I unfastened the torn veil and let it drift to the wooden floor. Her hand shot up to scratch her face, but I held it tight so as to block the nail from slicing once more into the emaciated skin. Touching my fingers to her mouth, I gently pulled the necklace from her teeth, catching a spill of drool with my cupped hand. When again she muttered, I understood her words.
'I know when one is dead and when one lives; he's dead as earth.' She took the ruddy necklace from me and swung it before our eyes. 'Why should a dog, a rat, a witch have life and he no breath at all?'
'Of whom do you speak, kind lady? I did not find his likeness in the album. Where is his photograph?'
The woman tilted her head and examined me with lunatic eyes. Raising her hands above me, she slipped the necklace over my head. With one hand, she tightened it around my neck. When I began to have trouble breathing, I clawed at her hands and pushed her from me. Tittering, she fled the room, and I followed to her bedchamber, where I found her lighting a candle on a bookshelf that she had littered with various bric-a-brac. I noticed the gilded frame before which she swayed. Going to her, I examined the glossy sheet of paper within the frame. At first I could discern no image, but the more I studied it in the flickering light, the more I could almost make out an imperceptible and spectral outline. 'Is this your young man?' I asked, touching the frame. 'Is he the young man in the Titian?'
'The Titian,' she spat, in a voice that sounded coherent and sane. 'He was young, wasn't he? Not yet nineteen. And so beautiful. I take flowers to him, to his shining face. I shall soon answer his summons.' She shuddered and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Turning to me, she tugged at her collar. 'Pray you, undo this button.'
I worked the buttons loose, then took the candle and led her to bed, setting the candle on the little bedside stand. Her face was smeared with dark blood that had seeped from her self-inflicted wounds. 'I'll be right back,' I promised, and then I went to her bathroom and threw a washcloth into the small porcelain basin. I turned one of the brass-spigots and let cold water flow onto the cloth, and as I waited I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. This reminded me that I was dreaming; for how could I see my face so clearly in an unlit room, and how could that reflection be mine own? I hadn't seen myself since my arrival to the motel, and so it should not have surprised me to see the growth of hair upon my face. But why was the bristle so thick, and how had my face grown so wide? Could those broad lips be mine, those large square teeth that almost protruded from the mouth?
No, this was all some mad hallucination, for only in a dream could my visage so alter as to resemble the ghoul in Pickman's painting. I thought of Oskar and his similarity to the figure in the painting above his bed. This was naught but mad delusion. And yet, when I reached for the cloth and wrung the excess water from it, I could feel the cold wetness so vividly. Returning to Pera, I washed the congealed blood from her face as she sat on the bed and stared at the flame. When I had finished, she took the rag from me and pressed it to the scar beneath my eye. Our mouths were very close, and I could smell her breath.
Dropping the washcloth to the floor, Pera picked up the candle and placed it between our mouths. 'Put out the light,' she whispered, 'and then put out the light.' My tongue, coated with saliva, licked out the tiny blaze. I took the candle from her and set it down, then reached to undo more buttons on her blouse. We sat in deep darkness, and yet I could see her, and even fancied that I could just make out the skull beneath her thin translucent skin. Together we reclined. She took hold of the necklace around my throat and spoke a stranger's name. I wrapped my hungry arms around her meat and shut my eyes. I dreamed within my dreaming, and those dreams were of dark cemetery sod, and of the carcasses beneath the earth. How piquant was the smell of that soil and its inhabitants! And mingled with their odor I took in the sweet fragrance of the lunatic in my arms.
But when the morning light fell on me from the window in her room, I was alone. And when I went to that window to seek the source of singing that I heard, I saw the figures that stood within the grove, encased by dawn's dim light. Crying, I fled the room and rushed outside, running across the road and into that grove. When I saw the figure hanging from a length of rope that had been fastened to a sturdy branch, I fell upon wet grass.
Someone called my name, and I turned to face the crone. She was pointing her camera device at me, nodding her head in approval. Cursing her, I turned once more to look at the woman hanging from the tree, at the three other women who stood underneath her and wailed harmoniously. Eblis was suddenly beside me, touching his three fingers to my face and nodding his happy head. I watched as he scampered to the tree and began to scuttle up it, like something in a Kafkaesque delirium. Oskar and Philippe now stood beneath the corpse and took hold of it as Eblis gnawed the rope around the branch. The body fell as the wailing trio blurred into one cloudy entity that rose to hidden branches, from which there came the squall of crows. I watched as the men took her body to the pool and gently tossed her into its water. In dream, I saw her dead hand gather a bunch of flowers that floated in the water next to her, and I sighed as she chose one lovely bloom and held it to me. Creeping to the edge of the pool, I reached for the flower that she offered me, and by chance I peered into the water, at the shining spheres that frolicked just beneath her. I saw the one pale globe that rose to kiss the back of her neck, that moved its mouth as if to name her. At the touch of his tender kiss, my lucent beauty smiled, closed her eyes, and sank into the water's depths.
The Dome
Mollie L. Burleson
Mollie L. Burleson's short stories have appeared in the magazines Eldritch Tales, Crypt of Cthulhu, and Bare Bone, and in a number of anthologies, including
A cloud formed atop the distant mountain as he headed west on Second Street. Pretty sight, he thought. It had been a big decision, moving out here. Not at all like living in the northeast. Better. Much better.
The vast turquoise sky above and the clean air and the people were just some of the reasons he had chosen to move here. Squinting slightly as the hot desert sun beat down, making watery images across the road, Tom nosed his car onto Saltillo Road.
He really liked it in New Mexico and was reminded daily of the rightness of his choice by just enjoying the natural wonders he'd see. The small town of Sand Rock was ideal for someone who had retired and was looking for a place to escape the rigors of the northern winters.
It was a friendly place, even though he had to drive two hundred miles a few times a year to shop the big stores and malls in Albuquerque or Las Cruces, and even Midland and Lubbock in Texas. It was a life without hearing daily about crime, and the air was pure, if you didn't count the occasional smell of manure as a pecan rancher fertilized his orchards.
Yes, it was a good life, he thought, as he turned left onto his rocky driveway and parked his truck. Slamming the door, he smiled as he watched the antics of a jackrabbit scampering across the lawn and heard the raucous cry of the long-tailed grackle. Yes, a good place to live.
He thought then about the only eyesore to the place, the huge, silver-colored building on the east side. It was rumored to have once been a place for storing cotton seed, but he'd never in his life seen its like. A tall building, ominous-looking and mysterious as it squatted on its gravel lot. The great domed roof could be seen from almost everywhere in town. It now housed a motley assortment of junk — collectibles, the sign read, which consisted of broken-down furniture, faded drapes and curtains piled high in cardboard boxes, outmoded children's toys, rusty bikes, tarnished mirrors, and the like.
The building was immense. He had been told that it measured a good three hundred feet across and was over one hundred feet high. Somehow, when standing in its very center, he had the feeling of having been swallowed up by a gigantic and repellant bug.
The circular walls of the interior were painted black halfway up and at the very top, a thing, very much like an eye, could be opened to the sky. It had been open for ventilation the day he stopped in to look at the items for sale, and the view it afforded had not been inspiring, but gray, for the day had been threatening rain.
