"Howie-"

"Too late to stop me. I said it."

She kissed him suddenly, a small sweet stab which he sucked against his mouth before she could deny him, opening the seal of her lips with his tongue, which at that instant would have opened a safe had the taste of her mouth been locked up there. She pressed to him with a force which matched his own, their teeth touching, their tongues playing tag.

Her left hand, which had wrapped around him, now found his tender right and drew it towards her. He could feel the softness of her breast, despite the demure dress and his numbed fingers. He started to fumble with the b.u.t.tons at her neck, undoing enough to slide his hand inside so that his flesh met hers. She smiled against his lips, and her hand, having guided him to where he'd be most good, went to the front of his jeans. The hard-on he'd begun to sport upon sight of her bed had gone west, bested by nerves. But her touch, and her kisses, which were one indistinguishable blur of mouth on mouth now, raised him again.

"I want to be naked," he said.

She took her lips off his.

"With them downstairs?" she said.

"They're occupied, aren't they?"

"They talk for hours."

"We'll need hours," he whispered.

"Do you have any kind of...protection?"

"We don't have to do everything. I just want that we can at least touch each other properly. Skin to skin."

She looked unpersuaded when she stepped back from him, but her actions belied her expression, as she proceeded to unb.u.t.ton her dress. He started to strip off his jacket and T-shirt; then began the difficult task of unb.u.t.toning his belt with one hand virtually useless. She came to his aid, doing the job for him.

"It's stifling in here," he said. "Can I open a window?"

"Momma locked them all. In case the Devil got in."

"He did," Howie quipped.

She looked up at him, her dress now open, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s bare.

"Don't say that," she said. Instinctively her hands went to cover her nakedness.

"You don't think I'm the Devil," he said. Then: "...do you?"

"I don't know if anything that feels this...this..."

"Say it."

"...this forbidden...can be good for my soul," she replied with perfect seriousness.

"You'll see," he said, moving towards her. "I promise you. You'll see."

"I think I should speak to Jo-Beth," Pastor John said. He'd got past the point of humoring the McGuire woman once she started talking about the beast that had raped her all those years ago, and how it had come back to claim her son. Pontificating on abstractions was one thing (it drew female devotees to him in droves) but when the talk took a turn for the lunatic he beat a diplomatic retreat. Clearly Mrs. McGuire was verging on a mental breakdown. He needed a chaperone, or she might end up inventing all manner of overheated nonsense. It had happened before. He wouldn't be the first man of G.o.d to fall victim to a woman of a certain age.

"I don't want Jo-Beth to think about this any more than she has already," came the reply. "The creature that made her in me-"

"Her father was a man, Mrs. McGuire."

"I know that," she said, well aware of the condescension in his voice. "But people are flesh and spirit."

"Of course."

"The man made her flesh. But who made her spirit?"

"G.o.d in Heaven," he replied, grateful for this return to safer terrain. "And He made her flesh too, through the man you chose. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect. "

"It wasn't G.o.d," Joyce replied. "I know it wasn't. The Jaff's nothing like G.o.d. You should see him. You'd know."

"If he exists then he's human, Mrs. McGuire. And I believe I should talk with Jo-Beth about his visit. If indeed he was here."

"He was here!" she said, her agitation increasing.

He stood up to detach the madwoman's hand from his sleeve.

"I'm sure Jo-Beth will have some valuable insights..." he said, taking a step back. "Why don't I fetch her?"

"You don't believe me," Joyce said. She was close to shouting now; and to tears.

"I do! But really...allow me a moment with Jo-Beth. Is she upstairs? I believe she is. Jo-Beth! Are you there? Jo-Beth?"

"What does he want?" she said, breaking their kiss.

"Ignore him," said Howie.

"Suppose he comes looking for me?"

She sat up, and swung her feet over the edge of the bed, listening for the sound of the Pastor's step on the stairs. Howie put his face against her back, reaching beneath her arm-his hand damming a trickle of sweat-and gently touching her breast. She made a small, almost agonized, sigh.

"We mustn't..." she murmured.

"He wouldn't come in."

"I hear him."

"No."

"I do," she hissed.

Again, the call from below: "Jo-Beth! I'd like a word with you. So would your mother."

"I've got to get dressed," she said. She reached down to pick up her clothes. A pleasantly perverse thought pa.s.sed through Howie's mind as he watched her: that he'd like it if in her haste she put his underwear on instead of her own, and vice versa. To push his c.o.c.k into a s.p.a.ce sanctified by her c.u.n.t, perfumed by it, dampened by it, would keep him the way he was-too hard for comfort-until the Crack of Doom.

And wouldn't she look s.e.xy, with her slit just out of sight behind the slit of his briefs? Next time, he promised himself. There'd be no hesitation from now on. She'd allowed the desperado into her bed. Though they'd done no more than put their bodies side by side, that invitation had changed everything between them. Frustrating as it was to see her dress again so soon after their undressing, the fact of their having been naked together would be souvenir enough.

He plucked his jeans and T-shirt up, and began to put them on, watching her watching him as he clothed the machine.

He caught that thought, and modified it. The bone and muscle he occupied was no machine. It was a body, and it was frail. His hand hurt; his hard-on hurt; his heart hurt, or at least some heaviness in his chest gave him the impression of heart-ache. He was too tender to be a machine; and too much loved.

She stopped what she was doing for a moment, and glanced towards the window.

"Did you hear that?" she said.

"No. What?"

"Somebody calling."

"The Pastor?"

She shook her head, realizing that the voice she'd heard (was hearing still) was not outside the house or the room but in her head.

"The Jaff," she said.

Parched by protestations, Pastor John went to the sink, picked up a tumbler, ran the tap-water until it chilled, filled the gla.s.s and drank. It was almost ten. Time to bring this visit to an end, with or without seeing the daughter. He'd had enough talk of the darkness in humanity's soul to last a week. Pouring away the dregs of his water, he looked up and caught sight of his reflection in the gla.s.s. As his gaze lingered in self-appraisal and approval, something in the night outside moved. He put the tumbler in the sink. It rolled back and forth on its rim.

"Pastor?"

Joyce McGuire had appeared behind him.

"It's all right," he said, not certain which of them he hoped to soothe. The woman had got to him with her halfwitted fantasies. He returned his gaze to the window.

"I thought I saw somebody in your yard," he said. "But there's nothing-"

There! There! A pale, blurred bulk, moving towards the house.

"No it's not," he said.

"Not what?"

"Not all right," he replied, taking a step back from the sink. "It's not all right at all."

"He's come back," Joyce said.

The last reply in all the world he wanted to give was yes, so he kept his peace, just stepping back from the window another foot, another two feet, shaking his head in denial. It saw his defiance. He saw it see. Eager to undo his hope it came out of the shadows suddenly, and made its presence plain.

"Lord G.o.d Almighty," he said. "What is this?"

Behind him he heard the McGuire woman start to pray. Nothing manufactured (who could write a prayer in antic.i.p.ation of this?) but an outpouring of entreaties.

"Jesus help us! Lord, help us! Keep us from Satan! Keep us from the unrighteous!"

"Listen!" Jo-Beth said. "It's Momma."

"I hear."

"Something's wrong!"

As she crossed the room Howie overtook her, putting his back to the door.

"She's only praying."

"Never like that."

"Kiss me."

"Howie?"

"If she's praying, she's occupied. If she's occupied she can wait. I can't. I don't have any prayers, Jo-Beth. I've only got you." This flow of words astonished him, even as they came. "Kiss me, Jo-Beth."

As she leaned to do so a window downstairs shattered, and Momma's guest unleashed a yell that had Jo-Beth pushing Howie aside, hauling open the door.

"Momma!" she yelled. "Momma!"

Sometimes a man was wrong. Born into ignorance, it was inevitable. But to perish for that ignorance, and brutally, seemed so unfair. Nursing his bloodied face, and half a dozen such complaints, Pastor John crawled across the kitchen to take refuge as far from the broken window-and what had broken it-as his trembling limbs could carry him. How was it possible he'd come to such desperate straits as this? His life was not entirely blameless, but his sins were far from large, and he'd paid his dues to the Lord. He'd visited the Fatherless and Widows in their affliction, the way the Gospels instructed, he'd done his level best to keep himself unspotted from the world. And still the demons came. He heard them, though he had his eyes closed. Their myriad legs were making a din as they clambered over the sink and the dishes piled beside it. He heard their wet bodies flopping on to the tiles as their tide overflowed on to the floor, and their pa.s.sage across the kitchen, urged on by the figure he'd glimpsed outside (The Jaff! The Jaff!), who'd been wearing them from head to toe, like a beekeeper too much in love with his swarm. The McGuire woman had ceased her prayers. Perhaps she was dead; their first victim. And perhaps that would be enough for them, and they'd pa.s.s him over. That was a prayer worth finding words for. Please Lord, he muttered, trying to make himself as small as possible. Please Lord, make them blind to me, deaf to me, and only you hear my supplications and keep me in your forgiving eye. World without End- His requests were interrupted by a violent beating on the back door, and, rising above it, the voice of Tommy-Ray, the prodigal.

"Momma? Can you hear me? Momma? Let me in, will you? Let me in, and I swear I'll stop them coming. I swear I will. Only let me in."

Pastor John heard a sob from the McGuire woman by way of response, which became, without warning, a howl. Alive she was; and in a fury.

"How dare you!" she shrieked. "How dare you!"

Such was her din, he opened his eyes. The flow of demons from the window had stopped. That is, it had stopped advancing, though there was still motion across the pale stream. Antennae weaving, limbs readying themselves for new instructions, eyes bristling on stalks. There was nothing among them that resembled anything he knew; and yet he knew them. He didn't dare ask himself how, or from where.

"Open the door, Momma," Tommy-Ray said again. "I have to see Jo-Beth."

"Leave us alone."

"I have to see her and you're not going to stop me," Tommy-Ray raged. His demand was followed by the sound of splintering wood as he kicked at the door. Both the bolts and the lock were unseated. There was a moment's hiatus. Then he gently pushed the door open. His eyes had a vile sheen about them; a sheen Pastor John had seen in the eyes of people about to die. Some interior light informed them. He'd taken it as beatific until now. He couldn't make that error again. Tommy-Ray's glance flitted first to his mother, who was standing at the kitchen door, barring it, then to her guest.

"Company, Momma?" he said.

Pastor John shook.

"You've got a hold on her," Tommy-Ray said to him. "She listens to you. Tell her to give me Jo-Beth, will you? Make it easier on all of us."

The Pastor looked round at Joyce McGuire: "Do it," he said, plainly. "Do it or we're all dead."

"See, Momma?" came Tommy-Ray's response. "Advice from the holy man. He knows when he's beat. Call her down, Momma, or I'm going to get mad, and when I get mad so do Poppa's friends. Call her!"

"No need."

Tommy-Ray grinned at the sound of his sister's voice, the combination of gleaming eyes and ravishing smile chilling enough to teach ice a trick or two.

"There you are," he said.