Mine

both elated and very sad. 'I'll take one of your rings.'

'What?'

'One of your rings. I want the one with the two diamonds side by side.'

Natalie shook her head. 'I don't know what you -'

'Take off that ring and put it on the table,' Mary said; her voice had changed. It was a soldier's voice again, all daughterly pretense gone. 'Do it right now.'

Natalie looked at the ring Mary meant. It was worth seven thousand dollars, and had been given to her as a birthday gift by Edgar in 1965. 'No,' she said. 'Wo. I won't.'

'If you don't take it off, I'll do it for you.'

Natalie's chin lifted, like the prow of a battleship. 'All right, come ahead.',

Mary moved fast; she held Drummer in the crook of her left arm and was upon Natalie before she could back away. Mary's hand grasped her mother's. There was a fierce pull, some pain as skin was torn and the finger was almost wrenched from its socket, and the ring was gone.

'Damn you to hell,' Natalie rasped, and she lifted her right hand and slapped Mary Terror across the face.

Mary smiled, a handprint splayed across her cheek. 'I love you, too, Mother,' she said, and she put the ring with its double diamonds into her pocket. 'Would you hold my baby?' She gave Drummer to Natalie, and then she walked purposefully into the den and yanked the telephone from its wall socket. She flung the telephone against the wall and smashed it to pieces as Natalie stood with tears in her eyes and the baby in her arms. Mary offered her mother another smile as she passed her on the way out the front door. She drew her pistol, put the first bullet through the Cadillac's left front tire and the second bullet through the right rear tire. She returned to the house, bringing with her a whiff of gunsmoke. When they'd walked down to the boathouse to get the formula, Mary had made her mother stand far enough away so Natalie couldn't tell she was in a van, not a 'car,' what make it was or what color. That was for the best; when her mother got back to civilization, she would sing like a little teakettle to the pigs. Mary took Drummer back from Natalie's trembling hands, her mother's face drawn and pallid. 'Will you stay in the house, or do I have to take your shoes?'

'What would you do? Tear them off my feet?'

'Yes,' Mary said, and her mother believed her. Natalie sat down in a chair in the den and listened to the squeal of air leaving the Cadillac's tires. Mary squeezed the last drink of formula into the baby's mouth, then she held him against her shoulder and patted his back, trying to draw forth a burp.

'Lower,' Natalie said quietly. Mary moved her hand and kept patting. In a few seconds Drummer did his thing. He yawned in the folds of his blanket, getting sleepy again.

'I wouldn't try to walk to the ranger's station in the dark,' Mary advised. 'You could break an ankle. I'd wait until the sun comes up.'

'Thank you for your concern.'

Mary rocked Drummer, a motion as soothing to her as it was to the infant. 'Let's don't say good-bye as enemies. Okay?'

'Everyone's your enemy,' Natalie told her. 'You hate everything and everybody, don't you?'

'I hate what tries to kill me, body or spirit.' She paused, thinking of something else to say though it was time to get going. 'Thanks for helping me with Drummer. Sorry I had to take the ring, but I'm going to need some money.'

'Yes. Guns and bullets are expensive, aren't they?'

'So is gas. It's a long way to Canada.' There's a morsel to feed the pigs, she thought. Maybe they wouldn't be so hard on her. 'Tell Father I asked about him, will you?' She started to turn away, to go out through the back door the same way she'd entered the house, using the key that always remained hidden on the doorjamb's ledge. She hesitated. One more thing to say. 'You can be proud of me for this, Mother: I never gave up what I believed in. I never quit. That counts for something, doesn't it?'

'It'll make a fine epitaph on your gravestone,' Natalie said.

'Good-bye, Mother.'

And she was gone.

Natalie heard the creak of the back door opening. The thunk of its closing. She stayed where she was, her hands folded in her lap as if awaiting the soup course at a formal dinner. Perhaps five minutes slipped past. And then a sob broke in the woman's throat, and she lowered her face and began to cry. The tears fell from her cheeks onto her hands, where they glittered like false diamonds.

Mary Terror, behind the van's wheel with Drummer swaddled and warm on the floorboard, saw the last of the house's light in her rearview mirror before the skeletal trees got in the way. She felt weakened; her mother had always had the knack of draining her. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered but being at the weeping lady at two o'clock on the afternoon of the eighteenth, and giving Drummer to his new father. She could imagine the radiance of Lord Jack's smile.

Today was Monday, the fifth. She had thirteen days. Time enough to find a cheap motel off the highway, lay low for a while and make some changes. Have to smell the wind and be sure the pigs weren't near. Have to disappear for a while, and let the heat drift past. She said to the sleeping Drummer, 'Mama loves you. Mama loves her sweet, sweet baby. You're mine now, did you know that? Yes you are. Mine forever and always.'

Mary smiled, her face daubed green by the dashboard glow. The van made a rocking motion, almost like a cradle. Mother and baby were at peace, for now.

The van sped on, its tires tracking across the dark land.

Part IV – Where the Creatures Meet

1: Shards

On the fourteenth day of February, two things happened: a TWA jet carrying two hundred and forty-six people exploded in the air above Tokyo, Japan, and a deranged man with an AK-47 assault rifle opened fire in a shopping mall in La Crosse, Wisconsin, killing three people and wounding five others before he took refuge in a J.C. Penney's. Both these news items together drove the last nails into the flagging Mary Terror drama, dooming it to that part of the newscasts and papers known as 'the coffin corner': dead items.

The fifteenth dawned. Laura Clayborne awakened sometime around ten, after another restless night. She lay in bed for a while, getting her bearings; sometimes she thought she was awake when she was still dreaming. The sleeping pills tended to do it. Everything was confused and uncertain, an entanglement of reality and delusion. She gathered her strength to face another day, a monumental effort, and she got out of bed and peered through the blinds. The sun was shining, the sky was blue. It was windy outside, and it looked very cold. There were, of course, no more reporters. The reporters had trickled away, day after day. The press conferences held by the FBI – which were really only attempts to keep the story newsworthy – had ceased luring the reporters in. The press conferences had stopped. There was never any news. Mary Terror had vanished, and with her had vanished David.

Laura went to the bathroom. She didn't look at her face in the mirror because she knew it would be a terrible sight. She felt as if she'd aged ten years in the twelve days since David had been stolen. Her joints throbbed like an old woman's, and she constantly had headaches. Stress, the doctor had told her. Perfectly understandable in this situation. See this pink pill? Take half of one twice a day and call me if you need me. Laura splashed cold water into her face. Her eyelids were swollen, her body bloated and sluggish. She felt warm wetness between her thighs, and she touched down there. Watery reddish fluid on her fingertips. The stitches had pulled loose again; nothing would hold her together anymore since her baby was gone.

It was the weight of not knowing that was killing her. Was David dead? Murdered and thrown into the weeds by the roadside? Had she sold him on the black market for cash? Was she planning to use him in some kind of cultish rite? All those questions had been pondered by Neil Kastle and the FBI, but there were no answers.

Sometimes the urge to cry suddenly overwhelmed her, and she was forced back to bed. She sensed it coming now, growing stronger. She gripped the sink, her head bent forward. An image of David's body lying in the weeds swept through her mind. 'No!' she said as the first tears burned her eyes. 'No, damn it, no!'

She rode it out, her body trembling and her teeth clenched so hard her jaws ached. The storm of unbearable sadness passed, but it stayed flickering and rumbling on the horizon. Laura left the bathroom, walked through the