The Backwoods

into a puppet of male sexual features all optimized. A broadened back, shoulders, and neck. Chest and biceps like pumped bands of meat. The surreally large genitals rising at the vision of her.

“Come here,” she said, a slut now. “And bring your mouth. You’re going to need it.”

Ernie obeyed without pause, a slave to her summons: He crawled to her on hands and knees: every woman’s perfect man. Patricia remained standing, the dream enforcing her need to be higher than him, to reduce him to subservience. She gave her plumpened breasts a shameless caress through the top and felt their gorge of nervous desire gust to her loins. She parted her legs some more, closing her eyes with a commariding smile, waiting for his mouth to give her succor. . . .

But nothing happened.

She looked down again and saw that he was gone without a trace.

Unless the gentle ripple in the water could be called a trace.

What crawled out next wasn’t Ernie. It was something thin, gray, and very dead.

A woman. She couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds. Gray skin seemed stretched over a struggling framework of bones, and Patricia could see those bones moving as the woman crawled hence. Hollow eyes looked up from the skull-like face showing through the open vee of straggly, waterlogged hair. Patricia wasn’t sure—not that details mattered in a dream—but it seemed that the corpse woman possessed crude stitches about her waist, as though she’d been cut in half and later reconnected by slipshod surgeons. A pendant with a stone of some kind swung about the starved neck as she continued to crawl.

“Flee this evil place, child,” rumbled some semblance of a voice. Was that a Squatter accent leaking through the corrosion that death had brought to her larynx? “Run outta here now, and beg God’s grace to go with ya. Run. Run.”

“Run from what?” Patricia asked.

The cadaver collapsed as though all of her joints at once had lost their connective tissue.

Patricia’s query wasn’t answered, and when she heard stomping behind her—something coming out of the woods—she didn’t need an answer to run just the same.

Her feet kicked up splotches of mud when she dashed along the edge of the pond. Before she could turn off in another direction . . . were there things in the pond, close to the surface, looking at her or addressing her in some way?

She didn’t want to know. She plunged back into the woods and their moonlit darkness, the fire still blazing deeper within. Smoke stung her eyes, and when she felt small, fragile things crunching under her bare soles, she realized what they were: cicadas, having been cooked to crisps while trying to fly away

The stomping still pounded behind her.

She thrashed farther into the woods, hoping she was heading away from the fires. Who’s following me? But was it even a who? This was a dream, and that fact, now, she had to keep reminding herself of.

“It’s something you’re never meant to see.” Dr. Sallee’s voice somehow suffused her head. He was nowhere to be seen, of course. “Sometimes we chase ourselves. We’re our own worst predators. Could it be that the person or thing that’s chasing you is actually an aspect of yourself?”

I don’t care! she thought at this point. Now she truly felt fear, and she expected more Freudian backlash when it became apparent that her previous sexual arousal had increased tenfold. I don’t believe that I subconsciously want to be raped again! She felt absolutely sure. Freud can kiss my ass! Her dream-enhanced breasts - swayed vigorously beneath the tight fabric of the nightshirt. Her nipples buzzed. Then—

Shit!

Patricia fell to the ground belly-first. She’d tripped over something. A vine? A branch?

No, because when she looked back, she saw in a network of moonlight what it had been: a severed head.

Dwayne’s head, she knew.

And the wild footfalls of her pursuer drew closer. But . . .

What’s . . . that?

Did she hear a pounding in the back of the dream? Like someone knocking on a door, she thought. But there were no doors here in the burning woods. The woods signified her desires, she knew, and the dangers that accompanied them, and her pursuer: the unknown.

But what of the pounding?

It scarcely mattered. She heaved herself up, was about to sprint off again, but then she saw another slant of moonlight painting the tree right before her.

There was a design carved in the tree’s bark . . . but was the bark bleeding? No, of course not, it must be sap. And it was the design that riveted her: a crude yet elaborate cross framed by the intricate etchings and squiggles of the Stanherd clan’s symbol for good luck.

She squirmed, flat on her back now. The dream was gone, and all she could feel were the throes of orgasm, her nerves pulsing, her hand fervid between her legs, and then—

“Patricia! Patricia!”

Her sister’s voice.

Patricia snapped away. She was confused at first, for the moonlit darkness of the bedroom matched that of the woods in her dream. Of course, she’d wakened, and it was Judy who’d wakened her.

“Patricia, I’m so sorry ta wake ya at this hour, but—”

Oh, Jesus . . . The first thing she noticed was that her nightshirt—the same one from the dream—was pulled up over her breasts. Her nipples throbbed in delicious pain, and she knew how they’d gotten that way: from self-plucking. The sheet lay aside, her legs splayed. She knew she’d been masturbating in her sleep again, to the point of climax.

She second thing she noticed was the smell of smoke.

“Is the house on fire?” she blurted. Why else would Judy be waking her up so late and so abruptly?

“No, no, dear me, no. But—”

“And . . . I heard this loud pounding,” she said, quickly dragging the nightshirt back down.

“That was Sergeant Trey, knocking on the front door.”

The police? “What did he want?”

“To tell me what happened. There’s been a burnin’ on the Point, in Squatterville. Now hurry up ’n’ put somethin’ on so’s we can go see.”

A fire on the Point. Real smoke, evidently, had pursued her in the dream. “I’ll be right there,” she said.

Judy turned before she left, the slyest smile in the dark. “You were havin’ yourself one racy dream, sister.”

Thank God she couldn’t see Patricia blushing.

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a gal takin’ care a’ herself,” Judy added. “Now hurry! We’ll meet’cha out front.”

My God, Patricia thought when she left. My own sister just caught me masturbating. . . . She pulled on a blouse, shorts, and sneakers. Before she left she glanced out her open window and saw flames from afar.

It wasn’t the kind of sight anyone would ever expect to see in a place like Agan’s Point. Ever. Blossoms of flashing red, blue, and white lights throbbed out into the night. Several fire trucks parked askew, tentacle-like hoses reaching out. A half dozen police cars bracketed the end of the perimeter—several state cars, Patricia noted—with poker-faced officers prowling the scene. Patricia, Judy, and Ernie looked on in macabre awe.

“Oh, Lord, no.” Judy gasped.

“It’s David Eald’s shack,” Ernie said, “so I guess that’s—”

Ernie didn’t finish as the three of them watched firemen bring out a black body bag atop a stretcher.

A smell in the air nauseated Patricia; it wasn’t a stench she might expect; it was an aroma—something akin to pork roast. Oh, Jesus, she thought, her stomach flipping.

“That ain’t the worst of it, I’m afraid,” Sergeant Trey. told them. His face shifted in various luminous shades from the flashing lights.