Part 38 (1/2)

She flopped on the bed and bounced on it. ”What a great bed!”

It's not the bed that's the problem with this room, he reminded himself.

”And these pillows!” The back of her head sunk into the middle of one. Another she embraced, a little girl with a teddy bear. She grinned up at him. ”I can't wait to sleep with you.”

Unfortunately, Collier knew what that meant: sleep. He lost his thoughts. ”You're...beautiful...”

The grin turned serious. ”I'm sorry this can't be what you really want.”

”You might be surprised what I really want...” He almost groaned when her legs extended, her toes flexing atop the sheets.

”Come to bed. Let's spoon.”

Collier strode to the bathroom with a candle, stripped down to shorts, then brushed his teeth, hoping to get rid of what must be awful beer breath. When he came back out, she was under the sheets up to her navel. Her cross sparked like a tiny camera flash in the candlelight.

”You want me to put out the candles?” he asked.

Thunder rumbled, then more loud lightning.

”Probably not,” she admitted.

”I agree.”

Collier crawled in, and they at once wrapped themselves up in each other. Her body's heat and the feel of her skin buzzed him more than all those lagers. Her hand opened on his bare chest, right over his heart. Collier knew it was racing.

They kissed, sharing each other's breath. Even after a day's hard work, her hair was so fragrant, it hit him like a drug.

”Oh, d.a.m.n it,” she muttered.

Collier's head was spinning, just from the feel of her. ”What?”

”You must really hate this. It's not what most people are used to. It's not considered normal.”

”I'm fine...”

”I know I'll never break my celibacy, but if I were going to, you'd be the guy I did it with.”

It was the worst thing she could've said, but even more so, the best thing.

Then her voice turned joking, ”Or you could always marry me, but I definitely wouldn't recommend that. It'd be hazardous.”

”Hazardous?”

”I'd probably screw you to death on our wedding night.”

Her thigh was between his legs, and when she'd said that, she moved it off because his p.e.n.i.s had gone hard at once.

I love you, I love you, the words in his mind seemed to flicker up the walls with the candlelight.

He should say it. He knew he should say it.

”I...”

But she'd already fallen asleep, her head on his chest.

The thunder and lightning had at least subsided enough that he didn't quake with each flash. Sleep was inviting him within minutes, but images and words kept snapping him back to a tense wakefulness: his dream of the wh.o.r.e named Harriet, ”Dirty dog!” the scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch as a young blonde girl shaved her legs and, presumably, her pubic hair in the brook, ”Gast buried his two daughters alive, then went about the business of murdering Jessa and seeing to the gang-rape and sequent ax-murder of his wife,” horses hauling caged wagons toward a plume of smoke, ”I heared they killed all the slaves when they was done. Near a hunnert of 'em,” an irate man with a gold nose scribbling checks, ”He built an entire railroad to Maxon and refired the furnace solely to incinerate the innocent,” a daguerreotype of a beautiful nude woman with a shaved pubis and a single freckle an inch above the c.l.i.toris, ”Rumor has it that the dog escaped, never to be seen again. But you can be sure...it escaped with a full stomach...”

Collier audibly groaned at the imagery, eyes pressed shut. But more details focused. In the room to my left, some guy was drowned in a hip bath and got his d.i.c.k spat into the toilet, and in the room to my right, Penelope Gast got an ax between the legs.

And in THIS room...

Collier could feel bubbling in his belly. All of Sute's stories and all that beer was suddenly boring a hole. The muskrat sausage probably hadn't helped either.

Even with the thunder, he could hear his own heartbeat along with Dominique's, and he could even hear his watch ticking. When he closed his eyes he couldn't shake the idea that a mutt was in the room, and when he opened them, the patterns on the wallpaper seemed to s.h.i.+ft into something like train tracks. Go downstairs and get something to eat, the idea came to him. Something bland might settle his stomach.

But did he really want to cross that big portrait of Harwood Gast? Or what if he saw Windom Fecory scribbling on checks at the writing table?

Jesus...

He knew it was his imagination when he thought he smelled stale urine.

Collier carefully slid out from under Dominique, hauled on his robe, and slipped out of the room, candle in hand.

It was late now, but certain sounds in the hall comforted him: voices of guests, television chatter, even some bedsprings creaking from the Wisconsin woman's room. Some rumbling followed him downstairs-he didn't look at the portrait or the desk-then he crossed the dining room to the kitchen.

There were no lights, of course, and the candle made the long kitchen seem cubby-size. Collier helped himself to a piece of shortcake from the fridge, took one bite, then- s.h.i.+t!

-dropped it.

He'd heard a dog bark from somewhere deep in the house.

Bulls.h.i.+t. I didn't hear anything...

He was staring into the black entryway, which led to the back wings. The voice of a little girl said in a cattish, snippy tone: ”...ritual atrocity and the sacrifice of the innocent are nothing new...”

Then the patter of bare feet running away.

It was no mistake. I heard that...

Sute's words from earlier, but definitely not Sute's voice.

Collier's eyes bloomed as he held the candle out and walked through the entryway.

The hallway felt like a catacomb. The dim candlelight wobbling on the walls lent the impression that the hall was moving past him rather than he through it. A window at the far end lit briefly from a throb of lightning. He could barely detect the dark paintings along the walls, and a row of closed doors.

Collier came to a dead stop.

Another voice, just a whisper: ”...an oblation to the devil...” and then a trailing laugh.

Not a child's voice this time but a mature woman's, with a rich, wanton Southern accent.