Beyond the world.

And beyond the eye of Dr. Harold's mind, the dark sketch of the creature seemed to turn to flesh and smile.

Chapter 35.

The dream is vivid, hot-it always is.

"Dooer, dooer "

"It's always the same: the back arching up, and waves of moans. The tense legs spread ever wide, the swollen belly stretched pinp.r.i.c.k tight and pushing...pushing...pushing forth...

Then the image of the cup, like a chalice, and the emblem on its bowl like a squashed double circle: She senses flame behind her, a fireplace perhaps. She senses warmth. Firelight flickers on the pocked rock walls as shadows hover. A larger version of the emblem seems suspended in the background, much larger. And again she hears the bizarre words: "Dooer, dooer."

She's dreaming of her daughter's birth. Birth is painful, yet she feels no pain. All she feels is the wonder of creation, for it is a wonder isn't it? Her own warm belly displacing new life into the world? It's a joyous thing.

Joyous, yes. So why does the dream always revert to nightmare?

The figures surround her, they seem cloaked or enshadowed. Soft hands stroke the tense sweating skin. For a time, they are all Ann's eyes can focus on. The hands. They caress her not just in comfort but also-somehow-in adoration. Here is where the dream loses its wonder. Soon the hands grow too ardent. They are fondling her. They stroke the enflamed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the quivering belly. They run up and down the parted, shining thighs. The belly continues to quiver and push. No faces can be seen, only the hands, but soon heads lower. Tongues begin to lap up the hot sweat which runs in rivulets. Soft lips kiss her eyes, her forehead, her throat. Tongues churn over her c.l.i.toris, and voracious mouths suck milk from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The images wrench her, they're revolting, obscene. Wake up! she commands herself. Wake up, wake up! She cannot move. She cannot speak.

Her o.r.g.a.s.m is obvious, a lewd and clenching irony in time with the very contractions of birth. Behind her she senses frenzied motion. She hears grunts, moans- -then screams.

Screams?

But they aren't her screams, are they?

She glimpses dim figures tossing bundles onto a crackling fire. Still more figures seem to wield knives or hatchets. The figures seem palsied, numb. She hears chopping sounds.

The dream's eye rises to a high vantage point; the circle moves away. Naked backs cl.u.s.ter about the childbirth table. Now only a lone, hooded shape stands between the spread legs. It looks down, as if in reverence, at the wet, bloated belly. The belly is pink.

Moans drift up, and excited squeals. The firelight dances. The chopping sounds thunk on and on, on and on...

"Dooer, dooer," bids the hooded shape.

The belly shivers, collapsing.

A baby begins to cry.

"Ann, Ann?" queried the familiar voice.

Ann's eyes opened, but at first she saw nothing. Soft murmurs seemed to hover about her like vapor. Color shifted-orange-and she sensed a pleasant pulse of heat. Again she'd had the nightmare of Melanie's birth...but where was she? She knew she couldn't be in bed. Beneath her felt cold, hard, like stone. Then, as suddenly as her realizations- Slup-slup-slup...

Her vision blanked again, bringing the image of crimson vertigo.

The wide knife plunging down- Slup-slup-slup...

"Ann. Wake up."

The face formed, a reverse dissolve. It was Dr. Heyd.

Her eyes at last came into focus. Cloaked and hooded figures surrounded her, looking serenely down. Ann's gaze panned. One by one she recognized the ovaled faces: all of Lockwood's elderwomen. Around each of their necks hung a pale pendant, like a piece of stone on a white cord. At Ann's feet stood Maedeen and Milly, and standing between them, in a cloak not of sackcloth but of black silk, was Ann's mother.

Ann couldn't move from where she lay, though she felt no lashings of any kind. She was completely naked before them all. It felt as though ghosts squirmed over her, holding her down.

In the background, more figures busied themselves. Shadows bent to stoke the flames within a great brick furnace. They were all men, she could see, and they seemed faltering, devoid of all will. Another man poured some dark fluid from a vessel into a large earthen cup. A chalice.

The women lowered their hoods, their eyes wide in some deep intent. The man pa.s.sed the cup to Ann's mother. The man was Martin.

He did not look at her at all.

"Blud fo cuppe," the wifmunuc intoned. "Nis heofonrice, bute nisfan."

The coven responded: "Us macain wihan, o Modor. Us macain fulluht with eower blud."

The chalice was pa.s.sed around, each woman mouthing a silent prayer, then sipping. When the chalice had made the entire circle, the wifmunuc, Ann's mother, consumed the rest of its contents.

Engraved along the cup's rim, the glyph could be seen-the weird double circle. And when Ann's mother bent to set the chalice down, Ann saw the glyph again, a much larger version, behind the circle. It was not a carving, she noticed, but a large slab of flat stone hanging from the rear wall. Ann's eyes could only remain fixed ahead. The wifmunuc turned around, her hands splayed. Then she leaned forward and kissed the great rectangular slab of stone.

"O Mother, Holy Sister, Holy Daughter-"

"Bless us on this holy night."

Now the heat swelled to a p.r.i.c.kling intensity. Ann felt sweat gather liberally between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and trickle down her sides. Her s.e.x felt tingling, but from what? Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s felt enflamed with desire.

"Receive this offering..."

But there was no desire in her heart, only a misshapen terror. Receive this offering... Receive this offering... She shivered in the heat as she realized what it was she lay upon: a stone altar. She shivered in the heat as she realized what it was she lay upon: a stone altar.

Receive this offering- A stone altar, a sacrificial slab. The kin sacrifice, The kin sacrifice, she remembered Tharp's words just before he'd died. This rock slab was what Ann was to be sacrificed upon, by her own daughter. she remembered Tharp's words just before he'd died. This rock slab was what Ann was to be sacrificed upon, by her own daughter.

It's like a trigger to the whole ritual, Tharp had said. Tharp had said. The final offering to the Ardat-Lil. The final offering to the Ardat-Lil.

The coven grinned down at her. From either side, Milly and Maedeen touched her daintily, as though her naked flesh were iconic. Her mother remained at the foot of the altar. Her silken mentel was so fine as to be partly transparent. The woman's body showed through the sheer material. Though close to sixty now, her large dark-nippled b.r.e.a.s.t.s scarcely sagged at all. Her body had remained firm, robust.

"You've been dreaming, haven't you?" the wifmunuc inquired.

Now the recurring nightmare came together: Melanie's birth as a foreshadow to this night. Through her mother's malefic ploy, Ann had given birth to a child destined to become a monster.

"Yes," the woman said. "You've been shown all along. Do you understand now? You are a keystone to history. Do you understand how important you are?"

Ann still felt rooted to the slab, but she could lean up to look her mother back square in the face. "You want Melanie for this madness!" she screamed.

"Dother fo Dother," Milly said.

"Daughter of the Daughter," Maedeen translated.

"Our savior," Ann's mother added. "Our deliverer."

"This is crazy!" Ann spat. "You're all crazy!"

"Through this holiest night, our G.o.d will come among us in the flesh, Ann. To bless us for the next thousand years."

Behind her, Dr. Heyd opened a long thin box. From the box, Martin and Chief Bard lifted a gossamer-like gown of the purest, sheerest white.

"Rise," Ann's mother said.

Ann's paralysis loosened. She felt like a puppet being risen by wires. The elderwomen guided her off the altar, urged her forward. Her arms raised by no volition of her own. Then the stunning paralysis returned. She stood upright but could move no further.

"Bring the mentel."

Martin trudged forward. He slipped the lambent gown over Ann's head. It slid against her flesh like mist. Martin stood to look at her; his eyes shone dull, flattened. No recognition was exchanged.

Then he walked away.

"Melanie has served well," her mother said. "We all have."

The white gown must be some symbolic raiment, a ritual garment in which to be sacrificed. "Where is she?" Ann croaked.

"You've been dreaming of it all along," her mother replied.

Maedeen added, "But it wasn't Melanie's Melanie's birth you were dreaming of." birth you were dreaming of."

"It was your own," her mother finished.

Ann felt lost in this information. In her confusion she could only stare back at her mother's gaze.

"You are the Daughter of the Daughter, Ann. You are the new Ardat-Lil."

Ann tremored with the words. Her eyes felt skinned open. In the high ground window, the pink moon bloated to fullness. Only then did she note that the edges of her gown were wet. In panic, she glanced down. Her arms were slick to the elbows with blood.

The circle parted for her to see.

On the earthen floor a naked figure lay: a corpse in a great spread of blood. The heart had been cut out of the bosom and laid aside next to a long, wide knife.

Ann gasped through vision like a chasm, or like staring down from the highest place of the earth. The butchered corpse was Melanie. It was her blood that now dripped fresh from Ann's hands.

The wifmunuc pointed to the rear wall of the church. "Look into the nihtmir, Ann. Look into the face of our queen."

The great slab of stone seemed charged now with some spiriferous energy. Its flat pocked surface changed before her eyes, to a perfect silver plane.

Ann gazed into the reflection of her own face.

Crimson spheres gazed back at her. The mouth opened in horrid astonishment, a colossal black orifice full of shardlike cuspids and incisors. Shining silken hair hung adrift in the night-mirror's radiant static energy.

She raised a hand to touch her cheek, but it was not a finger that appeared in the mirror's veins. It was a long, sleek talon, sharp as an awl.

High atop her forehead, two diminutive nubs protruded.

She turned to reface the coven. All members then fell at once to their knees, voicing prayers of praise and homage to their deliverer in the flesh.

The Ardat-Lil smiled down upon its new flock.

Epilogue.

The night had indeed thwarted him, the night in all its loss of reason, its queer moonlight, and its inexplicability. He'd taken three wrong turns, and twice he'd found himself driving unlit back roads in circles. Then the driver's-side front tire had blown. Half an hour later, the spare had blown. He'd driven on the rim awhile, and next the oil pump had seized up. It had only taken a few minutes before most moving parts of the engine had fused.

He'd had no choice then but to walk the rest of the way. Not one vehicle had pa.s.sed him, not one potential ride. By the time he'd actually made it to the small secluded munic.i.p.ality of Lockwood, dawn was less than an hour away.

Dr. Harold felt lost even when he'd found it. The town lay in total darkness. The police station and fire hall were empty. He walked several residential streets, and found doors wide open, no persons within. More walking and he realized that he had yet to see a single car anywhere in the township's perimeter.

Piqued, he made his way back to the main drag. He stood in the middle of the desolate street and looked up. Just above the high steeple of the church, the moon shone down. It looked bloated to hugeness, gravid. Its weird pink light seemed hideous now. It tinted his face, blurred in his eyes.

Moon of the devil, he thought. he thought. Moon of the succubus. Moon of the succubus.

The pink light made him feel enslimed in some portent, or some chasmal acknowledgment.

What? he asked himself on the dark street. he asked himself on the dark street. An acknowledgment of what, for G.o.d's sake? An acknowledgment of what, for G.o.d's sake?

It was in the church that he found it, or actually the bas.e.m.e.nt of the church. Another church of sorts, a chancel of evils which refused to allow description. The air was warm in these cramped confines. Behind a small room which looked like living quarters, he discovered the lair of their black reverence. Much blood was seen soaked into the dirt floor. The stench of cooked flesh wafted before his face like ghosts. Perhaps they were were ghosts, the remnants of spirits freed through heinous acts. Blood had dried to sh.e.l.lacked blackness atop a great stone altar; charred bones and skulls lay scattered about, amid indescribable sc.r.a.ps of fleshy sinew. ghosts, the remnants of spirits freed through heinous acts. Blood had dried to sh.e.l.lacked blackness atop a great stone altar; charred bones and skulls lay scattered about, amid indescribable sc.r.a.ps of fleshy sinew.

This church was as empty as the entire town. Its population had fled, but to where, and for what? Where did they all go? Where did they all go? he wondered. he wondered.

Dr. Harold then walked to the back of the unholy nave.

Twin metal hooks stuck out from the rearmost wall, mounting hooks as if to hang something from. Nothing hung there now-there was just an outline of dust and age against the old wood. Whatever had been there had been quickly removed, taken away.

Dr. Harold's eyes remained fixed upon the spot.

The outline was clearly visible, that of a great squashed double circle.