"Did anyone call?" Doctor Pierce asked as he scurried past the Department of Radiology's reception area.

Grabbing a stack of messages, Alicia Simmons, his secretary, tagged along behind him. "Dinner date, 6 P.M P.M., at Bruxelles. Doctor Meyers called to confirm. Jimmy down at Crown Motors called, the Mercedes will be ready on Thursday, said he's sorry for the delay, something about waiting for a part. Your tailor called, your suits have been altered and are ready for pickup. And a Miss Langley called, sounded urgent."

"What was that name? The last one?"

"Langley, Priscilla Langley. Here's her number."

Pierce reached his office and fell back in his chair, staring at the rose-colored slip of paper. It had been ages since he had spoken to her. What could be the matter? An ominous and unsettling notion crept into his psyche: this could only mean trouble. Who was stirring things up? he wondered. The parents of the now shattered teenaged interloper? The inquisitive Margaret? The dogged police lieutenant at the helm of it all? A whirl of emotions enveloped him. He willed it to go away, but it persisted, and the telephone number on the slip of paper became etched in his mind. He reached for his phone and punched in the number. Priscilla Langley's voice sounded in his ear.

"Is that really you?" he panted.

"Son, there was a man here in South Dorset, a policeman, asking all kinds of questions."

"Questions?"

"About a girl who died in your hospital."

"Patients die here, it's a goddamn hospital! What's this policeman's name?"

"Lieutenant John Driscoll."

Pierce thought his pounding heart was about to rupture. Frenzied thoughts emerged, ran rampant, and collided inside his brain. He could feel his entire body trembling. He brushed back the hair from his furrowed brow, only to find it dampened with perspiration.

"Colm, are you in some kind of trouble?"

The question went unanswered.

"Colm?"

"Yes?"

"You are. You're in some kind of trouble. Talk to me, boy."

Pierce couldn't control his trembling. He pounded his fist against the side of his desk.

"Colm?"

"I have to go now," he said slowly and deliberately. "You're not to worry. I'm not in any kind of trouble. I'll see to it that this policeman is reprimanded for causing you to worry."

"But, Colm-"

Pierce hung up the phone. His eyes fell, once again, upon the scribbled message. He crumpled the sheet of paper in his hand and flung it against the wall. He stood up. A dizziness overcame him. He sat back down. He pounded both fists on the top of his desk. The disturbance brought Alicia Simmons into the room.

"Is everything all right?" she asked.

"It will be," Pierce said, dismissing her. His eyes became fixed on the wall in front of him. His heart was still beating rapidly inside his chest when he heard his father's voice, distant at first, but gathering volume.

"What's keeping those eyes, Colm?"

A shriek came from atop the basement's shelving, shooting splinters of fear up my spine. A skittering sound followed.

"Bugler, what was that?" cried Mother.

"Daddy, we got rats!" Becky whimpered, her brown eyes pooling with tears.

"That ain't no rat," Father grinned.

A second shriek, more bone-piercing than the first discombobulated me. The box leaped out of my hands, launching the agate eyes into their own frenzied trajectories. My father's face went through a transformation. The muscles of his jaw knotted. A furrow cut deep into his forehead.

"Now look what you've done!"

He stood up. My heart burst.

His face became warlike. He let loose a cry, unfathomable and archaic, like the howl of a Celtic warrior.

My sister and I watched in horror. I knew my life hung on his very breath. He could choke me with his brute hands or spare my life.

He ground the strewn eyes under the heel of his hiking boot, leaned his distorted face into mine and said, "I could snuff you out, son. And it wouldn't matter much to the sun, or the moon, or the stars."

Father scraped fragments of glass from the heel of his boot and sprinkled the translucent dust on my head. Then he bolted upright, the tumor clawing at his intestines. "I spawned you, son, and I can snuff you out," he said, staring inquisitively into my eyes, examining my pupils like an ophthalmologist. His attention had been drawn back to his taxidermy. "This gutted pheasant, needs brown eyes," he murmured, inspecting the blue of my irises. "You've got your mother's eyes, Colm, and Rebecca's got mine, brown."

A piercing shriek tore through me. A vulture had leaped from the murk of the cellar's joists, swooped down, and clenched in its claws the entrails of the gutted bird.

"Ain't she a beauty?" Father boasted. "Just a week ago that critter was scanning the Alps for a stray lamb, and now this honey is mine. A real live lammergeier!" The sneer returned to his face. "Becky, come over here and give your Daddy a wet one."

Without warning, Father grabbed hold of my sister and flattened her body on the gurney. He poured some liquid on a rag and brutally smothered her face with it. Becky whimpered. But the noise slowly ceased as my sister fell into unconsciousness. Father then reached for the melon scoop and plucked out both of her eyes.

I grabbed hold of Father's sleeve, restraining further assault on Becky.

"Let go of my arm," he growled through clenched teeth.

Holding the rag he used on Becky, he turned his attention to me. Soon I too fell victim to unconsciousness.

It was the coppery scent of blood that nauseated me, waking me from my deep sleep.

Becky was still on the gurney. Two of Mother's abandoned tailor's mannequins stood, oddly enough, on either side. The newly mounted pheasant was staring at her through new eyes, and Becky returned the stare through two gaping holes, each one oozing blood.

I needed something to clog the holes. Mother's ping-pong balls! She had numbered them. They were stored in a vat and picked every week at the church lottery. I ripped open cartons, tore through boxes, and pried open metal cases until I found the keg in which they were stored. Rummaging inside, I pulled out two balls and raced toward my sister, squooshing the balls into her eye sockets, praying they would stop the bleeding.

The effort had sapped me of all energy. The chemicals on the rag I had inhaled were still taking their toll. I drifted into an agitated sleep.

Time passed.

"Colm," Becky screamed, in pain.

I woke up.

"I'm here," I said.

"I can't see!" she shouted.

"I'll be your eyes."

"It hurts," she sobbed. She was shivering. "It's so cold," she said.

Just outside the murky dungeon, the furnace lay dead, starving me and my sister of heat. It squatted, dumb and oblivious to our needs, for it too had abandoned us, despite my prayers for its fire and warmth. Terror filled and numb with cold, we waited for the dawn. But there was no sunrise, only the faint glow of a dingy twenty-five-watt bulb that flickered intermittently, threatening the cellar with total darkness.

Fever ridden, Becky coughed and wheezed. Her breathing had become a rattle.

Her condition worsened as the bleakness of our days led into the darkness of our nights. Eventually her breathing ceased. My sister was dead.

As I held her lifeless form in my arms, the door to the cellar creaked. It was my father. He descended the stairs, brandishing a hunting knife, eyes on Rebecca.

"You leave her alone!" I screamed.

The force of his blow knocked me against one of the tailor's mannequins, dismantling it. My mind was set on one thing: I had to protect my sister from his sinful hands. I grabbed the mannequin's severed arm and charged my father. The limb smashed against his kneecap, sounding as though it had crushed bone.

"You little bastard!"

He lunged for me. But his fractured knee wouldn't support his bulk. He collapsed, holding the injured joint. "I'm gonna kill you if it's the last thing I do," he seethed.

Another blow felled me. I turned my head before passing out from the pain. My eyes caught Mother's grin and the rolling pin coming at me again.

When I came to, a rope was cutting deeply into my wrists. Pain racked my head. I was hanging from a meathook like a leg of lamb.

Father had skinned Becky. The vulture was standing on the gurney, pecking at her bones. Cutting my sister's ligaments with its beak, it freed the humerus and tossed it into the air, watching it crash on the concrete floor. The bone cracked apart. The vulture then leaped on the scattered fragments and gobbled them up. Soon, there would be nothing left of my sister. The creature eyed me, ghoulishly.

I kicked my feet wildly, loosening the hook screwed into the moldy beam, and fell to the floor. I grabbed another of the mannequin's limbs and threw it at the bird. It croaked and flew away, perching on top of the shelving.

I embraced the skeletal remains of my sister. It was now up to me to care for her soul and prevent her bones from further assault. I decided to cremate her. It was the only way to protect her from either predator.

In the murk of the cellar I sniffed the stagnant air for signs of fuel and combustible material. There was a pungency emanating from a darkened corner of our confines. I followed the odor to its source: an abandoned canister of turpentine. Corrosion had fastened the cap tightly, resisting my efforts to open it. I found a clothes iron and brought it crashing down on the can. Turpentine soaked my shirt.

I wielded the iron again, striking the skin of the mannequin. Its guts, clumps of dried wood shavings, spilled out. I scattered them over Becky's bones.

I unscrewed the lightbulb and pried open the socket. I was rewarded for my efforts by a flash of pain. My eyes, though, hadn't missed the burst of bluish light that emanated from the tips of my fingers, nor the orange sparks, nor the stench of caramelized insulation wire that seared my nostrils. I'd harness this lightning and direct its bolts at Rebecca.

What witchcraft, what wizardry I was contemplating!

I tore the cable from its mooring and separated the two wires. Solemnly, I approached the heap of bones, sensing their urgency, their longing for rebirth.

As I connected the wires, spears of light cascaded around me, filling the cellar with a haunting luminosity. Fueled by the turpentine, flames blossomed. The lammergeier shrieked as the fire devoured the cellar's accumulated treasures. Becky's bones were being embraced by flames, serenaded by fumes.

In the distance I thought I heard my mother scream.

Chapter 85.

Driscoll returned from Vermont, frantic. Margaret was missing. In his mind, he played back the voice mail she had left him. She had said that Pierce knew the Benjamin woman was out of pattern. That news was as enlightening as it was unsettling, considering he didn't know the whereabouts of Margaret. He had left three voice messages on her cellular, and had called her beeper twice, but she hadn't responded. Where the hell could she be? It was very unlike her not to answer his calls. As he watched the narrow red hand on his office wall clock sweep away the seconds, he worried more and more.

The door opened, and Thomlinson walked into Driscoll's office holding a magazine. "Old Brookville. You know what an average house goes for in that community?" he asked.

"Why the sudden interest in real estate?"

"$3.9 million! That's the going price. Location, location, location."

"You got a career change in mind?"

"That's where Doctor Pierce hangs his hat. He's got his home there."

"That much I know. It's the only rock I haven't looked under. But there'll come a time."

"Some house. Made the cover of Architectural Digest Architectural Digest...June '98. Here, check it out."

Thomlinson placed the magazine on Driscoll's desk, open to a photograph of a palatial facade.

Driscoll read the caption below it: "On the corner of Lilac Grove and Primrose Lane lies the eighteenth-century residence of Doctor Colm F. Pierce."

The Lieutenant pushed aside the article and stared at Thomlinson. He was about to speak when he was interrupted by the electronic voice of his computer: "You've got mail" it sounded.

"Let it be Margaret," he prayed.

It wasn't. It was from someone called Paradox. Driscoll looked at Thomlinson, shrugged his shoulders and clicked the Read icon.

Darling Lieutenant,Bad karma with Godsend, you ask? Well, you can bend me over and tan my hide if I tell you a lie. I went and answered the man's ad hoping to find my first love. All looked promising until I met with the dude. Seems he wasn't too thrilled I was...shall we say...less than what he was expecting. I'm what those ratty-ass people call a tranvestite. A rootin' tootin' he-she! Well, anyway, your Godsend takes one look at me, rumples up his whitey-ass face and speeds off...The bitch. That sucker done me wrong, dude! Dissin' me. Can you believe that shit? Call me, honey, my number is 718-545-2134.Paradox Driscoll reached for the desk phone and punched in the number. A husky voice answered on the third ring.

"This is Lieutenant Driscoll. Is this Paradox?"

"It sure be, sugar."

"I just read your e-mail. You're telling me you saw the man?"