'Describe him to me,' Ali said. 'Before your light.' Together they would build the character. And then turn on the light.
'He smelled... different. His skin. When he was in my mouth. He tasted different. You know how a man has this taste? White or black or brown, it doesn't matter. His juices. His tongue. The breath from his lungs. They have this... flavor.'
Ali listened. Clinically.
'He didn't. My midnight man. It wasn't like he was a blank. But it was different. Like he had more earth in his blood. Darkness. I don't know.'
That didn't help much. 'What about his body? Was there anything that distinguished him? Body hair? The size of his muscles?'
'While I had him between my legs?' Molly said. 'Yeah. I could feel his scars. He's been through the wringer. Old wounds. Broken bones. And someone had cut patterns into his back and arms.'
There was only one among them like Molly had just described. It occurred to Ali that Molly might be trying to hide his identity from her. 'And when you turned on the light –'
'My first thought was a wild animal. He had stripes and spots. And pictures and lettering.'
'Tattoos,' Ali said. Why prolong it? But this was Molly's confession.
Molly nodded yes. 'It all happened in an instant. He knocked the light from my hand. Then he disappeared.'
'He was afraid of your light?'
'That's what I thought. Later I remembered something. In that first second, I said a name out loud. Now I think it was the name that made him run. But he wasn't afraid.'
'What name, Molly?'
'I was wrong, Ali. It was the wrong name. They just looked alike.'
'Ike,' stated Ali. 'You said his name because it was him.'
'No.' Molly paused.
'Of course it was.'
'It wasn't. But I wish to God it had been. Don't you see?'
'No. You thought it was him. You wanted it to be him.'
'Yes,' Molly whispered. 'Because what if it wasn't?' Ali hesitated.
'That's what I'm saying,' Molly groaned. 'What I had between my legs...' She winced at the memory. 'Someone's out there.'
Ali lifted her head back suddenly. 'A hadal! But why didn't you tell us before now?' Molly smiled. 'So you could tell Ike?' she said. 'And then he would have gone hunting.'
'But look,' said Ali. She swept her hand at the ruination. 'Look what he gave to you.'
'You don't get it, kid.'
'Don't tell me. You fell in love.'
'Why not? You have.' Molly closed her eyes. 'Anyway, he's gone. Safe from us. And now you can't tell anyone, can you, Sister?'
Ike was there for the end.
Molly gasped with birdlike breaths. Grease sweated from her pores. Ali kept washing her body with water scooped from the river.
'You should rest,' Ike said. 'You've done your best.'
'I don't want to rest.'
He took the cup from her. 'Lie down,' he said. 'Sleep.'
When she woke hours later, Molly was gone. Ali was groggy with fatigue. 'Did the docs come for her?' she asked hopefully.
'No.'
'What do you mean?'
'She's gone, Ali. I'm sorry.'
Ali got quiet. 'Where is she, Ike? What have you done?'
'I put her in the river.'
'Molly? You didn't.'
'I know what I'm doing.'
For an instant, Ali suffered a dreadful loneliness. It should not have happened this way. Poor Molly! Doomed to drift forever in this world. No burial? No ceremony? No chance for the rest of us to say farewell? 'Who gave you that choice?'
'I was trying to make things easier for you.'
'Tell me one thing,' she said coldly. 'Was Molly dead when you put her in?'
She wanted to punish him for his strangeness, and the question genuinely shook him. 'Murder?' he said. 'Is that what you think?'
Before her eyes, Ike seemed to fall away from her. A look crossed his face, the horror of a freak faced with his own mirror.
'I didn't mean that,' she said.
'You're tired,' he said. 'You've had enough.'
He got into his kayak and took the paddle and pulled at the river. The darkness covered him. She wondered if this was how it felt to go mad.
'Please don't leave me alone,' she murmured.
After a minute she felt a tug. The rope came taut. The raft began moving. Ike was towing her back to human society.
INCIDENT AT RED CLOUD
Nebraska
The third time the witches started fiddling with him, Evan didn't fight.
He just lay as still as he could, and tried not to smell them. One held him around the chest from behind while the others took turns working at him. She kept whispering something in his ear. It was mumbo- jumbo, in circles. He thought of old Miss Sands, with her rosary beads. But this one had breath that smelled like roadkill.
Evan locked his eyes on the stars spread above the cornfield. Fireflies meandered between constellations. With all his might, he fastened on the North Star. Whenever they let him loose, that would be his beacon home again. In his mind he saw the back door, the stairs, the door to his room, the quilt upon his bed. He would wake in the morning. This would be nothing but a bad dream.
The night lay as black as engine oil. There was no moon, and the yard lights lay a mile away, barely a twinkle between the stalks. The first half hour his kidnappers had been mere silhouettes, dark cutouts against the stars. They were naked. He could feel their flesh. Smell it. Their titties were long and tubular, like in the old National Geographics lying boxed in the cellar. Their ratty hair moved like black snakes against the stars.
Evan was pretty sure they weren't American. Or Mexican. He knew a little Spanish from the seasonal workers, and the old lady's chant wasn't that. He decided they were witches. A cult. You heard about such things.
It was a comfort of sorts. He'd never given much thought to witches. Vampires, yes. And the winged monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, and werewolves, and flesh-eating zombies. And hadals, of course, though this was Nebraska, so safe the militias had disbanded. But witches? Since when did witches hurt you?
And yet they scared him. He scared himself. In his whole eleven years of life, Evan had never imagined such feelings down there. What they were doing felt good. But it was forbidden. If his mom and dad ever found out, they'd bust.
Part of him felt this wasn't fair. He shouldn't have been so late bicycling home. Still, it wasn't his fault the witches had jumped up along the county road. He'd pedaled away as fast as a fox, but even afoot they'd run him down. It wasn't his fault they'd brought him to the middle of this field to do things to him.
