Part 5 (1/2)

And if it hadn't been a hallucination, who was this discreet exhibitionist with the mystery pubis?

At first, the bare feet made him think of Lottie, but now that he thought of it, the hips seemed too wide and the flesh too plush for Lottie. Mrs. Butler, then? No, he thought crudely. There's no way...

The woman from Wisconsin? There's a thought. Collier thought of the groupie phenomenon, women who lose their inhibitions simply because a man's a musician, a pro athlete, or...a TV personality. Collier had heard of such things, especially with the more flamboyant men on the channel. Like that Savannah Sammy a.s.shole. Women mailed him their panties, for G.o.d's sake. But as for Collier himself...

He'd never met a ”TV groupie,” and doubted that any existed for the ”Prince of Beer.”

He shook his head, bewildered to the point of headache.

Hallucination or not, something's come over me. I'm hornier than I can ever remember, so what's the reason?

But why think so negatively? Just that his s.e.x drive had turned hyper didn't mean there was necessarily anything wrong with him, did it? A healthy s.e.x drive was...healthy. Something was resurfacing in him: a vigorous response to s.e.xual attraction via the genetic urge to be reproductive...

That must be it.

Collier felt a lot better after coming to this conclusion, but in truth it was none of these things that were making him hornier than an ape in rut.

It was the house.

CHAPTER THREE.

I.

1857.

When N.P. Poltrock closed his eyes he saw rotten heads and blood being drunk from goblets. He saw limbs shorn by axes and hewers, and men and women thrown naked and very much alive into the belly of a red-hot coal bed. He saw children being raped in the dirt by faceless soldiers in stiff gray uniforms; others were merely m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed on and strangled. Horses dragging old men and women by nooses around their necks galloped regularly into the hot, smoky compound; just as regularly great jail wagons rolled in from the nearby depot-wagons so stuffed with the beaten and the starving that the bar frames seemed fit to burst. One soldier skewered a little boy in the eye with his bayonet and flung him into the coal bed, while a little girl, no more than fourteen but hugely pregnant, was flung in behind him.

These were the visions that poured into the darkness behind Poltrock's closed eyes. He heard endless screams and smelled the stench of human incineration.

When he opened his eyes, another stench briefly filled his nostrils: old urine.

Sick.

Sick.

That's how Poltrock had felt since the first day he signed on with Gast.

”We will lay one hundred miles of track per year,” Gast had told him that day.

Not with only a hundred workers you won't, Poltrock thought but chose not to voice.

Gast had told him this in the den of the mansion he shared with his wife and children. A beautiful house in the center of town, ringed by trees and full of flowers.

So why did Poltrock keep smelling p.i.s.s?

The whites of Gast's eyes looked yellow, and Poltrock thought he'd noticed that same look in the other men who'd been hired.

Just my imagination. I'm under the weather, that's all. Too much to drink last night after the long ride out...

Gast himself looked like exactly what he was: a vastly wealthy Southern plantation owner. Tailcoats, linen s.h.i.+rt, bow tie, and pointed leather shoes that s.h.i.+ned like oil. He stood tall and lean, and the lines in his face suggested he must be upward of fifty. Trimmed muttonchops didn't look right in the incised, overserious face. ”I have signed on fifty men already, some of the finest rail men in the state,” Gast a.s.sured. He'd turned just then, looking out the bow window. ”But I need an operations manager. You.”

Poltrock fought off the repeated distractions. ”I appreciate your offer, Mr. Gast,” he said in a distinct Southern accent. ”But why me?”

”Because you built the great railroads in Ohio and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth. I need a man like you to run my construction operation.”

Poltrock felt dizzy. He kept looking to the splendid furnis.h.i.+ngs and draperies, the crystal vases filled with blooming flowers, but then thought the strangest thing: It's all covering something up...The house, indeed, inside and out, looked beautiful but it felt...ugly. Corrupted. A sick person in fine clothes.

For a moment-just a fraction of a moment-again, he smelled urine. But when the moment pa.s.sed, so did the haunting stench.

A black maid ushered in a silver tray with cups of minted tea. She said nothing, simply set the service on the desk, glanced once at Poltrock, and left.

The glance showed Poltrock eyes full of fear. He closed his own eyes again at a wave of nausea. He could not dispel the image that rose: two strong white hands clamped about the maid's throat, squeezing until the dark face turned even darker, until veins swelled fat as earthworms and the bones in the neck could be heard cracking. When the hands let go, the dead woman's mouth fell open to ooze abundant s.e.m.e.n.

Then the image retracted to reveal whose hands they were: Poltrock's.

G.o.d help me, he thought. Where did that unholy vision come from?

Poltrock had never thought anything so vile in his life. He was a G.o.d-fearing Christian. What had caused such a sight to come into his head?

Gast turned back around, with his yellow eyes. He must have some liver disorder. ”Work for me,” he said and handed Poltrock a check.

It was a finely printed check on heather gray paper. It read RECEIVED OF: Mr. N. P. Poltrock, AGENT OF THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD COMPANY, Fifty DOLLARS.

The unease of the house hampered Poltrock's reaction. Movement caused him to look to the doorway. He could see into the foyer, where a dowdy teenage girl in a white dress sat on the stairs' second step. She was petting a dog-a small, wrangly thing with drab brown fur-and scratching behind its ears. For a moment the girl's eyes looked at Poltrock. She smiled coyly. Now the dog had its head under her dress.

Poltrock winced and looked away. He reminded himself of the check he'd just been given. Lord, that's good money. ”Just so I'm sure we understand each other, Mr. Gast, but you aim to lay a hundred miles of track per year with a hundred men?”

”I have a hundred slaves, plus fifty strong white foremen and rail engineers.”

”I see. So...like I was saying, sir, a hundred miles of track per year. From where to where?”

”From Camp Roan, just outside of town, to Maxon.”

”Maxon, Georgia, Mr. Gast?”

”That's correct.”

”That's halfway to Atlanta, sir,” Poltrock almost raised his voice. The notion was absurd. ”That's five hundred miles.”

”I'm aware of that.” Gast turned back to the window, with his tea. The sunlight through the trees seemed to create a dark fog about his head. ”I, like many, Mr. Poltrock, believe that a war is coming. It will be a great war that will forge our Southern brotherhood into the strongest nation on earth. I have confidantes who believe such a rail line would be imperative for the South to survive such a war.”

Poltrock shook his head. He didn't believe any of this war talk. The Congress would make things right for the South. Gast must not remember what the federal army did to Mexico not too long ago. And who were these confidantes? Probably just big money people, more plantation barons. Lots of money and lots of big ideas.

When he looked again, the girl with the dog was gone from the foyer, but he could swear he heard children giggling from deeper within the house. And- There was that smell again: the stench of urine.