Nazis equalled. He's taken women victims beyond even reducing them to murdered sex objects, or hunted animals – he's turned them into unrecognizable mounds of wrecked flesh and bone. It's the ultimate dehumanization and I'm sorry to say it doesn't surprise me – that's the logical next step in our deterioration as a society…" Ephram chuckled, and went on, "Denver's been talking to people around the investigation. He has to be – because they're calling it 'Wetbones'. That's my term and he is one of the few who knows it. I don't think he's giving them a line on me – that'd be dangerous for him. He's playing games, is what he's doing, the rogue. He got into this photo on purpose, expecting I'd see it… He paused to give her another jolt of Reward, so as to seal her attentiveness. ''And you see, Constance, I do not wish to be located either by the police or by dear old Samuel…" Odd, he thought, how he'd come to think of her so much more personally than the other girls. She was not a number in his journal the way they were, not any more. She was Constance. Very reckless indeed. "We must be careful, Constance, even of a small slip. Well, ha ha, a small slip can lead to a big slap, my dear. Oh yes."

"Tell me," she said, snuggling against him. "Tell me about the Spirit…"

"The Nameless Spirit? In time, my little one" Ephram said. "Not yet. First you must know the behind of it all…

"In 1923, a group of people came together in Hollywood at the house of a woman named Elma Juda Stutgart. She was a wealthy German immigrant – though perhaps immigrant is not the word. Citizen of the nation called Wealth, is closer. She maintained houses in several countries, and often returned to her lovely home in Berlin. Mrs. Stutgart was recently widowed; her husband had been rather mysteriously lost overboard in the course of a transAtlantic voyage. She had a servant who was a rather sturdy Bavarian peasant from the Black Forest and she called him Thandy, although I think this was some sort of corruption of his real name.

"Mrs. Stutgart was fascinated with the relatively new art of the motion picture – to generously grace that business by calling it an art.

"Actually, Mrs. Stutgart's true fascination was with a certain silent film star. She gave a number of extravagant parties for her pet star. The parties began as glamorous, and soon became sordid. Valentino and William S. Hart and Fatty Arbuckle were regulars at her bacchanals. Mrs. Stutgart was a morphine addict and once in America, increasingly infatuated with cocaine. Cocaine was quite a popular drug, in certain circles, even back then. Its addictive qualities were not understood in those days, and it was not illegal. Bowls of it were set out at parties and the revellers indulged with wild abandon. This, along with drink and his native stupidity, is what got Fatty Arbuckle in trouble.

"The director James Whale, the auteur behind the films Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, was a cocaine addict and, in the '30s, one of Mrs. Stutgart's most frequent guests. Sometimes Whale was her lover, but so was nearly everyone else, after her film-star sweetheart refused to have anything to do with her. Apparently she'd gone mad with jealousy at a party, on seeing her pet flirt openly with Rudolph Valentino, and tried to kill him with an ice pick. She continued the parties spitefully without him, throwing herself ever more into perversity. There were, for example, the young boys, not yet teenagers, whom she hired from the local fagens; a baker's dozen of dough-soft young things who were forced to act out an obscene play Mrs. Stutgart had written, buggering one another while declaiming bad verse. Must have been quite amusing.

"Are you paying attention, Constance?"

"Oh yes, I am, Ephram, really, I'm listening!"

"There were more exotic visitors to Mrs. Stutgart's late-night circle," Ephram continued. "There was Madame Blavatsky, the Spiritualist and architect of Theosophy, and Aleister Crowley, a drug addict himself. He was largely a fraud as a sorceror, was Crowley; but a fraud of great power, strangely enough. Mrs. Stutgart learned some interesting things from Crowley and Blavatsky. Certain things that neither of them spoke about in public or in print, except to hint at it. Mrs. Stutgart experimented with some of these things, and Crowley and Blavatsky, alarmed at her successes, soon departed for the continent. But Mrs. Stutgart was undaunted. She went on and down, ha ha…

"She was a driven woman, our Mrs. Stutgart. Cocaine users, and users of methedrine – whether they inject it, smoke it or snort it – inevitably discover, my pet, that after the first few strong doses of cocaine or amphetamine, there's very little pleasure left in the drug. There's only the compulsion to get high. The pleasure centre of the brain – and this you and I know only too well, Constance – has only so many cells and can only bear a certain amount of unnatural stimulation before it's necrotic. Burnt out, you would call it. So what is left? What next?

"The drug-maddened Mrs. Stutgart and a few of her grasping, leechlike friends found a way to bridge the gap, to pass beyond the barrier. They found that, having learned certain psychic disciplines, and having contacted certain… well, certain creatures of the Ether World, and having made arrangements with those creatures, whom we call the Akishra, they could use other people's brains for pleasure. They could pirate that pleasure. First, one takes control of those people with the proper manipulation of the reward and punishment centres of the brain – then one stimulates them, whether through pleasure or pain, rerouting all sensations through the pleasure centre. Once the pleasure stimulus is used up, the pain sensors can be used and the impulses altered. And one can experience a portion of what goes on in that other brain by proxy. If one has control of five such people, one can feed off five brains- without damaging one's own brain. It is the soul, ultimately, my dear Constance, that experiences pleasure or pain – the brain is only the fragile circuit that translates the sensations.

"Now, Mrs. Stutgart became more and more reclusive. Many of her circle were murdered, or very sensibly committed suicide. She became more psychically powerful still – and her 'arrangements' with the Akishra, the creatures who make this parasitism possible, became more involved. They maintained her in a degree of good health, while others aged around her. They fed, through her, on the shattered souls of those who were her prey. She took the senses, the minds of her victims; the

Akishra sucked instead at their spirits. She had become symbiotic with them.

"Eventually…" Here Ephram paused to sigh, and chew a nail in sudden anxiety, wondering: What was he risking, with these revelations?

But he found he could not prevent himself from continuing…

"Eventually, little Constance, Mrs. Stutgart developed a new circle of friends around her. A whole new generation. This was in the 1940s, and on into the early '60s. There was, for example, a young producer named Sam Denver. Whom she eventually married. She changed both her first and last names – she goes, now, by Judy Denver. Also in this circle were other luminaries of film and the arts. There was the actor Lou Kenson; there was the painter Gebhardt who claimed to do portraits of one's aura as well as one's physical person. And there were -"

I remember Lou Kenson!" Constance exclaimed. "He was a big star when I was little. He was in that TV show Honolulu Hello."

"Yes, yes, quite. Ah, also in this new circle were many who didn't seem to belong – such as myself. I had written an essay on Nietzsche that 'Judy Denver' enthused over, so she contacted me, and wired me a ticket to visit her at the Doublekey Ranch. Some intuition prompted me to accept. There, at the Ranch, I was initiated. I had a rather spectacular talent, you see – a talent the others did not have – which set me apart, and made me a valuable resource to the Denvers.

"The blossoming of this Divine Vision, as I think of it, this special talent, made me realize I was above the repugnant miscegenation that the Denvers and their set indulged in…

"What's miscegenation?" Constance asked.

"Interbreeding between races, my dear. In this case it went farther, really – it was interbreeding between species. Well, perhaps what they were doing was not exactly breeding, not sex – but it was a hideous congress of animal and man. The Akishra are thinking creatures, in a sense, but they are not highly evolved beings – they are really a kind of animal. An etheric animal. They are not in the same class as the Nameless Spirit…

"I did not wish to belong to the Akishra. So, I broke away. I found the Nameless Spirit, and with it, my own direction…

"Pleasure is important, but – despite what I may have told you for my earlier convenience – it is not enough alone. There must also be exaltation. True dominance and transcendence! Otherwise I would be only what the Denvers are: pleasure vampires. Vampires of the pleasure-centre of the brain, something they are absorbed in so fully they are no longer able to think beyond it. It is their raison d'etre . Pleasure – and pain in others that becomes pleasure in the Akishra.

"Pleasure can be taken to levels the Akishra cannot comprehend, when one becomes the superman, the man who is more than man. And we simply cannot achieve real dominance with the damn worms haunting us day and night…"

"Ephram?" she asked. "Could you give me a little more Reward now?"

"Oh yes, my dear. Here's a little. That's all for now.

"We'll talk more of this later. We'll talk of the Nameless Spirit. First, let me play some Mozart for you, and let us have a bite to eat. I know how you like pizza, and I ordered one for you in anticipation of your return. I'll just put some in the microwave. Then we'll drink in more Reward, and contemplate, together, a fine and elegant murder…"

Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles

It was a relief when Lissa opened the door. Though the sunny afternoon seemed to make a joke of his fears, Prentice had been irrationally certain that Arthwright would be waiting at Lissa's place, smirkingly poised behind the door. "I should have been cool and waited to see you at the party," Prentice said. "But -" He shrugged ruefully and hoped he was coming off charmingly smitten. "I just had to see you."

She smiled. "I can live with that." She was wearing a sky-blue Japanese robe, embroidered with red dragons, open in the front to show only a white string bikini. "You wanted to see me – and you can see me pretty well, in this thing. I was out back getting a tan. Come on in."

He'd been hoping that coming here would drive the burden of Amy's imagined presence from him. He'd felt dogged by memories of her, almost by a sense of her nearness, for days. It was wearing on him. Sometimes it very nearly terrified him.

But the nagging intrusiveness, the taint of Amy's point of view, stuck with him as he followed Lissa into the house. Tacky robe she's wearing, he imagined Amy saying. And these paintings. What is she, a Hare Krishna?

The wall was adorned with framed prints of Hindu deities, scenes from the Uppanishads; brilliant-hued panoplies of spirits from the tormented fertility of India.

They stepped into a modern living room with a flagstone floor scattered with sheepskin rugs, and a tinted glass back wall; out back, a cinderblock fence enclosed a kidney-shaped pool, a redwood hot tub, and immaculately gardened strips of Bird of Paradise, gardenia bushes and yucca. The back door was open and the heavy odor of gardenias hung almost cloyingly in the air. "You live rather well," Prentice began, pausing to look around. He had almost finished by saying, For a secretary. But that would have been rude. Still, it was odd. This place was large and expensive.

"The place is left over from a former marriage; he got the cash and I got the house," Lissa said; she said it rather glibly, Prentice thought. She looked at him thoughtfully a moment, then went on, "I was just going to have a light beer. You want one?"

"Sure. Thanks."

Beers in hand, they settled on the white couch. "You look kind of tense," she said.

"Do I? I guess I am. It's a couple of things. Not knowing how to act today with you – how much of what happened at the party was a fluke of your mood or… or what. And I've been bothered by… Well. Maybe I should tell you about Amy."

She raised a casual hand. "Hey. You're under no obligation to apologize for having girlfriends and wives or whatever."

Prentice imagined Amy remarking, You might know the slut would take that attitude.

He took a long pull at the beer, and then said, "You misunderstand, Lissa. Amy's dead. She was my ex-wife. I identified her body not that long ago… I'm still a little freaked out by it."

He expected the ritual noises of sympathy from her. But she only nodded slowly, and squeezed his arm. And said, "Look – the only thing you can do is let go. Just let go of her. And feeling responsible – I see that in you, that you feel responsible. But we're not responsible for how other people end their lives. You know? You get out of yourself you'll feel better. I've got an idea…"

She disappeared into a side hall, past the kitchen area, and he wondered if he were supposed to follow her back to the bedroom. He imagined Amy saying, God what a bitch. 'Just let go of her' she says. That's easy for this slut to say…

"Stop it," he muttered to himself

Lissa came back with something cupped in one hand. She sat down and opened her hand; in it were two large gel capsules of white powder. Prentice stared at it, then shook his head hastily. "No. No thanks. I don't indulge. Too many of my friends have taken the big plunge behind drugs…"

"This isn't anything addictive. It's MDMA. You know – Ecstasy."

He knew. He remembered Amy had taken it…

She went on, "With a little demerol mixed in, just a little, to take the edge off because these are pretty big hits."

"Uhhh…"

"It's a great aphrodisiac."

She knows your weakness, all right.

"Sold," he said defiantly, taking a capsule. He downed it with beer, and she took hers as she walked to the CD player. She put on some George Benson. Then crooked a finger at him, opened her arms. He stood and walked to her, and he thought he could hear Amy saying, You've done it now, dumbshit. She's completely -

But then Lissa slipped into his arms. And with that contact, the imaginary voice cut off. The stifling memory of Amy, the presence that had dogged him – simply vanished. Instantly.

Prentice and Lissa danced. By the end of the third tune, there was an electricity flickering between his teeth and along his spine, his nerve ends sang along with the music, his dick was hard, and he was convinced Lissa was the finest girl in the world.