had been one of the happiest in my life. When it was time I asked her to forgive me and she seemed to nod her head as if she wanted me to help her die.”
Ann was crying. “Then why did you lie to me? You said she’d committed suicide.”
Cyclops edged closer, dead branches snapped below him. “Because I wanted to make things easier on you.”
“No. You wanted to protect yourself. You’re a coward. You want to believe it because it makes you feel better.”
“I’m afraid there’s nothing that will make me feel better. Your mother has made that impossible. She’s with me wherever I go. I’ll never be free of her.”
“So what stopped you from killing me before?”
“I came close once a few years ago … I sat in your bedroom and watched you and not a soul in the house even knew I was there except for the cats. But I left you a gift instead. The locket you’re wearing now. I took the picture of your mother that’s in it. She was standing on a cliff in Big Sur.”
“No, that’s impossible. I found it in a box of her things that Aunt Kate kept in a storage shed she rented in Knife Cape. She hoped that some day detectives would go through them and find the piece of evidence they needed to make an arrest…”
“You’re surprising me, Ann. Didn’t you wonder why you hadn’t seen your mother wear it before?”
“At first I thought it was hers. And then I realized Aunt Kate must have done it. She knew I’d sometimes go to the storage shed without telling her. She must have thought it would make me feel better somehow.”
“She was wearing it the night she died. I bought it for her from a silversmith in Tijuana. She had a picture of you in her purse and she cut it out and put it inside. When I brought the necklace back and hid it in the box I put the picture I’d taken of her in it.”
He must be telling the truth, Ann thought. She’d once removed her mother’s picture and had seen her own below it-blurred, she’d thought, from water damage. She remembered the chills it had given her.
Her arms were getting tired. She wouldn’t be able to hold up the.38 much longer.
You still haven’t answered me. Why didn’t you kill me the last time?”
“After I listened to your sleep-talk I couldn’t go through with it. It made me sick.”
“Sleep-talk?”
“A skill my mother taught me long ago.”
“What is it?”
“You wouldn’t understand … It would take too long to explain.”
“Try me.”
“All of us have a voice that talks while we are asleep, one that we are not aware of. It’s another language and takes years of training to understand. But if you do learn it, you’ll find out many things about a person. And it doesn’t stop there. You can also learn things about the future as well as the past.”
“What did my sleep-talk tell you?”
“I heard your mother’s voice coming from your mouth. She was talking from the other side…through you. While you slept.”
“You heard my mother?
“She had already changed so much by then. In fact, I almost smothered you with a pillow to quiet her.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me that the only way she’d ever let me rest is if I killed you, sent you over to her.”
“You’re lying… She’d never say that.”
“You don’t understand. She’s not the same woman that you or I knew before. All your mother wants is to have you back, no matter what the cost. And when I told her I didn’t take children from the world, she became obsessed with making my life a living hell.”
“But now you’ve changed your mind. About killing me.”
“Of course I have. Look at what your mother has turned me into? I live like an animal because of her.”
“You got off easy.”
Ann pulled the trigger and Cyclops finally dropped the knife.
Chapter 59
Ann choked.
He had her throat between his grime-covered hands. He could feel her pulse ride up through his palms, the lifeline he knew he needed to cut off.
Her fists pounded his face and he laughed when he heard the dogs begin to take a greater interest in her fear. He was bringing it up to the level they liked. The dogs surrounded them like an electric field, anticipating a wave of fresh energy to burst from his hands.
But they couldn’t wait. There were so many of them now and they were hungry and fighting for their place at the table. He could feel their icy breaths against his skin as they gnashed their teeth. They clawed up on his back and weighed him down.
Ann’s arms slipped away. His eye was clouded with sweat but he could see her face tighten into the familiar rictus of fear. He still tasted the elk’s heart he’d eaten earlier, knew that its blood-jam was pumping wildly through his veins.
When he drew away his hands he looked up and saw Ann’s mother.
Most of the time Ann’s mother no longer resembled the woman he’d met years before. What Cyclops saw now was the face of a woman who’d been pulled from a shallow desert grave by coyotes, her eyes milky white and her flesh bubbling with sores from the day’s scorching rays.
Cyclops staggered to his feet and tried to run. He threw back his head and screamed in agony. The shadow- dogs clung to his body from his neck down. Their electric teeth sinking deep into his flesh. He stretched his arms out to his sides and the dogs wriggling bodies caused him to sway-moving him past Ann and toward the cliff as if he’d become their marionette. They brought him up to the crumbling edge. He spotted an exposed tree root and looped his arm through it.
“Leave me!”
The shadow-dogs pulled him over and he swung above the dark chasm until they tired and let go, dropping from his body toward the rocks and roaring surf, taking Ann’s mother screaming down with them.
When they were all gone, he climbed back up to look at Ann. She lay on her back, coughing. Her chest heaving for fresh air. He pulled off the remains of his shredded jacket and threw it over her before picking her up in his arms.
Chapter 60
