He drew a pentagram around the bed, and another on the ceiling directly above, all the while muttering a Latin incantation. When he’d finished, he dusted off his hands and surveyed his work. The pentagrams were protective circles designed to repel negative forces that crept upon hapless sleepers: the night hags, the succubae and incubi, whatever unnamed demons that made feasts of a dreamer’s spirit. “Be sure to step carefully when you get into bed. Smudge the line and it’s useless.”
“The maid is gonna love this,” she said. Probably Sonny had arranged for them to be left undisturbed, however. He thought of everything. “Maybe we should sacrifice a goat. Yeah, ram’s blood. And a virgin.”
“You’re drunk. Go to sleep,” he said.
6.
Katherine lay sleep-drugged and passive while Sonny fucked her. His face always changed during sex. His eyes narrowed, his teeth shone like tarnished gemstones; he seemed dangerous and she occasionally fantasized he was a criminal, maybe a gangster who’d decided to have his way with her.
She turned her cheek against the coolness of her pillow while he grunted in her ear. The room was dark, but by the glow of the guttering candles she slowly realized Mr. Lang stood in the doorway, watching. She groaned, and Sonny put his hand over her mouth as he’d gotten in the habit of doing back when they were young and lusty and dwelt in an apartment with paper-thin walls. She struggled and that excited him and he moved faster, pressed her so hard the mattress formed a cave around them. Mr. Lang sidled from the doorway and toward the bed and slipped from her field of view. All she could hear was Sonny panting, her own muffled moans and cries. She panicked and thrashed against him and then she came and moments later he finished and collapsed upon her like a dead man.
Gasping and sobbing, Katherine shoved him until he rolled over. She frantically looked around, but Mr. Lang was nowhere to be seen. Her chest squeezed so tight her vision twinkled with motes and stars. Then, the urge to pee came over her. She was terrified to walk across the floor and into the pit of darkness that was the bathroom.
She lay awake, curled tight as a spring until morning light slowly pushed the shadows away and into the corners of the room. By then she’d half convinced herself Mr. Lang’s appearance was that of an apparition. She chuckled wryly: What if Sonny’s pentagram had kept them safe?
7.
Good as his word, following breakfast Mr. Prettyman gathered a party, which included Mr. Cockrum and his girlfriend Evelyn Fabini, and squired his guests around the expansive property on foot. The morning was damp. Golden
light fell over the leaves and grass. It was a hushed and sacred moment before reaping-time. The world was balanced on the edge of a scythe.
Mr. Lang, accompanied by a scruffy field hand type, shadowed them. Katherine’s flesh crawled and she endeavored to walk so one or more of her companions blocked Mr. Lang’s view of her backside. On several instances she’d begun to broach the subject of the man’s intrusion into their bedroom, but Sonny ignored her this morning, submerged in one of his moods. He wouldn’t have believed her anyway. She took her fair share of pills and that wasn’t something he let her forget. The accident had destroyed his trust in her judgment, perhaps her rationality.
Their tour skirted the outlying forest. Katherine, a veteran hiker, was nonetheless impressed with the girth of the trees, the brooding darkness that lurked within their confines. Periodically, well-beaten paths diverged and disappeared into the dripping trees. Mr. Prettyman led them past a tract of stone bungalows and into a cluster of decrepit outbuildings. The distillery was in the middle stages of collapse, its equipment quietly rusting amidst the rye and blackberry brambles. A stream clogged with brush gurgled nearby. He claimed that one of the state’s only functioning windmills, a stone and timber replica of the famous Dutch models, had long dominated the rolling fields. Storms destroyed it decades prior, but its foundation could probably still be located should an intrepid soul assay chopping back mountains of scotch broom and weedy sycamore.
It had grown hot. She stared into the distance where the tall grass had begun to turn yellow and brown, and felt an urge to fly pell-mell into the field and roll in the grass, to burrow and hide in the soft, damp earth, to stare at the sky through a secret lattice.
“What’s that?” asked Ms. Fabini, Mr. Cockrum’s pale young mistress. “Over there.”
Katherine had previously noted a copse of rather deformed oak trees that crowned a low rise in the otherwise flat field. She counted five trees, each heavily entwined in hawthorn bushes to roughly waist height. The thorn bushes made a sort of arched entrance to the hollow interior. Shadows and foliage obscured what appeared to be large pieces of statuary.
Mr. Prettyman said, “Ah, that would be one of several pagan shrines scattered across this region. They’re no secret, but we keep mention of them to a minimum. The edification of our esteemed guests is one thing. Wouldn’t do to stir up a swarm of crass tourists, on the other hand.”
“Of course, of course, my good man,” Mr. Cockrum said, to which the rest of the party members added their semi-articulate concurrence.
“Indian totems?” Mr. Woodruff asked, shading his eyes. “Shall we nip over and take a closer look?”
“Celtic,” Sonny said.
“Quite right,” Mr. Prettyman said. “You’ve done your homework. The details are sketchy, but Mr. Welloc and those of his inner circle imported various art objects from Western Europe and installed them in various places—some obvious, others not so. Allegedly, this piece was recovered in Wales.”
“In other words, robbed from the peasants,” Mr. Cockrum said to his girlfriend from behind his hand.
They filed into the copse where it was cool and dim.
“My word,” Mr. Woodruff said.
The stone effigy of a muscular humanoid with ram horns reared some eight or so feet and canted sharply to one side. It radiated an aura of unspeakable antiquity, its features eroded, its form shaggy with moss that issued from countless fissures. Pieces of broken masonry jutted from the bed of dead leaves at the statue’s foot—the remnants of a marble basin lay shattered and corroded. Even in its ruin, Katherine recognized the sacrificial altar for what it was. Heat and chill cycled through her. Blue sky peeped through a notch in the canopy and it seemed alien.
“Exactly like the painting,” Sonny said, his voice hushed.
“It’s…ghastly,” Ms. Fabini said, white-gloved hand fluttering near her mouth as she stared in awe and horror at the statue’s prodigious endowment.
“Oh, honey, control yourself.” Cockrum squatted to examine the base of the statue, which had sunk to its calves in the dark earth. Sonny joined him, dusting here and there in a fruitless search for an inscription. From Kat’s vantage, their heads obscured the Goat Lord’s genitals. It struck her as a disquieting tableaux and without thinking, she raised her camera and snapped a picture an instant before they rose, dusting off their hands.
Katherine toed the ashes of a small fire pit, stirred sand and charred bits of bone. She said to Mr. Prettyman, “Who comes here? Besides your guests.”
“Only guests. No one else is permitted access to the property.” Mr. Prettyman stood beside her. He’d tied his long, white hair in a ponytail. It matched the severity of his expression. “There are those who pay for the privilege of borrowing the shrine. They hold services, observe vigils.”
“You find it distasteful,” she said.
He laughed coldly. “I understand the will to madness that is faith.”
“You say they imported this from Wales.”
“Yes, from a ruined temple.”
“But, isn’t this a pagan god. It resembles—”
“Old Nick. Of course. Don’t you suppose The Prince of Darkness transcends religion? The true Man of a Thousand Faces. He’s everywhere, no matter what one may call him.”
“Or nowhere,” she said.
“Ah. You have a scientific mind.”
“What’s left of it. Not much room for superstition.”
“He doesn’t require much,” Mr. Prettyman said. “A fly will lay eggs on the smallest morsel.”
8.
They lay in bed in the darkness of their small Pasadena home. He spooned her, his arm across her shoulder. The weight of his arm used to be a comfort; now it frightened her somehow. She knew he was awake because he wasn’t snoring. A fan revolved somewhere above them. The room broiled. Her skin was cold and slick. She trembled.
Katherine?
She held her breath, waiting for his hand to slide from her breast to her belly, to push her legs apart and begin stroking her pussy. This was how it started, if it started at all. The hairs on her neck stood and she felt sick, flush with precognition that sent a wave of queasiness through her.
Did you do it on purpose? His whisper came low and harsh. It might’ve been the voice of a perfect stranger.
She cried then. Her entire body shook, wracked with shame and grief and guilty terror. His hand fell from her and he began to snore.
9.
It wasn’t a bad week. Sonny drank more than usual, which worried her at first. This seemed to improve his mood, however. Between his daylong excursions into the countryside and midnight sessions poring over the archaic tomes by candlelight in the far corner of the suite, he was utterly preoccupied. He acted euphoric, which was his custom when approaching the solution to some particularly thorny problem. He kissed her gently in the morning before his departure, and when they shared dinners on the deck overlooking the valley, he was absentminded, yet sweet. She warmed to her independence, lounging with a book in the shade of the yard trees, walking the grounds as she pleased, hopping rides with Mr. Cockrum and Ms. Fabini for daytrips into town.
One late morning, she and Ms. Fabini contrived to ditch Mr. Cockrum when he nipped into the Haymaker Tavern to slum with the plebeians. The women explored, although there wasn’t much to see after one had taken in the Main Street shops and the museum. The abbreviated center of town lay cupped by gently rising hillsides. Industry was relegated to the eastern edge, beyond the deep, quick waters of Belson creek, where dwelt the junkyards, auto shops, tattoo parlors, taverns, and the brewery, a monument which had been installed shortly after the end of Prohibition. Most everything else had withered on the vine over the years, leaving a series of darkened warehouses, the shuttered bulk of an old mill, and a defunct textile factory. These last loomed in steadfast isolation like headstones.
Ms. Fabini spotted a decent antique shop and they spent an hour browsing through Depression-era furniture and bric-a-brac. Katherine had wandered into a cluttered aisle in a gloomy corner of the shop when she came across several framed photographs taken in the late 1800s. Most were bubbled and faded, but one stood in stark contrast, albeit yellow at the edges. A group of men in greatcoats and dusters stood around a wagon freighted with hay. The farmers were stoic as per the custom of pioneer America; even the youngest of them wore a thick, handlebar mustache. A blot of discoloration caught her glance. A person lay in the shadows beneath the wagon axle and leered between wheel spokes at the photographer, at her. She recognized the face.
10.
Katherine went for a stroll along the grounds in the afternoon. She reached the second gate and kept walking, kept treading the path until she’d come to the bungalows, all of them locked, drapes drawn tight; a cluster of family tombs.
Mr. Lang reclined in a wicker chair on the grass. He set a bottle of beer on the table near his elbow. “Hello,” he said. His smile was insolent.
She hesitated, then walked directly to his chair and stood nearly looming over him, fists set into her hips. “What do you want?”
“I live here.”
“This one?” She gestured.
“The Goat’s Head Bungalow,” he said. His face was a dark moon. “Thinking of dropping in for a beer later?”
“No, Mr. Leng—”
“Lang. Call me Derek.”
“I want you to stay far away from us, Mr. Lang. I don’t like you.”
Mr. Lang raised an eyebrow and took a pull from his beer. “Yesterday your husband went into the country to a farm I told him about. He bought himself a cute little nanny goat. Pure, virginal white. Paid me a hundred bucks to help him smuggle the critter onto the property. We took the goat to that shrine in the field. Man, that’s one nasty dagger your husband’s got. Said he picked it up in India from some real live cultist types. Some screws rattling around in there, you ask me.”
She stared, dumbfounded.
He’s not lying. Sweet baby Jesus, he’s not lying.
“I charged him an extra c-note to dump the goat in the woods. I’ve done it before for a few other wackos—usually cats and rabbits, but hey.”
“Screw you. Jesus, you’re insane. You’d best stay clear of us.” She hoped she sounded brave. She wanted to vomit.
Goddamn you, Sonny.
“If you say so. I’m not the one slaughtering farm animals to get his kicks.”
“I should march right into Mr. Prettyman’s office and tell him what kind of psycho he’s turned loose on the public.”
“Should you?”
“Yeah. We’ll see how smug you are when you’re sent packing.”
“And I should be reporting your husband.”
That stopped her in her tracks. “About what? The goat? Go to hell. We’re leaving on Monday. Frankly, it suits me if we blow this freak circus a couple of days early.”
Mr. Lang’s smile faded. He said with mock gravity, “Interesting hobby he’s got, hiking in the hills, digging up things that don’t belong to him. Probably thinks he hit the mother lode. I could just shoot him. The sheriff would thank me.”
“What? No. Sonny doesn’t… He takes notes for his articles. Sketches, sometimes. That’s it.” Her guts felt like they were sliding toward her shoes.
“That’s it? That’s all?”
“Yeah. Just sketches.” She bit her lip until sparks shot through her vision and her eyes watered.
“Oh.” He nodded as if her explanation was eminently reasonable. “You’re a funny one, Mrs. Reynolds. Give me these come-hither looks all week, and now you get coy.”