"Why did you come all the way back to the mountain to kill your own mother?"

Questions without answers. They all knew what they wanted to hear, and they would all get back to their beer and reality television quicker if he confessed. Telling the truth would not be easy in a situation like that, and almost certainly would not prove successful.

He could go down to his family on the mountain-his father's family. He could gather some of those who'd attended services when his father was alive, if any such still lived on the mountain, and he could put together a burial party. They had no minister, and after the fiasco at Jonathan Carlson's burial it wasn't likely they'd send to Friendly, or anywhere else, to get one.

Abraham turned to the cottage and walked along the walls again. Around one side was a smaller structure, tucked into the shade of two tall pines. Abraham walked to the small building. The hinges were rusted, and they screamed in protest, but with an effort he managed to get the old door to swing outward. The interior was shadowed, and he heard something scurry deeper into the interior. He waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom, and for the dust to settle, and then he stepped inside.

He saw the shadows of implements lining the walls. Rakes and hoes, a pickaxe and several saws lined the wall. He knew most of them would be rusted and corroded from disuse and lack of care. There was time to deal with all of it later.

A spade and a shovel leaned against the wall by an old, decrepit wheelbarrow. Abe saw that the solid rubber tire had finally suffered enough dry rot to cripple it. A large chunk was missing from one side, and the rest was flaked and crumbling. He flashed on the stone walk at the church below. He felt the handles in the old wheelbarrow dragging left, then right as he pushed across rough earth. He heard his father's softly spoken instructions and encouragement as clearly as if he'd stood in that past moment, and the tears he'd finally managed to bring back under control slid wet and hot down his cheeks.

He took the spade and the shovel out the door and searched the yard surrounding the cottage. He didn't want to come too close to the building, nor did he want his mother's final resting place too close to the trees. He had the sensation of something waiting, just out of his sight, writhing vines and clawing roots. The sun was well along its path to the west, and Abraham doubted that the clearing yard would provide much protection against the encroaching darkness.

He chose a spot to the right of the two large pines by the shed. It was just to the left of what was, once again, the entrance to the path down to the church below. Abraham glanced down that half-cleared expanse, and then averted his gaze. There was no sign of the thick hedges. There were shrubs and vines slipping free of the heavier growth to either side that sent feelers across the trail, but for as far as he'd seen in that quick glance, the path was relatively clear. Impossible, but right in front of his face.

Abraham dug as quickly and carefully as he could. He shaped the grave in a rectangle about five feet long. He knew he'd never reach six feet through the rocky soil with only the spade and shovel, but he worked steadily, placing the dirt in mounds to either side, and after about an hour he had to step down into the grave itself to go deeper. He stopped at a little over three feet and clambered back out of the grave.

He slammed the blade of the shovel into the earth and turned, but something stopped him. He turned back, closed his eyes, and saw the image of the equal armed cross he wore about his neck. It surrounded the grave. He took the spade in hand again and cut the arms of the cross carefully into the soil, extending them to either side of the grave. The shadows had grown very deep by the time he stopped, satisfied with his efforts.

He dragged his mother's limp body to the grave and knelt by her side. He lifted her easily, ignored the queasy sensation in his stomach, and knelt again to lay her gently into the earth. He wished he had more time. There were words he should speak. He also wished he'd brought the small leather bag from the box on her fireplace mantel, because he knew her rituals as well as those of her father. He knew how to call to the archangels, and he knew that, whether or not there was actually any power in such actions, his mother had believed that there was.

He stood and clutched a handful of loose earth in his right hand. He tossed a pinch of it to the North. He whispered the names, but somehow the words gained strength as they were released. He heard them and would have sworn they echoed off the peaks, each in turn.

He circled the grave slowly, and each time he turned a new direction, he tossed another pinch of earth into the grave in the proper direction. When he had finished, he knelt at the head of the grave and bowed his head. He spoke a single word.

"Charon."

The last of the dirt trickled between his fingers and down into the grave, dusting his mother's pale, bloodless face. Abraham reached into the grave, leaning down so close his chest brushed the earth. With two fingers he closed his mother's eyes gently, then he stood, and with even, rhythmic scoops, shoveled the soil back into the grave. When he was done he patted the top of the grave carefully. There were stones piled beside the shed, and he went to them, gathering them up one at a time and carrying them to the grave. He placed them as he had tossed the soil, and he repeated the names, a little louder this time. He also placed stones along the lengths of the arms of the cross he'd dug. When he was done, the grave was marked, top to bottom and side to side, with strings of stone.

He stood and stared for a long moment. He willed his mind blank, and then he concentrated on her face. He remembered words he'd heard her speak. He remembered the smell of her and the warmth of her arms. He remembered long nights reading by the fire as she rocked and sewed, and late nights filled with the magic of her stories. Images of his father wove in and out of the memories, blended, and took root.

Abraham turned back to the cottage. The trees seemed to have backed away from the stone walls. The sun had pa.s.sed beyond the tree line, but it glowed in the uppermost branches and lent an eerie half-light to the clearing. Shadows filled the corners and leaked from the trees, but they held no particular malice, only a lack of light.

Abe leaned the shovel and the spade against the wall beside the door, opened it, and stepped into the old cottage. In the distance a bird cried, and he flashed on his dream, the church windows glowing and voices chanting, those eyes, searching and malevolent. He shook it from his thoughts and closed the door behind him.

THIRTEEN.

Abraham knew that, as he'd been alone in burying his mother, he would have no help in what he did from here on out. He circled the small cottage slowly, took in all the chips and c.h.i.n.ks the years had doled out and filed them away in his mind. He thought briefly of the house on the beach, and of Katrina. His life away from the mountain had seemed very simple. Now, with the daunting task ahead of him of clearing a way back to the church through that thicket, patching the walls and roof of the cottage, and lugging what he needed up the mountain from his mother's place, the cottage and the life he a.s.sociated with it hovered in the distance like a great spider's web of complexity.

Water, phone and electric bills. Taxes and rent, budgeted groceries and cable television. Each of these things, taken by itself, would not be a challenge, but as a group the drag on time, energy, and spirit were staggering.

Abe's arms ached from the scratches and gouges of the thorns, and his new jeans were a torn, ragged mess, stained with blood and sweat. A small cloud of gnats had gathered to dine on his blood, and he batted at them to absolutely no affect.

The walls were solid, as he had known they would be. There were places where the mortar was working its way out between stones, but he could replace that easily enough. Without effort his memory conjured the formula his father had taught him so long ago-how much sand, how much mud from what part of the creek bed would mix to for just the right consistency. Abraham smiled at the ease and comfort the thoughts brought in their wake. The door had not opened easily. Weather had sprung the wood of the frame slightly, and the planks that made up the door itself had swollen and curled slightly at the ends. It still sealed, but before too many days he knew it would have to be taken down and straightened, any recalcitrant wood being replaced. He noted all of this, but only on some level below the conscious. There was one more thing he had to check on before he started to work.

He stepped deeper into the cottage and coughed as clouds of dust rose to sting his eyes and tickle his throat. He staggered to the near wall, found the inner shutter and swung it open. This did nothing for the dust, or the air, but it did allow the hint of light into the place. When the moon rose fully, it would be brighter. It was hot inside, but not as hot as he had expected. The trees and vines surrounding the cottage provided some relief, and the building itself had been dug from the bedrock of the mountain. The stone floor was a good two feet below ground level.

As a boy, he'd paid little attention to the long lectures his father had given him on the history of this place, or its construction, but he found that despite his earlier inattention, the facts surfaced when he needed them. There was a curved base on the up-mountain side of the cottage that ran around the two sides and off into two channels dug to carry rainwater away and down, should there be any flooding from the mountain's peak. A similar curving clay apparatus ran around the sides of the stone roof to catch rainwater. If it had still existed, a barrel would have sat beneath the spout and by now, with the storms of the past few days, would be br.i.m.m.i.n.g with water that needed only to be boiled, filtered, and bottled before drinking. Of course, in this cottage, on this mountain, that had never been enough. The water would be collected, filtered, boiled-and blessed.

Abraham opened another shutter, closed his eyes and mouth against the new onslaught of dust, and found that there was enough light with two open windows and the open door to see the interior clearly. He stood very still and let the moonlight pour over his shoulder as the dust settled. He would need to open the rest of the windows and air the place out before he could attack the dust with a broom, but there was time for all of that.

The air cleared and he saw that nothing had changed. He didn't know why this was a thing he might have doubted, since no one but his mother and himself was likely to have crossed the threshold of the old cottage since his father's death, but seeing everything in its place had a calming effect. Like the path that led around the church, its stones set deep in the Earth, and the walls of the cottage, extending two feet into solid stone, the impression was of age and strength.

There was a squat fireplace, fronted by a small grate for cooking. To the right of this was a table that doubled as a desk, and farther along that wall stood a narrow cot. On the opposite side of the hearth were several small shelves and a taller cabinet that would hold a few articles of clothing on hangers, with drawers beneath. It was all very simple, yet somehow elegant, even in its thick coat of dust and neglect.

It wasn't the furniture he sought, however, or the inventory of windows and wood that needed repair. Stepping as lightly as possible to keep from raising another cloud, Abraham moved to the center of the room. There was a sparkle of light on the floor here, and he glanced up.

Set into the ceiling, molded into a hole that had been cut into the stone and fixed in place with the same mortar that held the walls in place, a huge cl.u.s.ter of crystals, cut from the center of a single geode caught the early rays of the moon and sent them flickering along the walls and off through the shadows. Abraham caught his breath and held it. That one simple thing-so beautiful, and so natural, not formed by the hand of men, but borrowed from the Earth and shared with the moon, brought the tears back to Abe's eyes. The moon was still low in the sky, but it caught the tips of the uppermost crystals, bending and refracting through the natural lens. The light had a silver blue hue, as though deep water had been tapped and run inside the cottage walls through gla.s.s pipes.

Abraham tugged his gaze from the spectacle on the ceiling and glanced at the floor. Moving slowly and working carefully, he brushed away the dust in the very center with the toe of his boot, and then worked out along a straight line. There were patterns carved into the stone, centered by a raised, circular cover with two handles. From the circle's outer edge, lines shot arrow straight at the walls, cutting the room into fourths, then eights, like the points of a compa.s.s.

The same cross symbol that was carved so carefully into the wood of his mother's front door adorned the circular s.p.a.ce in the middle of the floor. Abraham didn't touch it-not yet-but he examined it carefully. There was no sign that it had been tampered with, or disturbed. The dust was as thick at the edges of that compartment as anywhere else, and without the secret of its opening, it would have taken sledge hammers and chisels to get through. Again, he sensed permanence and strength, and this time it flowed up from beneath, the mountain recharging his energy from its own vast supplies, seeping back into his blood through the soles of his feet.

For a fleeting moment, a shadow pa.s.sed over the moon. Abraham thought about the s.p.a.ce beneath that circular door, and shivered. He could imagine the smooth, dark coils of a serpent, trapped but alive, ready to strike at anyone foolish enough to open that portal. He almost faltered. He had begun to raise his foot from the floor to take a step backward, when the moonlight burst free of the clouds and shot a bright silver beam of light through the lens on the cottage roof. It bent and shone directly onto the carved cross, deepening the black lines in contrast to the brilliant, sparkling light. Abraham closed his eyes, but the image of the cross was burned across his sight. It strobed gently in his mind and his heart rate and breathing slowed.

He'd need to hurry and gather wood before it got any darker. The memory of the very real snake in the hedge came back and again, he shivered. It wouldn't do to remember all of the magic of the mountain if he neglected to remember its dangers, as well. Not all of those dangers were human, or even walked in that guise.

His stomach rumbled with hunger, and he grimaced. This would not be an easy night. He had chosen to come with a single canteen of water and no food. He had not counted on the loss of blood in the hedges, or the emotional turmoil he had already faced weakening him. The fast was necessary, but he wondered if he should have waited.

The sky had darkened very quickly. Abraham stood in that darkness with his arms full of firewood and kindling. He was a few feet from the door of the cottage, and he turned to face the side of the mountain. He sensed things moving below. The air tingled, and he would have sworn that in that vast silence he felt the pulse of blood through every creature in the forest and the touch of their breath on his cheeks. He closed his momentarily useless eyes and reached out with his other senses.

He tried to picture the layout of the mountain, the homes he remembered, the road trailing down to Greene's store, the placement of the other church. He felt a chill as this thought crossed his mind. In that utter blackness he was suddenly aware of a darker spot, a blemish in the harmony of the silence. Within that darker cloud was motion, writhing, twining motion, and as if on cue, the voices of crickets cut through his reverie, their insistent whir too much like the voice of a serpent.

Abraham nearly dropped the wood, and he took a full step back before he opened his eyes to the moonlit night. The hissing sound died away to the harmless backdrop that it was, and he turned to the door and the hearth with his wood. He had a small flashlight, but he was conserving the batteries. He used it sparingly as he arranged the fire. He stacked the logs as his father had taught him so long ago, and tucked the kindling and bark up beneath. He lit the tinder and watched it crackle and snap as the flames licked their way up through the slightly larger twigs and reached hungrily for the logs.

He knew he'd need more wood before the night was done, but for the moment it was good to have the cottage brought back to flickering life by the dancing flame's light.

With the long night ahead of him, he took stock of his surroundings with a more critical eye. He managed to loosen the mechanisms that held the gla.s.s-framed windows tight and latched them open to let in the cool night air. Once this was done, he took the old broom that leaned in one corner and set to work. He started high and cleared the horizontal surfaces. He had to take the mattress outside to knock the dust from it. Miraculously, neither rodents nor insects had infested it, and the cottage had remained dry, so there was no mildew.

Despite the cottage's diminutive size, it took more than an hour for Abraham to be satisfied. He was thorough, sliding the broom into any crack or creva.s.se large enough to allow it. He worked the piles of dust and dirt toward the door, and then brushed them out into the night. The fire crackled and danced, and when he'd completed his circuit with the broom, he made himself a torch from one of the longer branches and a bit of his torn shirt. With this for light, he managed to gather another armload of wood. He repeated this three times, making certain he had enough to fight off all the hours of darkness and the chill of the night air, then he sat on the bed with his legs crossed and leaned back against the stone wall. He was exhausted, but his mind raced, and he knew sleep was not going to be quick in coming, if it visited at all.

He thought about Katrina, and for the first time since he'd written the note and left it on the table, the ache returned to his heart. She'd never understand. She would have understood if he'd explained it in person. He might even have convinced her to stay behind while he came to the mountain to straighten things out. He wasn't as certain about his own strength. He might not have tried hard enough to prevent her. In the isolated silence of the cottage, he missed her more than he'd ever missed anything in his life.

He thought of the food, blankets, and belongings he'd left behind in his mother's home. It had seemed foolish, at the time, to lug any of it up here without checking first. He'd intended to make the climb, then return to the cottage below and come up with a plan. He hadn't counted on the hedge, or the serpents. He hadn't counted on finding his mother dead on the mountain. He hadn't counted on the deep-rooted sense of accomplishment that cleaning out the old place and lighting a simple fire had brought him. He sipped his water, not wanting to waste it, and sat very still, watching the fire.

He knew that he should be mourning his mother's death, but it hadn't hit him. It had been so long since he'd seen her that there was a rift, deep inside, he would have to cross if he wanted closure. He had a list of things in his mind he'd wanted to say to her, questions he wanted to ask. It was too late for all of that now. It was too late for his mother, and his father, but maybe it wasn't too late for the mountain. Sometimes all that's left to the sons and daughters of the world is to make certain their actions validate the lives and loves of their parents.

He glanced around the room slowly. There was a comfort in this old place, despite its solitude and long neglect. The warped door effectively shut out the night, and the open windows let in just enough of a breeze to keep the fire from overheating the room, and to make it dance.

Abraham thought briefly of removing his shirt and checking the extent of the cuts and scratches, but thought better of it. He had very little water with him, not enough to drink and to cleanse his wounds. Once he got started he'd have to do it right, and he also had no material, other than the torn shirt and jeans themselves, with which to make bandages. Best to let it alone until morning.

He had come up the mountain without fanfare, but he knew that when he came back the following day it would have to be different. He would have to walk in the open, and without wavering. Everyone who could see him should see him, and those who did not see must hear it from those who did. There was no morning news on the mountain, but there were plenty of voices, and it wouldn't take long to spread all the way up to the peaks, and down to San Valencez, that Abraham Carlson had returned.

There were rituals. He couldn't just come here, as he had this day, if he wanted them to follow. If he wanted to see them trickle in, one by one, to his father's church, he would have to give them what they expected. What they believed he had denied them so many years before.

There had been no one to preach in the stone chapel since Jonathan Carlson died. Abraham had been young at the time, and his dreams of a world beyond the mountain were strong. His mother told him, quietly, what his duty was to the people, and to the mountain, and their G.o.d. They shunned her, called her evil behind her back, or named her witch, and still she had defended them.

Abraham had been outraged at the time, and was outraged still. If it were just about the others, his own family and the other folk on the mountain, he would not have come back at all-or if he had come back, it would only have been to get his mother out. That was before she sent him the note.

He wasn't sure why it made a difference. His family had all but disowned him when he chose to remain with his mother after his father's death, and that disownment had been complete when he turned his back on them all and took off down the mountain to the world beyond. He remembered them-their names and faces, the stories of their ancestors-the stories of the mountain itself. He knew the other families as well, had played with their children, now grown as he was grown, had eaten cookies in many of their kitchens and fished for trout with their fathers.

All of them had their lessons to impart, and Abe's father had made certain his son was available to learn them. He could probably have pa.s.sed on the same stories himself, but somehow it mattered that they come from others. They weren't just stories of the stone church, or of a single family. They were the roots of the people who lived up and down the side of that peak, the blood and beliefs of a dozen countries, and they stretched out to lands and times so far away, and long past, that it was hard to separate them, one from the other.

Now they were in danger. All of them were in danger. Abraham had felt it as he came up the mountain, and he'd felt it again outside these walls, trapped in the hedge and staring down the rattlesnake. He'd seen it in the empty, hollow pits that had been his mother's eyes, and known its voice when it howled in the winds of the storm. If his father were alive they would already be lined up outside this door, waiting.

Jonathan Carlson had not lived in the cottage, but in times of crisis, he'd stayed there. That was the first transgression-that he chose not to live in the cottage and tend the church day and night, but instead tended his own family and came on Sundays, and when he was needed. It was not the old way. It was not their way, and they had resented it, calling it more of the witch's work. When things grew dark, their resentment did not prevent them from coming for help. They had come that night so long past; the night the darkness was driven from the white chapel with its tall steeple and pealing bell.

Abe turned and lay down across the mattress on the old cot. He could still see the fire from where he lay, but his eyelids were suddenly very heavy. He heard the crackle of the fire and felt the soft breeze from the window, but he could concentrate on neither. The exertions of the day were catching up with him. In moments, he was asleep.

He dreamed.

They climbed the trail up the mountain, torches held high, and stretched off around the winding curves of the road until they curled out of sight. From where Abraham stood beside his father, waiting for their arrival, the lot of them might have been a fiery dragon slithering up through the trees. All he saw were their torches, occasional flashes as the flames reflected off of some metal buckle, or pair of gla.s.ses, and he heard the low hum of their voices.

They were still too far away for him to bring faces or single voices into focus. Farther down the mountain he could just make out the glow from that other church. It stained the tops of the trees a deep orange and its light seeped out across the top of the forest. Others gathered there, he knew. Abraham had never been to that church, but he had seen it. He had stood cloaked in the leaves and branches of the surrounding trees and watched as the tall, powerful Reverend Kotz entered and exited the building. As others came and went, some familiar faces, and others obviously from "somewhere down mountain," as his father had liked to say.

That was why Abraham watched. He dreamed of valleys, and oceans, deserts and fields so flat that you couldn't see a mountain on the clearest of days. He had read about such places in the books his mother provided, and heard about them in his father's stories-those from The Bible, and others. He had heard stories of "the old country" from so many different sources that all of the old countries had blended into one wondrous place in his mind and became a powerful, magnetic force, dragging at him from the world beyond. He stood at his father's side and waited, but his mind was a thousand miles away, and the hypnotic sway of the torches winding up from below did nothing to draw him back.

The first two men stepped clear of the trail and stood before the doors of the old stone church. They stood in silence for a long time, watching Jonathan Carlson and his son, and waiting as the others filed in behind them, forming a semi-circle. In the end the crowd hung back, and only the two leaders stepped forward.

Abraham recognized Harry George and Ed Murphy. They stood, their features highlighted by the torchlight, grim lines of anger etched into their features-anger and something more. Abraham's father stood stoic and silent, returning their gaze.

"You know why we've come," Harry George said at last. "If it was up to me, we'd be down there right now, setting torches to that place, but it isn't our way."

Jonathan Carlson nodded gravely. Abraham couldn't decide whether to stand, as his father, and meet the other men's gaze, or turn to see what the reaction would be.

"My brother is down there," Harry threw in. "His wife and two sons, and little Emma."

Abraham knew people who attended that other church as well, or had known them. Mountain families kept to themselves, but there were no secrets. There was no way to keep a thing secret, and that church made no effort at privacy. It drew them in like moths to a bright light, and when they came back out they were never quite the same. Their eyes were dull and lifeless, and they mumbled when they spoke. Abraham had not seen any of the boys of those families at the lake, or in the forest, except in pa.s.sing.

"The time has come to do something about it," Harry went on.

"You know it's true, Reverend. We have been patient, and we have turned both cheeks to the evil. It eats our families from within."

"It hasn't eaten you, Harry," Jonathan Carlson replied. Harry was silent, as if the words had removed some vital support he was counting on. At last, Ed spoke.

"It isn't as though we haven't thought about it. I had to drag my own wife through the trees to keep her away from that place, and she's locked at home now. My sister Jenny is down there now, with her boy."

Reverend Carlson said nothing.

"They aim to baptize him," Ed said, his voice breaking. "That boy helped me put up my wood shed not two months back. He's a good, hard working boy. They aim to baptize him in that pool, Reverend. I can't let that happen."

Ed Murphy's voice broke then, ending in a soft, high-pitched squeak. The man flushed from head to toe, but he stood his ground.

Abraham shrunk closer to his father, shaking.

The pool. Everything had gone south at the white chapel when they installed the baptismal pool, and the tanks; some said five, others said as many as ten. Gla.s.s tanks like Abraham had read about in books, meant to house glorious schools of colored fish and bright coral. Only about half of the tanks in the white chapel held water. All of them held serpents, and the baptismal pool was the center of it all. Abraham had never seen the place, but he'd heard the stories.

Men and women with snakes twined around their arms and throats, winding up their legs, standing like moving sculptures of pagan statues. Children led through the center to that pool, through the threat of fanged poison and the writhing bodies of their own parents by the Right Reverend Kotz to the pool of cleansing, where their sins would be washed away, if they were pure. If they were found worthy, and did not come up wanting. If they ignored the writhing bodies and flickering tongues surrounding them and weathered the storm of fangs.

No one who had actually witnessed this ceremony could be found to explain it or to verify it. Some had tried to slip close and peer in the windows, but of those about half had been drawn in, and the other half had lost their nerve. Bits and pieces could be had, though, mumbled words from those who pa.s.sed through, needing this done, or to buy a little of that. Those who attended the white chapel were not dead, and they still lived on the mountain. The mountain was too small for secrets to thrive, and Reverend Kotz went to no pains to hide his actions. His words and his faith spread like poison over the face of the mountain, and now those who stood against it had come to Abraham's father.

"We must break the pool," Jonathan Carlson said softly. "We must cast it down and scatter the serpents. If you want your families to be safe, there must be a cleansing."

Whispered words wound their way back through those gathered, and the volume of the murmur of voices raised a notch. Abraham shivered again. He didn't know what his father meant, but he saw the effect of the words in the other two men's expressions. They were frightened, but their eyes glittered brightly, and their fists clenched on their torches. The torches drew shadows from the men's forms, and Abraham, watching those shadows, wondered who was more powerful in each-the man with the glittering eye, or the dark man who danced in the shadows beyond the light.

"Leave me," Jonathan Carlson had said. His voice was powerful, and they obeyed him without question, but Abraham knew his father well enough to hear the weariness in his tone, and the doubt.

A branch snapped in the fireplace, and Abraham started awake. For a moment he still saw the wavering torches and the long, endless line of men and women slowly winding away down the mountain. He felt his father's presence, and that faded slowly to the comfort of the cottage itself.

He sat up, rose, went to the fire, and tossed a few more branches in to bring up the light. A slight chill had set in, and he closed the windows carefully, being certain the old wood frames sealed properly. It was a ritual he could recall his father performing, and the act soothed his churning thoughts.

He hadn't thought about that white church, or the baptismal pool within, for years, but it was still as clearly etched in his mind as if it had only been days since he'd seen it. He had seen it, after all. Everyone had seen it, but not until after the cleansing. Even then it had left a bad taste in his mouth. He'd been unable to remain in that church under the eyes of the hideous old statue above the door.

Of all the pain and flames he had witnessed that night, all of the things he was not supposed to have seen, but could not have been kept from, in the end, it was that face that had etched itself in his mind. He recalled Reverend Kotz's wild-eyed glare and the screams, so many screams that he'd never been able to sort them by voice or person, but none of that was as clear as that carved wooden face with its ropy hair.

"I should have burned it," he said softly, repeating the words like a mantra. "We should have burned it and carried the ashes to the corners of the forest, thrown them into the sea, anything but what we did. We should never have walked away."

He stirred the coals to life once more, and this time when he went to the cot he laid flat on his back, draped one arm over his eyes, and slept. With the windows and doors sealed against what remained of the night, the small fire warmed the air. Tiny flickers of firelight caught in the geode lens in the ceiling and sent tiny sparkles rippling over the walls, but he did not see them.

There were no more dreams.

FOURTEEN.

The tiny cottage grew to huge proportions with Abe gone. Katrina sat in the chair where he had sat so many times and stared out over the beach. The sun was setting over the waves, a sight they usually shared, and it blurred into a surreal wash of fuzzy color as tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She made no attempt to brush them aside.

Before sitting down she'd locked the doors and checked the latches on every window in the house. The phone was back on the hook, and she stared at it off and on. Prior to the calls that had started so recently, she'd been unaware of it. There were infrequent calls from Abe's agent, or from a few editors. They had few friends, and their families were equally unlikely to call. Now it lurked in the background. She turned now and then, caught the telephone table out of the corner of her eye, and started, as if it might suddenly spring to life.

Her coffee sat cold on the table beside her, and to the left of that her book lay open and face down. The spaghetti she'd made for her supper lay cold and hardening on the plate. She hadn't been able to do more than pick at it, and noodles crusted the edge of the pan on the stove.

She was frightened. She didn't know why. No one had spoken to her any of the times she'd answered the phone, and it had been hours since it had last rung. No one had knocked on the door, and though she watched the beach carefully, she hadn't seen a soul. There weren't many lights nearby, and as the sun failed, the sense of isolation deepened. It was warm, but she wrapped herself in one of Abe's flannel shirts and shivered.

The worst was that he hadn't told her everything. Despite all of the promises, he had taken off without a word, and she didn't know why. She knew where, or she was pretty certain that she did, but Katrina couldn't think of a reason in the world why going home to help his mother should be such a secret. Or why the phone ringing should freeze her blood. Or why sitting in the cottage they'd shared for so long, which always made her feel warm and welcome, suddenly felt disjointed and wrong.

The silence was too much. She stood, walked to the stereo, and flipped on the local rock station. With a soft backdrop of sound, she paced the main room of the apartment. There had to be something more he'd left, or something more that she could do. There had to be something she had missed, or forgotten, something that was implied or that she should infer from the stories Abe had told her. There were only two explanations, at the root of it.

Her insecure side believed that Abe had just gone. She had never had anyone love her as he did, and the thought that it was an illusion, and that he was really just like all the others she'd met in her life hovered in the back of her mind and haunted her thoughts. She'd fallen prey to such stories and fabrications before, and each time a bigger and more important slice of her heart was cut away. If Abe had lied to her, and this was just his idea of "goodbye," then he was the worst of the lot-too cowardly even to face her with the decision.