Minna was a strong girl and had seen death at close hand before. She did not scream. She jerked the woman by the shoulders, shook her, slapped the dead white face, listened for a heartbeat. There was none.
'Dear Lord,' she whispered, 'take the soul of Sister Hannah to Thine everlastin' mercy. Amen.'
Methodically she laid the body straight upon the bed, pulled the blankets up over the face, and bent to clean up the shards of crockery, the spilled oatmeal and milk. Only then did she scream -when, lifting the overturned cup, she saw what had lain curled beneath it: the tiny white shape, thin as the finger of a child, coiling and uncoiling on the rug.
Three A.M. The building is asleep. Outside, in the darkness, a chilly rain drums against the pavement. A streetlamp on the corner makes oily reflections in a puddle. Lampposts in the distance are obscured by mist.
The lobby is deserted, the light dim. Barefoot, dressed in baggy shirt and pants and clutching his little bag of tools, he tiptoes down the stairway to the basement. The corridor winds before him like a maze, its turnings illuminated by bulbs in metal cages, its ceiling just a foot above his head, as if pressed down by the weight of the building. From somewhere comes the hum of huge machines.
His teeth are out; his mouth hangs slack. The concrete floor is cold beneath his feet. He hurries past the steel-grey doors of the laundry room, the storeroom, the room where the superintendent keeps his mops and pails. Here it is at last, a battered metal door marked No Admittance. Impatiently he slips a strand of wire into the lock and gives it a twist. The door swings open.
The room is dark; from the darkness comes the hum of a machine, louder than before. Reaching inside, he switches on the light. Beneath him, down a flight of iron steps, stands the furnace.
It is huge. It fills the room like a monstrous metal tree, a vast tangle of pipes arching from its central core and spreading like branches across the ceiling.
Shutting the door behind him, he rushes down the steps and crouches like a supplicant before it, emptying his tool bag on the floor. A screwdriver tumbles out, then a wrench, then a pair of thick asbestos gloves.
It takes him but a minute to remove the boiler plate midway up the side. Within, the gas burns a bright and steady blue, and the roaring it makes is like a waterfall. The flame is not high now – in summertime the furnace only heats the building's water – but its force is still intense; as he lays aside the metal plate, his face is scorched by blasts of burning air. In the firelight, the black streaks on his skin look like a sunburst.
Stepping back to where the heat is less intense, he takes a stub of blue chalk from his pocket and hurriedly scrawls the circles on the floor, and then the circles within circles. The design is crude, simple, totally unlike a cabalistic star of tetragrammaton. It has eyes, a tongue, and claws. It resembles, in fact, a kind of beast: something primeval-looking, serpentine, coiled with its tail in its mouth.
The design is ready. He climbs the steps and switches off the light. Now the only illumination in the room comes from the mouth of the furnace, aglow with dragon fire.
Standing just outside the chalk line, he shrugs off the loose-fitting shirt and drops his baggy pants. Naked, he steps into the circle, his soft pink body hairless as a baby's. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he begins to dance.
His movements are awkward at first, then more certain. Suddenly he flings his arms wide and hops from foot to foot in an ever more complicated rhythm. From his toothless mouth comes a low ecstatic crooning and a string of unintelligible words.
'Da'moghu… riya moghu… riya daek… '
Round and round he dances, eyes shut tight, hands weaving ancient shapes above his head. Faster and faster move his fingers and his feet, faster comes the stream of words. Sheened in sweat, his body glows eerily in the flickering blue light that bathes the room. He bows, he leaps, he spins, pirouetting girlishly but turning ever faster till he's whirling like a dervish, his tiny withered penis flopping up and down, his plump breasts sagging and jiggling like a woman's. The crooning grows in volume, turns into a ululation, then a high-pitched wail.
'Riya moghu… davoola… DA'FAE!'
And suddenly with a cry it is over. The vision has come. Exhausted, he sinks to the floor and lies flat on his back with his head in the center of the circle, body still trembling, limbs still twitching from the dance. His eyes, opening, roll back to stare at the fire, but he sees far more. He sees all that he has to.
The Dhol has come at last. It is out there now. And it is free.
July Sixteenth
Sun's been warm today. Blue sky, fleecy clouds, refreshing summer breeze, all that rot. The sort of day that's supposed to make you feel good to be alive. Would have been perfect except for the bugs.
Got up reasonably early. Butterflies on lawn, cats playing tag. Bwada never came back, which is also nice. Sarr repairing leaks in the barn roof amp; knocking down nests of caterpillars from beneath the eaves; Deborah weeding in her garden, pruning rosebushes, hanging out sheets to dry. They do keep busy, these rural types.
And I should keep busy too. I've been here three weeks now amp; have yet to write a word on the dissertation. Slipping in my exercises, too. Didn't do them yesterday, and haven't done today's yet, either.
God, three weeks! Hard to believe. Even out here the time goes fast, when you stand back amp; look. Half of July's already gone, amp; I can almost feel August's hot breath on the back of my neck, something huge amp; angry waiting for me beyond the next hill…
From his rooftop, with the hot afternoon breeze at his back, he surveys the great doomed city spread before him in the sun. He hears, floating up to him, the hum of traffic, people's voices, the hiss of wind from off the Hudson. Children's cries reach him from the playground on the next block; he leans over the wall for a better view. Two of them down there are fighting. The larger boy has the smaller one down and is kneeling upon the other's shoulders, slapping at the face below him, slapping, slapping…
Elbows resting on the parapet, head resting on his hands, the Old One smiles as he waits for the tears to start. There; he has seen the gleam. His smile widens, spreads across his face. For a moment, as a wisp of cloud obscures the sun, the shadows change, his skin looks chalky pale, and he becomes a thing of stone, a gargoyle.
The gargoyle moves, dissolves. He raises his gaze from the playground to the dark green line that slices through the center of the city.
He has business there tonight – he and the woman. He is prepared. She will be, too, when the time comes: for tonight she'll wear the second victim's dress.
Last night was his turn to dance.
Tonight will be the woman's.
Night, now, amp; tired. Spent a lot of time in the sun this afternoon with Arthur Gordon Pym. The flies made it pretty hard to concentrate, but figured I'd get myself a tan. Probably have a good one now. (Hard to tell by looking in the mirror, though; light's too dim.)
But it suddenly occurs to me that I'm not going to be seeing anyone for a long time anyway, except the Poroths, so what the hell do I care how I look? Deborah had her chance; no sense trying to look good for her anymore.
No moon tonight, which works to the advantage of the stars.
One thing rather troubling: When I came back here after dinner I felt like reading something light, to counterbalance all the claustrophobic horrors of the Poe book with its pirates amp; corpses amp; cannibals – so I reached for the Saki collection.
Now I know I shelved that damned book under H.H. Munro, where it belongs. I specifically remember doing it, amp; I'm equally sure it was that way last night, because it gave me A.N.L. Munby on one side with The Alabaster Hand amp; Oliver Onions on the other side with Widdershins, all three books in fancy old bindings amp; looking quite handsome together. I remember sitting here admiring them.