"Fuck yourself," said Bill.

Septimus shrugged. "I know that this has been a...challenging day. You must miss her already."

"Where'd you get this fuckin' thing?" asked Bill. Then he surprised himself by laughing.

"A house. Remember, Bill, I can do pretty much whatever I want."

"And the water is from Africa? From the top of mount Kilimanjaro? Where the aliens roam?"

Bill let himself laugh again.

"Am I going insane?" he asked when he'd calmed down somewhat. "Did I just control a dead person?"

"You'll love it," said Septimus. "Now wash yourself and get some rest. I will see you in the morning, darling. May flights of angels protect you from harm."

Septimus lay a hand on Bill's shoulder. The touch was light, but warmth emanated from his hand. When Septimus squeezed, Bill felt like five points of fire, intense but relaxing, had burrowed into his flesh, calming the muscles, making them droop into relaxation.

"Okay," said Bill. He forced in a deep breath. "Okay. Wash up, okay."

And at those words, Septimus was gone.

Bill wasn't surprised; he just stared at the place where the giant freak had stood. A mere disappearance was mild, compared to the things he had just experienced. What new things had Mr. Logic placed into his head?

What was happening?

Bill pulled himself to the sink. The aches in his joints were subsiding, the warmth of Septimus* touch flowing through them.

Bill pulled the lever on the faucet. The water that came out was ice-cold, and numbed his arms and face as he cleaned himself, washing away the blood and grime. He squirted some of the Dr. Bronner's soap into his palms and worked up a good lather, splashing it across his face, stinging his eyes. The mount Kilimanjaro water smelled vaguely of minerals, like a mountain stream that had been running across rocks.

Bill could not help a bemused grin. "Where the fuck is the water coming from?" he found himself asking the bodies. He looked toward the fire, to where Saul had been immolated. "Sorry, man," he said.

Bill washed off the rest of the soap. The cold air evaporated the remaining water on his face as he settled down next to the tree, leaning his head against the trunk. The forest made night-sounds around him as the autumn wind shushed through the trees.

"I feel bad," said someone next to him.

Bill looked up, squinting.

Mary sat down next to him. Twigs snapped under her bulk.

She smelled like flatulence and body odor and some other funeral-home kind of reek. But Bill didn't care at this point. He could have sat next to a whole heap of body parts and not blinked.

"I'm sorry," said Mary. "I'm sorry. Your wife. That awful fucker Terris. Nothing I could do."

"Umm, okay," said Bill, feeling his eyes shut. His eyelids fluttered, turning the glare of the firelight into a hazy will-o-wisp. On the backs of his eyelids, he saw a vague checkerboard pattern. He wondered if his dream-classes would continue when he fell asleep.

"If you like," said Mary, "you could pretend that I am your wife."

Bill laughed. "Fuck no," he said. "No way. Oh God, that's sicka""

"Jesus Christ, you men are all the same. Get your hormones out of the gutter, young man. Marriage vowsa*sacred, they remain."

"What the hell are you talking about, then?" The grid behind his eyes came into higher resolution in his sight, with the black squares sharp and clear, and the whites the color of snow or the white of Septimus' head.

"What I meant was that you can lean against me when you sleep," said Mary.

"Mmm," said Bill, meaning to be noncommittal. But he instantly felt her huge arm around him, enveloping him in skin that was surprisingly soft. Not warma*it was as cold as the Kilimanjaro watera*but at least it was soft. He supposed the pressure against the left side of his face was her breast, which pressed to him like an overeager pillow.

An overeager pillow? Really? He must be going mental.

Bill tried to feel some disgust, some outrage at his situation. He was leaning against a repulsive, morbidly obese, shit-stinking, and not to mention completely fucking dead girl, little more than a day after getting married.

That's it, he thought. I am completely losing my mind.

"That's nice, darling," said Mary, as Bill felt himself settle in. "Better in the arms of the dead, than in the arms of nobody at all."

Bill's eyes fluttered.

"I don't want to sleep," he said, but did anyway.

"Help us," whispered Mary. "Oh, Jesus Christ God in Heaven, help us, Bill."

Seventeen.

Bill woke, and the clearing was empty.

Gray light filtered through the trees. He blinked, and became aware of the cold. He moved stiffly, popping his joints. His muscles creaked.

"Shit," he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "My God."

He sat up. Mary was gone. He remembered falling asleep in her cold embrace. Disgusting. Falling asleep in the arms of the dead.

He looked around.

Then he said, "Oh, no."

In the middle of the clearing, all that remained of the bonfire was a pile of scorched logs, and a halo of ash and blackened earth.

But that was it.

The bodies were gone.

Bill hauled himself to his feet. "Shit," he said.

He looked down, and saw that he stood in a depression, which had the clear outline of a body.

"Packed up," he said aloud.

"Beautiful morning, right?" said a familiar voice.

Bill turned around to see Septimus standing at the edge of the clearing.

"Terris and I had an agreement," said the magician, as if picking up on a conversation they had just been in the middle of minutes ago. "That we would let the day break. We considered making it night for the next seventy-two hours, but revised those plans. but no. And come, Bill. You're going to be late."

Bill frowned. "Late for what?" he asked. He walked away from Septimus, toward the remains of the fire. The cold in his joints was like ice, and maybe there was some remnant of the flame that could melt it out.

"Late for the first bit of fun," said Septimus. "At the cabin."

At these words, Bill felt nothing. It seemed that the night had leached out some of his spirit, and left it either in the ground or in the cold embrace of Mary. He crouched next to the blackened logs, which still gave off a bit of heat. He rubbed his hands together above it.

"No," said Bill.

"But everyone's going to be there. Your wife is going to be there."

"Won't cooperate."

"Yes you will. You know you will. Because we have her. And she's cooperating because we have you. And because she's a weak-spirited bitch."

Bill bit his lip. He opened his hand and stared at the scars crossing his palm.

What else could he do?

Bill sighed. He thought of Constance's white-blonde hair, and her delicate hand in his.

Had she been forced to sleep alongside one of the dead, as he had? He could imagine it all too well: his wife in her pink sweatshirt, curled up into a ball, cuddling with a man with a half-rotten face and a corpses' smile...

He shuddered.

If there was any chance to protect her, to get her out of this situation, he needed to play along. Even though he wanted to cut off Septimus' head, he had to obey the crazy fuck. For now, he just had to be a good soldier.

He swallowed some of the anger. There'd be time enough to let that out. But the time wasn't now. Wouldn't do any good to him, and sure as shit not to his wife.

"Bill?" said Septimus.

"All right," said Bill, through clenched teeth. "Let's go."

"Excellent," said Septimus. "Over the river and through the woods! Back to your home!"

"Can't wait," muttered Bill.

Eighteen.

The dead were lined up at the cabin.

The first one that Bill saw was the man with the orange tie, who Septimus had called Mr. Fancy. He leaned against a thin birch tree, which bent like a rubber band under his weight.

"They're all here," said Septimus.

"Huh," said Bill.

He walked next to Mr. Fancy. The smell of his putrefaction was less pronounced than the other bodies; instead he smelled of some kind of heavy man's cologne, something you would buy at the counter of J.C. Penney in a middle-American mall. Looking at him from the rear, he could almost believe that it was a guy in a suit who had just happened to wander into the woods.

But the illusion faded when Bill saw the man's face. In the half-light, its ravages were starkly revealed. The muscles and sinews of the flayed face were like an anatomical diagram, only the color was closer to black and purple than the wholesome red they used in textbook illustrations. Mr. Fancy's lidless eyes were bloodshot, and they moved back and forth as if he was scanning a line of text.

"Touch him," said Septimus. "You're going to need to, anyway. Yours is the first move."

"No," said Bill. "Think I'll pass."

"Going to need to eventually. Get it over with. Come on, be a good helper, Bill."

"No."

"All right. Just delaying the inevitable."

The dead were indeed standing in a straight-file rank, stretching out through the forest in a wall of flesh. All of them stood silent and motionless, their eyes open and glued to the cabin. Bill recognized a couple of the bodies near hima*there was the Asian kid, and the tattooed hipster, but many of them were new faces, all in various states of decomposition. Some of their deaths were obviousa"there was the guy with the arrow through his chesta"and others had no indication that they had even died in the first place.

"Ah," said Septimus. "Look. I thought he would never show. Lazy, lazy Terris."

Septimus pointed toward the cabin.

Through the shadows of the trees, Bill saw another line. They stood perhaps twenty-five meters away. These soldiersa*or bodies, or whatevera*stood in a similar formation to his ranks: shoulder-to-shoulder, single-file, facing the cabin. They were little more than silhouettes in the murk.

"How many?" asked Bill.

"Does it matter?" said Septimus.

Bill glanced to his left. Their lineup stretched as far as he could see, and disappeared into the dense undergrowth less than thirty meters away.

Bill counted twenty-five visible people. There had been at least a hundred lying in the clearing, perhaps more.

His stomach growled again. Even through all of the strangeness, through all of the trauma, mere biology had to make itself known. Even through the smell of all the dead, which had become intense despite the perfume of Mr. Fancy, Bill fantasized about a Big Breakfast at McDonald's, with extra syrup and butter for the heated-up pancakes served on styrofoam. And a chocolate shake for desert.

He wondered if Constance felt the same way. She'd eaten even less than he had.

"I think he's sending a scout," said Septimus.

Bill heard the running steps before he could look up. And when he did, he took an unconscious step backward.