It was a corpse that lay sprawled upon the kiosk floor: a nude woman besmirched with blood. In the moonlight, the blood looked utterly black. A tremendous stain spread from the apex of the corpse’s legs. The navel and sunken nipples looked like sockets, and the face…the face…
Veronica turned and ran.
— the face had been eaten off.
Her terror propelled her back down the path. Suddenly the woods seemed labyrinthine, insolvable. She thought in primal one-word bursts. Murder. Help. Phone. Police. She ran manic back to the house. Who was it? The corpse, bereft of a face, defied identification.
Up the wooden steps, across the deck. In the kitchen she stopped. What! What! “Somebody! Help!” she yelled, but the plea only echoed. She sprinted up the steps and burst into Amy Vandersteen’s room. The room’s tenant was not within. Veronica was about to run back out, but something locked her gaze. A lone sheaf of papers lay on Amy’s writing desk.
Amy obviously had accomplished little of her project, too distracted by drugs. The pages were an attempt at some sort of an outline, a scene from a projected screenplay.
VOICE: All the truth that you can bear…is yours.
PROTAGONIST: What truth! Tell me!
VOICE: Look into the mirror. What do you see?
[Protagonist squints.
Cut to a mirror, two o’clock angle.]
PROTAGONIST: Nothing.
VOICE: You’re not looking closely enough.
[Cut to protagonist’s face,
then back to mirror. Mirror is empty.]
VOICE: Look closely and you will see the truth. Tell me what you see.
[Close-up protagonist’s eyes. Zoom into pupils.]
PROTAGONIST: I…see…a man.
VOICE: Yes!
[Show flames in pupils.]
PROTAGONIST: I see a man made of flames.
A man made of flames? The similarity urged Veronica away from the desk. She dashed next to Ginny’s room, not surprised that Ginny wasn’t there. The manuscript, stacked neatly atop the typewriter bore the title “The Passionist.” She flipped to the last page and scanned the last paragraph of Ginny Theils’ taut, clipped prose:
…touched her, and in that touch she saw all the love in the world. Flesh made perfect, all flaws purged by the fire. “I am risen,” said the voice, but it was no human voice at all. The voice, like midnight, like truth, was incalculable. “Be risen with me.”
“But I’m not worthy!” she pleaded. “I’ve sinned.”
“And I now absolve you, with fire.”
She openly wept before the flow of love. I am risen, she thought. Trembling, she reached out. His hand closed over hers.
“Come away with me and my dream,” said the man made of flames.
Veronica’s heart wrenched in her chest. It was impossible. They’d all had the same vision in their dreams. The Fire-Lover. The man made of flames.
She was too confused to sort her thoughts. Then the words, behind her, rose in the air like a palpable shape.
“All the truth that you can bear, Veronica, is yours.”
She shivered as she turned. Gilles blocked the doorway. “What have you people done?” were the only words she could summon.
“There’s so much that you don’t understand, but you were not made to understand. You’ll see it all, though. In time.”
“You’re murderers,” her voice whispered. She stepped back, and Gilles stepped forward. His muscles flexed beneath his tight, tanned skin as he moved.
He opened his hands. Suddenly his eyes showed only white. “I am risen,” he intoned. “Be risen with us.”
Madmen, she thought. Her instincts poured adrenaline into her heart and she rushed forward. She tried to claw at his face, but his hands snapped up her wrists. She bit into his forearm. He didn’t flinch. She bit down harder and felt her teeth grind against bone. He only winced slightly, holding her. Warm blood flowed into her mouth. Even when she bit out a collop of flesh, he barely reacted.
“Don’t hurt me,” he said. “We have a gift for you. It’s a precious gift. Your transposition will show you wonders.”
She fought against his grasp, but his forearms, firm as steel rods, didn’t budge. His grip on her wrist made her hands go numb.
“You cannot hurt me,” he said.
Veronica squealed. Her foot lashed out and caught him directly between the legs. Gilles’ hands snapped open — suddenly he was on his knees.
Veronica leapt over him, scrambled out of the room and down the stairs. Fleeing to Ginny’s car would be pointless; she didn’t have the keys and she didn’t have time to look for them. She yanked on the front door but nothing happened. The dead bolt had no knob, just a keyhole. Locked.
She sensed the shadow that appeared on the landing.
She rushed back into the kitchen. Get a knife! She heard footsteps as she hauled open drawers, spilling their contents in a clang of metal. Her fingers closed around a fileting knife, when she noticed a lower cabinet hanging open. Immediately she noticed what was inside.
A phone.
It was a portable phone. A small whip antenna stood out of its handle, and a big battery pack was screwed into its housing.
A tiny yellow light winked when she turned on the switch, and the buttons glowed. Beeps resounded as she punched in 911.
She listened, panting. Nothing happened.
“Goddamn it!” she squealed. She’d never used one of these. It wasn’t like a cell phone. She fumbled with the receiver, sensing the footfalls coming through the living room. A top button glowed SEND.
Before she could push it, she was screaming, rising, being lifted up by her hair. The heel of Gilles’ bare foot slammed down on the phone and cracked its black plastic housing.
“You don’t understand.” His accented voice was clement, soft. Her scalp barked with pain. She whipped around—
“Veronica, please—”
She brought the knife across Gilles’ face. Its blade sliced cleanly through one cheek and out the other.
He stiffened and let go. In silence he brought his hands to his pouring face and stared at her. The stare seemed to dare her. I can’t hurt you, huh? she thought. Then she lunged again—
“Please, don’t,” he pleaded.
— and planted the knife into Gilles’ left eye.
He stood shuddering. Blood flowed like a cascade down his chest, yet he didn’t fall. His right eye held wide on her while the fileting knife jutted from his left.
And then, with resolute calm, he slowly removed the blade. Clear fluid ran down his cheek. The knife clattered.
“Please, Veronica. I won’t hurt you.”
She screamed again, a high keening sound, as the hand came around and grabbed her throat. Suddenly she was kicking, held fully off her feet.
“He won’t hurt you,” Marzen said very gently. “But I will.”
The grip of the German’s big hand tightened. Veronica gagged. Aloft, she seemed to be running on air, but soon her movements began to grow feeble.
Marzen’s face looked up at her. Blank. Pitiless.
I’m dead, she managed to think.
The hand squeezed off all the blood to her brain, and down she went, into darkness.
Chapter 33
The fog of her thoughts sidetracked her all the way home. She’d read The Synod of the Aorists in its entirety, a tome as black as pitch tar. Its images seemed to peer at her like phantoms in the backseat. When she spotted the green sign, her exit—Historic District, Next Right—she nearly wept with relief.