spores burst from them. Instead, in this exotic mind movie, from some of the caps rose what appeared to be gray tongues, and from still others ascended yellow eyes on fibrous stalks, as if plants and animals had conjugated, producing demonic children. Abruptly—impossibly—the point of view changed within this delirium, and he found himself not staring at the fungi but peering out from within them, as if the eyes on stalks were his eyes, and he saw himself in his uniform, his face pale and sweaty, his eyes as bleak as an arctic dawn.
He realized that he had returned to the half bath, although he had not been aware of leaving the kitchen. He stood at the sink, gripping the marble countertop with both hands, as if to anchor himself in a turbulence, gazing at the mirror. The wall behind him crawled with repulsive fungi, but the light wasn’t dim like before, and when he turned from the mirror to confront the slithering colony, it wasn’t there in reality. It existed only in the reflection. The looking glass showed Logan as he was now but presented the wall behind him as it had been earlier. The mirror was not the problem. Something had gone wrong with Logan.
A tingling sensation drew his attention to his hands, with which he gripped the countertop. His fingernails were black.
By the time Martha entered the living room close on the heels of her sister, Smoke and Ashes had stopped squalling. Although the cats seldom did any climbing, both were atop an etagere filled with porcelain birds. They peeked around the pediment of that cabinet, their orange eyes wide. They were usually as self-satisfied and confident as any cats, but now they appeared to be alarmed.
Addressing the high-placed pair, Martha said, “What’s frightened you?”
“What do you think?” The tone of Edna’s question suggested that they both knew the answer.
“Not Satan,” Martha said impatiently. “With a world to corrupt, why would the prince of Hell be wasting so much time spooking around here—because we make good cakes?”
“He’s the
“Royalty has always bored me.”
“Anyway, I never said Satan, dear. I said Sally saw a demon. His name is legion, after all, and he has an army to do his work.”
Regarding the crouched cats on their high redoubt, Martha said, “They never were mousers. They’re a disgrace to their species in that regard.”
“There aren’t any mice in the Pendleton to test them. I’m sure if there were, they’d have left us many little gifts with tails. It wasn’t a mouse that scared them.”
“So it was the thunder.”
“Or not,” said Edna.
Smoke and Ashes reacted simultaneously, heads twitching as one toward a far corner of the room, and they hissed as if they had seen something they detested.
The sisters turned to seek the cause of the cats’ displeasure, and Martha caught the slightest glimpse of something that scurried between an armchair and a large overstuffed chesterfield.
“What was that?” she asked.
“What was what?”
“Something. I saw something.”
Lightning painted the windows, thunder vibrated in the panes, and rain washed them dark again.
After retrieving a long poker from the rack of brass fireplace tools on the hearth, Martha crossed the big room, weaving among an abundance of Victoriana—plump chairs, tables covered with valuable curios, plant stands from which trailed ferns, pedestals presenting busts of classical poets—toward the sofa behind which the small quick intruder seemed to have taken refuge. The hand that gripped the poker ached, but Martha’s swollen and arthritic knuckles remained strong enough that she could club a rat or a potentially dangerous exotic pet if some hopeless fool in the building had let one escape again.
Eight years earlier, a rock-and-roll musician had taken up residence in the Pendleton. He enjoyed three hit songs and one successful national tour before his career collapsed for lack of talent. Before he could drink away, sniff away, or otherwise squander his small fortune, he purchased a second-floor apartment for cash and moved in with a blonde named Bitta who had green hair and breasts as large as a pair of Butterball turkeys. Unknown to the homeowners’ association, with the glamorous couple had come a Gila monster named Cobain, which had the run of their apartment and which had escaped through their front door when they had unthinkingly left it ajar after coming home in the throes of drunken lust, singing bawdy lyrics in the hall. In the following eighteen hours, before the elusive Cobain could be cornered and captured and removed from the premises, pandemonium ensued in the Pendleton.
A year later, after a night of disastrous gambling in Vegas, the rock and roller had lost his money and Bitta. He was long gone from the Pendleton, but this was an age in which fools of many kinds were more plentiful than ever. Martha half expected to find another exotic animal. If it proved to be of a species with wicked teeth and a vicious temperament and evil intentions, she would defend herself with the necessary ferocity, regardless of whether its name was Cobain or Fluffy.
“Whatever are you doing?” Edna asked as Martha, with the poker raised, stalked the intruder.
“Remember Cobain?”
Smoke and Ashes hissed from atop the etagere, though Cobain had been before their time.
“You saw a Gila monster?” Edna asked.
“If that’s what I saw, then I’d have said so. I saw something, I don’t know what.”
“We should call someone.”
“I simply will not summon an exorcist,” Martha said as she warily rounded the chesterfield.
“I meant the superintendent, Mr. Tran.”
