hand into a grab box at a county fair.
She knew it would serve her right if there was a nest of black widow spiders in the cupboard, but she didn’t stop. The first prize she grabbed and pulled into the light of the bathroom bulb was a blue plastic Secret solid deodorant dispenser. Jenny set it carefully to the side of the frayed bath mat that served as her bathroom rug. Next was a box of tampons, three-quarters full, then a bottle of Xanax, dental floss, a hairbrush with rubber bands secured around the plastic handle, a tube of ChapStick, a box of Q-tips, toothpaste, hand lotion, shampoo, creme rinse, nail clippers, birth control pills, and an emery board.
Jenny ran her hands over the aged wood of the shelf but found nothing else.
The Subject’s items were lined up like soldiers along the edge of the rug.
Tampons.
Xanax.
Hairbrush.
Birth control pills.
These were not things a woman forgot, not things she would leave behind.
Jenny’s illicit frisson of excitement took on a sharper edge.
THIRTEEN
The 747 landed without a bump. Anna stood in the aisle with the solid clot of humanity clutching bags to their chests or jostling to drag luggage down from the overhead bins so as not to spend a moment more than necessary on board.
The flight was a blur, as was the Martian landscape of Glen Canyon, and the beautiful deadly jar. All she knew or wanted to know was that she was free and safe and almost home.
The clot began to break up, people bleeding out of the plane’s hatch. Anna had no luggage, no purse, no glossy magazine. Her hands were empty, and she felt she flowed rather than shuffled as row after row of blue upholstered seats passed in her peripheral vision. The tube connecting the airplane to the terminal was round, jointed like the hose of a vacuum cleaner, and, like a vacuum, it hoovered Anna up. She was almost flying. Molly would be waiting for her.
The terminal lived up to its name. Anna felt the thud as she slammed into the waiting area and movement stopped. Platinum blond hair, cut fashionably short, jewel-tone suits, posture one salute shy of military, Molly always stood out in a crowd.
Anna’s eyes refused to find her.
Molly hadn’t come. The Jetway reversed its suction. Anna was being pulled backward toward the plane. Then she saw him, leaning against a wall with angular grace, silky hair curling at his collar, glasses crooked on his fine long nose.
“Zach!” she cried and started to run to him. From behind her came the sound of static, and her legs went numb. “Zach!” She was screaming now.
He looked into her eyes. With his forefingers he traced a heart on his chest and let it fall into his cupped palms. He blew it to her like a kiss, then turned and walked away.
Again she screamed his name, but the static was so loud it drowned her out. He didn’t look back.
Static. Scratching. A cry like that of a small animal being slaughtered.
Anna opened her eyes. She had broken her vow to stay awake. Crumpled, as if she’d collapsed midpace, she was on her side in the soft sand a yard from Kay’s grave. The only hint of light was a faint oblong, slightly less black, on the floor of the jar, moonlight sifting through hundreds of thousands of miles of outer space to the earth’s atmosphere, only to fall into inner space as dark as that from whence it had come.
Scratching.
Confused, Anna rolled onto her back. Her left arm fell from its resting place on her upthrust hip and sharpened her mind with a jolt of pain. Somebody was coming. Rocks were being moved, tiny pebbles, a stealthy coming, but erratic. Monster was coming. Anna tried to get to her feet, but the drug, like the dream, crippled her, and she floundered beetle-like on her back. Finally she made it to her knees. In the pose of a drunken penitent, she swayed and stared upward. If she tried to stand, she would fall. If she tried to struggle against whatever was coming, she’d lose. Thirst had undone her. Despite her promises, she had consumed more from the poisonous canteen than she should have. Unless it was in the second sandwich. It didn’t matter. The monster was coming and she was helpless.
He—it—had already manipulated her body, carved WHORE on her thigh and very possibly done things she refused to let herself imagine, but he hadn’t killed her.
Better to play dead than be dead. Anna rearranged herself into a fetal position on the sand and waited.
For a minute or so, no more sounds emanated from the upper realms, and she dared hope that she had been left to enjoy her personal Hades unmolested, at least for the night. Then the disturbance renewed, frenzied, as if the monster were scrabbling around, raking up gravel or rolling in something.
Fear loosened Anna’s bowels, but she would not lose control of her bladder again. Now that she had clothes, it was unthinkable.
Now that she had clothes, the monster would take them away from her.
The thought terrified her more than the coming of her captor. Knowing it was irrational didn’t ratchet down the horror one notch. He would take her shorts and bra, the belt sling.
He would take the watch.
Making so much noise she could no longer monitor sounds from overhead, she squirmed out of the stolen clothing, ripped the Velcro loose and kicked off the sandals, then lifted the belt and the bikini bra from around her neck. The watch she put in the pocket of the denim shorts where she had stowed Kay’s anklet for safekeeping.
When she’d finished piling up her worldly goods, she heaped sand over them. Without light she couldn’t tell if she’d buried them completely or not. Running her hands over the sand, she checked for bits of exposed fabric or leather. The motion gave her the sensation of swimming through thick black waters so far beneath the surface of the ocean that not a glimmer of sunlight penetrated.
The monster would have a flashlight; Anna knew that. Carving WHORE into her thigh had taken time and a decent light to work by.
Scootching backward on her newly bare behind, pushing with her heels and the palms of her hands, she crossed the whisper of moonlight and reached the wall of the jar. There she lay down on her right hip, the questionable left arm on the sand in front of her face. Pulling her knees up in the futile hope of protecting her vulnerable belly and breasts, she waited.
The noise, light and irregular, was joined by the sound of panting. Anna squeezed her eyes shut. A high- pitched strangled cry jolted them open again. A small black object, like the head of a doll—or a cat—fell into the crescent of waning light on the sand. It bounced into the impenetrable black of the datura patch near the grave.
Then nothing. Silence, so complete Anna could feel its weight on her skin, filled the solution hole. Staring up at the narrow mouth, she couldn’t see anything but the prick of a single star.
Whatever was there was gone.
Whatever was here was here.
FOURTEEN
Opening the throttles, Regis reveled in the rush of speed as the powerful engine dug in and the hull climbed to the lake’s surface. Three, four, five hundred feet below the keel were the rotting remains of dozens—if not hundreds—of boats. No one knew the precise number. Boats sunk too deep to be salvaged. In more wrecks than the NPS liked to admit, corpses, preserved by the cold, floated in dark cabins.
Lake Powell covered over two hundred fifty square miles of what had once been dry land. The ruins of ancient
