Succubi

reality?”

“No but maybe the base of Tharp’s belief is real.”

“The cult, you mean?”

“Why not? I just read in Time that there are over a hundred fifty incorporated devil worship cults in the United States. I for one don’t believe in the devil but I can’t deny the reality that there are cults that worship him.”

“That’s an interesting point,” Greene remarked. “Maybe Tharp really did belong to some crackpot cult.”

“And if that’s the case, you just answered your own question. Tharp is motivated by a delusion. The delusion is motivated by a cult. Therefore—”

“That’s what he’s returning to,” Greene considered. “A cult. There was never an investigation because the state NGRI’d him almost immediately. The state attorney’s office was satisfied that Tharp perpetrated the murders.”

“At least it’s something for the police to go on,” Dr. Harold pointed out.

“I’m going to give them a call right now. Maybe you’re right, and even if you’re not, so what?”

“That’s the fun of clinical psychiatry, isn’t it?”

“Actually, I’m only in it for the free pens and coffee cups… Yeah, I think I’ll tell the cops to keep a real close eye on Tharp’s hometown.”

“Where is Tharp from, by the way?”

“A little town about twenty miles north of the hospital. Lockwood.”

Lockwood, Dr. Harold pondered. What a coincidence. Hadn’t Ann Slavik said she was from a town called Lockwood?

«« — »»

“I don’t know,” Ann said. “It’s just that your grandmother and I don’t always get along. We don’t always see things the same way.”

“Like you and me?” Melanie responded.

What a comeback, Ann thought. But it was proof of her innocence—the simple way in which she perceived the truth and how she associated it to herself. “Everybody has disagreements, honey. We’ll work it out, we always do.”

How honest a reply was that? In a sense, she knew she had never worked anything out with her mother. Adversity was their only common denominator. Ann Slavik had become everything in life that her mother opposed.

You’re afraid of becoming your mother, Dr. Harold’s voice haunted her again. Had she really been repressing Melanie’s perceptions all these years, by condemning her alternativism, by objecting to her friends? It was times like this that Ann wondered if she had any business being a mother at all. She would have to try harder, she knew, much harder, to give her daughter the conceptual freedom that she herself had never been allowed to have.

Melanie would be staying in the last bedroom on the east wing. It had been Ann’s room as a child. When she’d left home after high school, her mother had changed it as much as she could, “To turn it into a guest room,” she’d said, but Ann knew better. Back then her mother had felt so betrayed she’d gone out of her way to remove all reminders of Ann—a subconscious punishment. She’d gotten rid of all the furniture, and all of her things she’d left behind. She’d even changed the carpet and the wallpaper.

Ann looked out the same window she’d ruminated through so many times as a child. The backyard dimmed in early dusk. How many times had she peered through this same glass in complete misery, contemplating a future that did not include this place at all?

“Can I see Grandpa now?” Melanie asked.

“Let’s wait. He’s not conscious very often, and he’s probably very tired.” The truth was Ann was afraid. She didn’t know how to prepare Melanie for the still figure in the room at the other end of the house. Sometimes the facts of life included the facts of death. “Tomorrow, maybe,” she said.

Melanie seemed sullen. She loved her grandparents. She didn’t understand, but maybe that was the problem. Ann had never taken the time to explain the real world to her daughter. Melanie had been left to interpret it herself.

“I’m going for a walk,” Melanie said. When Ann turned, her daughter was stripped down to her underwear and was pulling on jeans.

“I don’t know, Melanie. It’s getting late.”

“This isn’t exactly New York, Mom,” Melanie observed. “I doubt if there are any drug dealers or rapists around. You think?”

Ann frowned. She couldn’t very well blame Melanie for her sarcasm. She’s had a great teacher, she thought. “Just don’t stay out too late, all right?”

“I’m only going for a walk, Mom. I’m not going to join the circus.” Melanie pulled on a T shirt that read “Cherry Red Records,” then she grabbed her Walkman. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Ann hesitated. “No, you go, honey. I’m going to straighten up our room.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Ann went down the hall to the room she and Martin had. It was on the other side of the house, across from her father’s room. Again, it was little things that bothered her, insignificant things. She didn’t want Melanie out by herself. She didn’t want Melanie to see her father in his present condition. She didn’t even like the idea of Melanie’s room being so far from her and Martin’s.

Now she felt isolated. Martin had gone out earlier. “I need some air,” he’d said. “I’m going for a drive.” Ann wished he and Melanie had gone to Paris without her; this scene was a dice of strained proximities and discomfort. It was a family matter surrounding a family that had never accepted Martin and had never been sufficiently exposed to Melanie by Ann’s own devices.

There was no sign of her mother at all. Where could she be at this hour? Perhaps Ann and her father were the only ones in the house. Down the carpeted hall, a slice of light glimmered. Dr. Heyd said that her father would have a nurse. But no one could be found when Ann stuck her head into the cramped, warmly lit room.

Only her father lay there, swaddled in covers.

He shouldn’t be here alone, she thought, but then she heard something downstairs.

In the kitchen, a figure leaned over the refrigerator, a plainly attractive woman about Ann’s height and build dressed in traditional nurse’s garb, a trim starchy white dress, white stockings, white shoes. Light brown hair had been cut short, and she looked up with very dark brown eyes.

“Hello, Ann,” she said. She removed a little bottle from the refrigerator. “You probably don’t remember me, but we went to high school together.”

“Milly Godwin,” Ann said. “Of course I remember.”

“You’re sort of a legend around here. You know, Local Girl Makes Good. Dr. Heyd probably told you, I’m the only RN in town. I’ll be looking after your dad. Your mother put me up in the room next to his.”

“I can’t thank you enough for that,” Ann said. “Just let me know your rates and I’ll write you a check.”

Milly Godwin looked slighted. She closed the refrigerator. “That won’t be necessary,” she said.

The offer probably offended her, Ann realized. She’d have to remember that this wasn’t the city; here time was not redefined in terms of money.

“We thought it best that I stay at the house, and if there are any complications I can’t handle, Dr. Heyd can be here in minutes. He has a beeper.”

“Well, again, we’re very grateful for your time.”

“I could never even begin to repay your parents for all they’ve done for me. They’re the most wonderful people, the whole town’s in debt to them. I would never have been able to go to nursing school without their help.”

What did that mean? Had her mother helped her financially? Ann thought it best not to ask.

“We’re feeding him intravenously,” Milly Godwin said, shaking the little bottle. “Most of the meds have to be refrigerated.”