The September afternoon on Lake Memphremagog, the weather became breezy and cool. Joe Endicott turned the small diving boat more toward the west, so that he and his younger sister Jane headed straight for the opposite shore with the waves of the open lake behind them. The boat lifted and dropped with a swoop through the wind and water. Their radio played a strange song, drowning out the drone of the outboard motor. The lyrics lifted above the water:
Dispatch the immortals who give us black light,
Forever spill the blood of their sister and brother's birthright.
Eternity is gone from this earthly flow,
Infinity is no time at all, today, Magog...tomorrow.
Without letting go of the throttle, Joe reached over and tapped her on the shoulder.
"Look!"
He pointed south down the lake. His face showed that at eighteen, he was already toughened by the raw elements of the lake.
A silver, almost eerie-looking yacht, which seemed to glow in the grey afternoon, came quickly toward them. Foam piled up at its sharp bow, which rose and fell as the yacht lifted and dipped to the waves. An enormous brass spotlight mounted on the roof added to its sharp lines and to its air of danger.
"Why is it going so fast?" Jane called out over the noise.
He shrugged and slowed the boat, then stood and wiped his eyes so he could see better. His sturdy athletic body, and the way he stood, reflected his confidence on the water.
"It's nearly planing," he whispered to himself.
The yacht lurched suddenly in their direction.
He opened his mouth to say more, transfixed.
A steady, full-throated drone, with a suggestion of much more power in reserve, rose across the wind and above the music. The lyrics on the radio were fading out and then unexpectedly blasting loudly, but he didn't recognize either the mode of the warning or the nature of the threat.
The yacht had picked up incredible speed.
Joe sat again and gave the boat full throttle. The distance to the shore was impossible to make before the yacht reached them.
Should they abandon the boat? He couldn't decide, but it didn't matter. The yacht came even faster on their path, then with a violent keel, turned and smacked the boat sideways and left them staggering in a churned-up wake.
Their boat rocked and tipped to the surge, and then flipped violently over. Joe felt something hit his leg with a painful snap, and when he came to the surface, he saw that Jane had come up and was okay. He spun around to get a look at the yacht. His right hand held tightly onto the overturned boat: a sharp pain shot through his leg, and treading water became futile. He knew he had broken it, but his whole body seemed to be in pain as well. He half spit, half retched a mouthful of water out, leaving a taste behind best described as burnt aluminum.
At the yacht's sternpost, a small American flag fluttered in the wind, and across the stern, between a couple of powerful two-hundred horsepower Johnsons, metal letters spelled out the legend 'Newport, Vt.' The yacht sat two hundred meters away, idling now, and a few people gathered on the deck watching. For a moment, Joe imagined the yacht passengers laughing, drinking and carrying on.
Jane swam over to him. She had turned fifteen this year. She was lithe and fair with short black hair and a pretty form, but to Joe's critical eye, she was a little spindly. Nonetheless, he had become protective of her, hoping to keep the boys at bay a little while longer. She was almost as tall as Joe, and they often scuba-dived together.
"What's wrong?" she said, upon seeing his expression.
"It's my leg. I can't move it. I think it's broken. You'll have to swim for help."
He looked to the shore. It seemed a long way off still, and the waves crested quite high.
"Can't we get them to help us?" she asked.
"I think we'd better not."
"Then you can relax in my grip and I'll drag you to shore."
"You're a ninety-pounder, kid. How are you going to make it with almost a hundred and a half holding you back? Swim to shore and go for some help. I'll stay with the boat."
To his dismay, black thunderheads rolled out over the bay from the east. He had heard nothing of bad weather, and certainly not of a storm. Moreover, the yacht had turned around again and drifted threateningly in the water. A tall man on the bow watched them with binoculars.
"They did that on purpose," Jane said. "Why don't they come to help us?"
"They didn't do it on purpose," he contradicted her. "Don't be ridiculous. They just didn't see us. Maybe the driver's drunk, and they're nervous about doing the right thing."
Though it was a lie, if she became more scared, he knew that she might panic. The yachters had most definitely done it on purpose, and drunkenness had nothing to do with it. Joe had heard a thing or two about Mirror Island in his time. He should have stayed away, but what's a rumor from old people sitting around and telling yarns over a bottle of wine at a bonfire? He had laughed at those old tales, but right now, he certainly wished he hadn't.
"Where are the life jackets?" she asked. She swam the circumference of the boat and came around in a full circle. "I don't see them."
He breathed in to calm himself, fighting his growing alarm.
"Well, they couldn't have sunk." He tried to chuckle, but his courage failed him.
"I'll check under the boat," she said. She returned in a moment. "I can't find them," she said, her glance wandering to the yacht. "Why are they watching us? What are they waiting for? Why don't they come and help us?"
"Be cool, sis. I'm going to try to get up on the boat, and wave to them for help." With an effort, Joe crawled up on the bottom of the boat, but with his leg so sore, he only waved from a position of lying down.
"I must look pathetic," he said to himself.
And vulnerable.
Where had this improbable thought come from? He didn't know, but it struck him as unlike him.
Jane looked up with her puppy-dog eyes.
"Dad's going to kill us."
He saw that she might cry. "It's going to be okay, but it looks like they're not going to help. Go! You can do it."
She looked over to the shore.
"I'll go, then," she said in a troubling voice.
Joe's heart sunk as she began to swim off. The yacht drifted away for a while, and the people seemed to have disappeared from the deck.
"That's the spirit," he called to her softly. "It's not too far, and the water's not too cold."
The first drops of rain began to fall as Joe watched her go.
"For sure they did that on purpose." He swore under his breath when she was out of earshot, the rain falling on the surface beginning to mute any other noise. "But why?"
Soft, high-pitched voices sang to him like a nonvisual mirage. The voices seemed far off and yet also known, as though they had come to him many times in his dreams but that he had always forgotten them:
They are bent to their veiled designs,
The tribe neither Magog nor Zion's.
In the netherworld they made their pacts,
Slipping into the world through subterranean cracks.
Despite the voices' ambiguous familiarity, he shook off what he took to be an auditory hallucination and focused with a shiver on Jane.
At the southern side of Sergeant's Bay where she was headed, a medium-sized island stood high out of the water, showing only a rocky base covered with fir, cattails, and woodlands. It was two or three hundred yards away. Fitch Bay lay off to the right. He knew the area well, but hadn't laid a foot on Mirror Island for years.
Lightning flashed in the horizon and the sky began to darken. Distances over water look longer than they are, and his anxiety grew.
"She's a good swimmer. She'll make it." He observed her as she swam. "But she's young and afraid."
A dull throbbing ache came to his leg, and as he watched Jane's head grow smaller, he began to feel certain that his leg was in a bad way. "From this stupidity, my sister and I are in serious trouble, and nobody knows where we are. Damn!"
For a moment, he looked away from Jane out onto the greater Lake. Memphremagog ran basically north and south for thirty-two miles. The southern six miles were in Vermont, the rest in Quebec. When he turned back, Jane hadn't drawn noticeably nearer to the shore.
"Hurry, please."
Just as depression overtook him, he heard the yacht's engines gun. The sound came over the rhythmic clunk of waves hitting his overturned boat. With a menacing roar, the yacht suddenly sped down upon him.
"Good God," he said to himself.
He waved with one hand and shouted at the top of his voice. Two men stood in the bow of the yacht. One of them waved back mockingly, and held what to Joe's mind looked like a rifle with scope. The man aimed it at him.
"Jesus!" he swore.
He pushed himself off the boat into the water and dove under the boat as quickly as he could, his leg screaming with pain. Then he heard the shot, and the bullet smashed through the wood and fiberglass and grazed his shoulder. Above him, the yacht passed over and swirled back around. Another shot made an underwater 'ping' sound. He released the scuba gear stored on his boat from its casing.
Another bullet broke through the haul and almost hit a tank. Joe saw the life jackets fastened underneath the tanks as he sank with the water-weights, taking a tank to the bottom of the bay. The life belt floated away from him to the surface. It took all of his effort not to panic. He released the oxygen and began breathing. He put the weight around his waist and, using only his arms, pulled himself along the bottom in the direction of the island. After five hundred meters, he peeked up through the surface for his sister. The rain had become steady drizzle but he could see that the yacht was headed out of the area toward the northern end of the bay, and Jane was nowhere to be seen.
"Get to the shore," he urged himself. "They've kidnapped her!"
For fifteen minutes, Joe swam underwater toward the huge rocks of the shore of the island. The warmth quickly left his body. The pain of his leg was turning into a dull, sickening ache. It accompanied every movement of his whole body. When he surfaced, he hid behind two enormous boulders jutting three to four feet above the water level. Both the yacht and the man who had tried to shoot him seemed like a vague memory.
It gave the impression that it was quite simply unbelievable and that he had gone mad. He fell into a feverish reverie. What did they want with Jane? He didn't dare contemplate it. What they were up to couldn't be explained, and why they had attacked and shot at him, he couldn't imagine.
The basic struggle of survival became his sole focus. It was the only way he could help Jane.
With some effort, he crouched in the water and buried the scuba gear under a pile of rocks in case he needed it later, and to hide the fact that he had survived. He crawled to the shore and dragged himself under a huge oak tree, which hadn't yet let go of its red and orange autumn leaves. He fell at its base then sat up against it, somewhat protected from the rain. Flanked on three sides by cedar bushes, the shadowy sense of the misty woods lulled him for a moment, and he passed out.
When he awoke, he tried to recall what had occurred, and it flooded back.
"How could this have happened?" he asked himself, without self-pity and without crying. "I've got to get help, but how? Mum and Dad won't even start looking until it grows dark."
He cursed himself for always coming home late after their dives. His hands trembled with cold: he wore nothing but a sweatshirt over a white cotton shirt, and a pair of loose-fitting trousers. He had to get out of the rain, to get dry. Cold would soon set in and he needed to get help, but how? At least the bullet graze at his shoulder wasn't serious—it had already stopped bleeding—but his leg remained a life-threatening problem.
Using all the strength in his arms, he pulled himself up along the tree to a standing position and scanned the immediate area for a stick that might suffice as a crutch. Putting any weight on his leg had become unbearable. He spotted a stick that might support him, and the effort just to make it to the stick seemed enormous. But Joe had a strong will to survive, and he struggled onward. With the stick, he hobbled some twenty steps and then he stopped, bent over, and vomited what seemed to be dirty water.
Afterward, he felt better and his pace increased.
For a time the rain lessened. From inside the tree line, he had drawn toward a part of the shore that curved out west. He caught sight of what appeared to be a beat-up wharf with a dock thrusting out from the side of the island and a worn boathouse.
"Please, let there be someone there, or at least a boat."
This new hope again increased his pace. He approached the boathouse and saw that its dock had been built of wood, with solid pilings and reinforced sides, but years of complete neglect had reduced it to ruin. Whole sections were missing, and some of the pilings had grown greenish and shiny. Underneath, the oddly dark water sloshed against the wrecked dock. What little light showed from the sun had fallen behind the big black fir trees that covered the island.
"It's going to be dark in a couple of hours," he whispered to himself.
All signs of paint had disappeared from the boathouse, and the roof shingles had fallen to the ground, rotting. At one corner, over the water, one of the support beams had sunk lower than the rest, rendering the structure crooked. But something about the ruin made no sense. It looked as though it were done on purpose. Joe stepped inside, out of the drizzle. The door, torn off its hinges, was gouged with cryptic symbols, and as he suspected, complete dilapidation had won out: debris and garbage lay scattered throughout, and a foul odor pervaded the space.
"Damn, not even a beat-up canoe or a moldy life-jacket!"
Cut high up into the wood on one side of the boathouse were the words:
Serpent-dweller.
He stepped back out and walked around the boathouse through thick, wet sumac and fern. Faint traces of a path led up into the mixture of fir trees and undergrowth that lay before him. The silence and abandonment made him desperate. The path slanted upward as the damp ground rose beyond the boathouse. Crumbling wooden steps set into the earth could hardly be seen. The forest changed to cedar and spruce; the walk became better, freer, and the walking stick gave him more support. The ground became firmer, but the pain of his leg worsened. He trembled and shivered. How many steps before he tumbled to the ground and passed out?
The woods smelled of mushrooms, rot, mud, and the proximity of water. He stepped forward and began to climb the path again. At the top of a hill, he found himself looking down on a large neglected cottage.
Like the boathouse, absolute ruin triumphed.
It stood two stories high, and the last vestiges of paint had peeled from the clapboard walls. Dormer windows ran along the upper floor. Like the roof, the windows were adorned with elaborate, wooden decoration, some of it broken away and dangling. Seen against the sky in a silhouette, and in the grey drizzle, the decorations gave the house a sinister effect.
Joe made the sign of the cross, even though he wasn't that religious.
At one corner of the cottage, a turret had been built. All of the windowpanes were broken, and in some places, burned. It looked a good deal like a house that had been abandoned for decades, but its modern style belied this assumption, especially the ground floor bay windows. Joe hobbled across an expanse of knee-high grass and weeds encumbered with small bushes. Debris lay in the entrance before him: the door was long gone. He peeked inside.
Should he cross over the threshold? The general condition of the place added to his queasiness. The furniture had been destroyed, but in an eerily particular manner, as though it was random. In the large room next to the kitchen, parts of smashed chairs and tables lay everywhere, and mildew and cobwebs covered a torn couch. He spotted a single wooden chair that lay turned over on the floor in a hall between two rooms, and stepping up to it, he set it to right and sat. He struggled to get inside of his wet pants-pocket and withdrew a small red Swiss army-knife, extending the blade with trembling hands and reaching down to his ankle to cut the pant of his injured leg.
As it separated, he gasped.
The leg looked grotesque. The black and blue sight of it made him shiver head to toe. He breathed and turned his glance away, perhaps for the first time feeling overwhelmed with self-pity.
Other rooms could be seen from where he sat. They were without doors, and most had huge holes in their walls. A front parlor, a den and the dining room had the walls stripped to the quarter boards. There had been a view over the lake from large bay windows in the kitchen, but now there were bushes growing up right outside them, blocking the room and darkening it. Then he noticed a huge fireplace in the living room, and sat for a moment looking at it, drowned in his pain.
"Maybe I can get it going," he said, quivering at the sound of his voice, as though the ruined house didn't want to hear a human talking. Involuntarily, he made the sign of the cross again. He glanced around the room for something to burn. Roughly gouged into the largest wall of the kitchen, was the word:
Babylon.
He frowned and ignored it.
"Do I have a light?"
He checked his pants-pockets and found his lighter. He shook it several times and after three tries, it worked. He stepped over to the fireplace, set the lighter on the ledge, and turned to look again for something to burn. A spiral stairway started from the center of the room and vanished as it curved upward and out of sight. He noticed that many small wooden posts supported the hand railing. He checked the first one and found it loose. With little effort, he forced it out and threw it toward the fireplace. The second one took more effort to dislodge. He saw other words carved or burned into the baseboards of the stairwell, but could make out only one word, on the seventh step up:
Arazal.
One by one, he hobbled up the steps of the stairway and took out the wooden posts, throwing them toward the fireplace. His leg throbbed and his head boomed. He knew he might soon pass out. Broken glass and pieces of plaster littered the steps, and as he made his way to the top, it seemed that each post took more effort than the one before it and that the cobwebs became thicker.
By the time he reached the top, he had counted thirty-two posts, all flung in a semicircle around the fireplace.
The staircase lead to a large, round room, an open, airy place with a huge bay window at the back. The glass from the window was long gone. It looked south down the lake, and he made his way over to the window frame. The rain seemed to be increasing, but had there been any sun to see, it would have been behind the house by now. Joe guessed the time to be near five o'clock.
At the end of the long vista lay a deep, rough bay with white foam caps. He didn't recall the name of the bay, but behind it sat a small mountain called Owl's Head. Looking south along the shore, he saw a castaway raft not far from the boathouse, trapped in among several large rocks. The raft appeared to be in good shape, and the bright, clean yellow barrels beneath showed it had been built in the recent past. It was a godsend. He realized that he needed medical attention soon to save his leg.
From some distance away, he heard a male voice.
"Look at this place. It's like a shrine to 'Old Nick' from that sixties movie."
Joe listened for clues of whether they were friends or foes.
"Don't you know what this place is?" another male voice asked.
"A huge stinking black shack?" the first returned sarcastically, chuckling.
The other had a phony laugh as well. "This is the Boss' old house."
"We're going to find him here? You shot the son of a bitch three or four times."
They were foes! Their voices drew closer to the cottage, and Joe looked around for a place to hide. He saw a closed door to the right of the top of the stairway and scrambled toward it, dragging his leg.
To his ears, the noise of his movement sounded like a banshee, but it apparently didn't give him away; perhaps the rain patter on the roof hid it. Joe opened the door to the destroyed remains of a closet. Although there were shelves, some still intact, enough room remained for him to squeeze in beside them and close the door. The pain shot through his leg, and he almost cried out.
"Why did his body sink in the water, though?" the first voice asked.
"Who knows? Sometimes they sink right away and then float later. It's scientific shit. It depends on certain factors."
"Look at this mess," the second voice said.
After a moment, the first man replied: "Check upstairs, Frank."
He heard the footsteps on the stairway.
"Look what's carved into the wood here," the man called Frank said. "Arazal. I heard Haslet refer to Leona once by that name."
Joe could tell when Frank had reached the top of the stairs. He heard the footsteps going over toward the window; he imagined Frank looking down on at the water and the vista of Owl's Head, just as he himself had. Would he see any footprints? Would he spot the raft?
Please, not that!
"Come on, let's go," the other voice called loudly from below. "This place is creepy in this light."
"There's a raft out on the shore by the boathouse," Frank said.
Joe cursed under his breath. The floor squeaked toward him.
"So?" the other voice called up.
"We should check it out," Frank returned. "Do you know what I mean, jellybean? We're soaked anyway."
"Sure, Sweetheart," the other said, doing a Jimmy Cagney voice, "I'll buy you the whole factory. I'd rather be out in the rain, you dirty rat, than in here. It's totally spooky, ha, ha, ha!"
Joe heard the footsteps come toward the door of the closet where he hid. He gripped the doorknob with all his strength and felt it being pulled, then the pressure ceased.
"Imagine having to spend a night here," Frank whispered to himself as though reciting a prayer. "Life would be better if I had never met him."
Joe heard his footsteps descend the stairway, and took a breath. "We better find him soon," Frank said. "I need a drink."
"He didn't come this way," the other answered after a pause. "There's no blood, and I'm sure I hit him with my first shot."
"If he's alive, he's swimming across the lake right now."
"Don't be stupid. He isn't going to swim two miles across the lake—not in September in the rain, and certainly not while we have his sister. If he's alive, he'll show his face soon enough. It's a small island."
"They have Jane," Joe whispered. "I knew it."
He had presence of mind to remain calm.
"You think he's alive?"
The two men had stepped out of the cottage. "As far as I'm concerned, I plugged him twice, but you know what the boss says..."
Their voices faded, and after a few minutes, Joe let himself out of the closet. He hobbled to the huge window frame and looked out over the rainy shore. He could see neither the two shooters, nor the raft.
The pain of his leg made him sick to his stomach again.
Leaves covered the floor, but for some reason, he looked up.
Gouged into the ceiling, indented in large depressions, were the words:
Welcome. Your soul is free at Mirror.
The die is already cast.
You are to perish near here.
The kingdom of God has passed.
When he looked away and back again, only a single word remained.
Arazal
Although Joe was sure the shifting words were a hallucination, without thinking, he made the sign of the cross once again. He left the cottage with his makeshift crutch, leaving the thought of the fire behind him. He stumbled to the shore and sat on a rock that looked over the lake, torn between fear and rage, hoping against hope that they hadn't taken the raft.
He took off his pants and his sweatshirt. His clothes were cold to the touch, and his hands felt clammy. Crouching over a large flat rock, he put his hand in the water.
"Not so cold," he said in a depressing whisper.
He determined, based on the growing dark, that six o'clock had passed. He heard thunder return and looked down at his leg. It was more swollen than before. Again, he cursed himself for so often coming home late from his dives.
"It'll be hours before they begin to worry."
He hated his parents at that moment for the same behavior for which he had so often admired and loved them: the fact that they trusted him to be responsible.
A cold shadow passed over him. For the fourth time, he involuntarily made the sign of the cross.
"What did I do so wrong today?" he asked himself.
He looked out over the rough lake in the fading light. "What's the right thing now?" He hung his head in concentration. "Goddamn them! Who are they?"
He took his first steps into the lake. The right thing to do was to find help for Jane. God wouldn't let them hurt her until he found help.
Suddenly, his heart filled with love for her.
"God. Give me the strength to make it across the lake."
He floated out and swam past the rocks. He used only his arms to propel himself, going slowly, every so often kicking his good leg. The rain seemed colder than the lake water, and as he swam, he became more hopeful he would make it. After all, he had swum across this lake before.
After a quarter of an hour, the rain had increased, with more intermittent thunder. An eerie sensation passed over him again, and he stopped and spun in the water. He saw huge black silhouettes moving and bustling about on the shore of Mirror Island. It was as though the silhouettes were peering out on Magog and taking notice of him.
Lightening flashed just behind them, and lit up the cottage. He saw now clearly some sort of shrine, glowing with black light.
En masse, the silhouettes entered the water, shouting and whooping it up. They swam toward him. Some of the silhouettes were of monstrous forms, and some had the shapes of beasts and aliens who hated the water, yet out of fear or hate they came toward him with awful speed. How he knew this, he had no idea.
"Jesus. I'm going nuts."
Then he heard a boat on the water, and saw a light shining from the bow. It seemed to be searching the foggy surface, and it came toward him from the other direction. In the blackness, he heard a booming voice:
Their power is increased at night.
He began to panic, but called out, "Dear God, please help me!"
He could move his leg now: the pain had receded, and the broken bone felt as though it had miraculously healed.
"Or it's completely numb, you moron," he cursed himself.
He heard a song, which sounded as though it was sung by angelic voices:
You've been healed to escape your plight,
Swim now toward the shining light,
It is one of his primary foes.
Hurry! They are attacking in rows.
Exasperated by what seemed another auditory hallucination, he turned toward the oncoming boat and looked at the light. He began bobbing in the water and waving.
"Help!" he called.
He sobbed in fear or in hope. He turned back to look.
The black, almost animated forms of thunderclouds stormed up behind him, moving monstrously up and down. He threw himself with all effort toward the light, but the dark silhouettes had come upon him quickly and surrounded him.
They passed through his body and he became numb. Then they laughed, sending a deadly echo of defeat through his mind with a dark hollow song of surrender:
Come with us; great works are done by the Underorder,
You are no longer needed in the world of pain.
Drowning here, before the porters at the border.
This is unHoli's wish, and your heaven-sent gain.
Finally, they pulled him under the water to the muddy bottom of the lake, until his lungs filled with its unholy water and his soul fled his body.
—
Jane slept, and in her dreadful dreams, she heard a haunting voice.
"Is she ready?" it said.
"Let me go," she responded in her sleep, "I didn't do anything."
"It's outfitted," another voice said.
For a minute, whispering, high-lilting singing voices tried to get her attention. They sang in an almost annoying, childish voice:
All is well with Arazal,
And she'll cause Kilaran's knell.
Although nagging, those voices didn't gain supremacy in her consciousness.
"Tell Bert we go at dawn," the first voice said, "and breakfast better be ready this time. No drinking tonight."
A moment of silence passed, and brought with it a feeling that pure, malevolent evil watched her sleep.
"I want to go home," she cried out, trying to wake herself. "Please, let me go home."
At length, she awoke out of her groggy sleep and sat up in bed. From outside the door, she heard, "Okay. Let Tom know."
"I didn't do anything to deserve this," she said, hearing the sound of her own whisper.
She lay alone on a single bed in a large basement room, which had no windows and only one door: an inescapable cell. She cried, though she was still not completely free of sleep—it clung to her like sweat. Then she realized that she had been drugged. This thought seemed to come from outside of her.
A large round table stood in the middle of the room. It held a container of orange juice, a clean, empty eight-ounce glass, and several different chocolate bars: her favorites, Caramilk, Coffee Crisp, Malted Milk, and Baby Ruth. The cement ceiling, walls, and floor were painted grey, and were free of cobwebs or dirt. They gave the impression of a modern prison cell. The bright light glared down, but a feeling of oppression filled the air as well. Clearly, it was a sparkling, clean dungeon.
"I want to go home," Jane called out. With an effort, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Please let me go," she whispered, then lowered her head and cried softly, already feeling doomed.
"That's not going to be possible," a voice returned from inside the room.
She looked up, startled.
Standing before her, ten feet away, stood a tall, fair-haired man, about fifty years of age, maybe younger. In the instant that Jane looked at his face, she sensed his power.
Even though she was only fifteen years old, she knew that he led the men who had captured her. Something about his mouth, with a ghost of a smile, gave him a sort of hovering grin of evil—but really, it wasn't a grin at all. Rather, it was only the shadow of one at the corners of his mouth. His face wasn't sickened by this subtle evil smile either. It seemed rather seductive, but in a horrible way.
Behind him, through the unlocked basement door, she saw that a set of steps climbed up steeply behind him.
"Why?" she mumbled.
"Take off your clothes," he said, in a voice that made her quake.
She backed away, and without the slightest change of expression to his face—the trace of a smile still at the corners of his mouth—he took a step forward.
"Or not, it's all the same to me," he added, then let out a cold chuckle of disdain.
Jane saw that she hadn't been mistaken. The mocking, lewd smile sprung to his face from some secret deep place inside. She saw that he was a horrible person, a lecher who hated women. The meanness sat plainly on his mouth as though it was something tangible, like a cold sore.
"Please, don't hurt me," she whispered.
"Believe me," he returned, and smiled still, "that depends."
"What?"
"My daughter would have been your age by now if she was still alive. It's shocking how much you look like her. It's probably a trap, but still, it's an irresistible one: sometimes you have no choice about what you do. The other tribes pull the strings. Debbie, my former daughter, the one who looked so much like you, came forth from Magog to serve me and to slay a servant of Gabriel's, Kilaran. Maybe you know her? It doesn't matter, but now, you will kill Kilaran in Debbie's stead."
"You want me to be your daughter?" she asked, ignoring the rest. It was insane.
He gave a cruel laugh. "You could never be my daughter. Do you know what a concubine is?"
With that one word—because she didn't really know what it meant—he truly terrified her. She began to cry again.
"You want me to baby-sit?" she asked, guessing its meaning.
He laughed—genuine laughter this time, which lightened his face. "Gosh, you are innocent. Maybe it's not a trap."
She stared at the open door and thought of making a dash for it. He followed her eyes but didn't budge, nor did he change the expression on his face. Again, the shadow of a smile sat heavily on the corner of his lips. She saw dark mockery and vitality in it.
"I want to go home," she said. "Mom and Dad will be sick with worry."
"You may find this hard to believe," he interrupted, "but this is a whim. Do you know Connie Adams? What am I saying? Of course you do. Your brother goes out with his daughter. See? You do know Kilaran, after all."
Again, she latched on only to what she could understand. "A whim?" she mumbled, growing desperate.
"I'm what they call filthy rich, a cocksucker! I have seen you out on the lake before, tempting me in that purple see-through bathing suit. At first I was afraid, but then I realized that I had to have you. Do you believe in love at first sight?"
She backed away. "Why did you kill Joe?"
"Joe's not dead. Nothing dies. My men are, how should I say, a little ardent. Joe got away. He is across the lake by now and has told your parents and the police this incredible story of love and deceit on the high seas. What's the ransom? What's the treasure? Ah, my lass, you know so little." Again she felt his disdain. "You're not an agent from Kilaran, are you?" he said softly. "Of course you are! You are just too innocent to be believed."
"But..." she said, close to tears.
"Alive? Joe? Yes."
"Are you a gangster?"
Again, he gave a genuine laugh.
"An oil man, which is nearly the same thing. You could say that I'm practically part of the Bush family." For a short moment, he laughed again. "I'm a Soprano slash bin Laden slash pedophile slash demon-lover slash..."
He let his words fall away. "Well, you can fill in the blanks with pretty much whatever you wish and some part of it would be true."
He looked into her eyes and stepped closer. She backed away against the wall.
"You know, Jane," he continued, "you can have anything you want. I need you for a little while, two years at the most. I will treat you like the devil's daughter, if you get my meaning. If you please me, if you obey me, I will reward you handsomely. You don't have to sell your soul, or do anything tawdry. I think they have stopped doing that sort of thing, anyway. Your family has been slated to perish. I could save one or two of them, if you please me in other ways—if you try to love me. I'll give you more than you dare dream to ask, maybe even eternal life. Do you understand?"
Her eyes clouded over with tears and truly, she told herself, she didn't understand a word he said. "I want my Mom and Dad."
"That's cute, but it's going to get old, fast." He paused. "Think over what I said with great care. Every word is true. If you throw yourself into it, you will survive. If you resist, you will die."
She turned away from him and threw herself back on the bed, sobbing. When she looked up again, he had disappeared behind the locked door.