widened and filled with terror as he bent over them, applying his hands to their necks, bearing down with just enough force to cut off their breath, then watching, waiting, as the last breath left their body, watching for that moment when the soul made its escape, set free from the prison of the body, to fly-fly up and away through the ether and into the waiting arms of the Lord. And then the ritual of cutting the Lord's words into their dead flesh, consecrating them even as they lay before him, their bodies still warm…
A smile moved across his face just as a tiny silver water snake slid by, brushing its shiny skin against his trouser leg. He was unaware of the snake, but perhaps he felt its presence, because he shivered as he thought of all the work he had yet ahead of him.
He thought about the girls, alluring and fresh… He catalogued their charms one by one: the soft shimmer of their hair, their gentle eyes and pliant bodies, the tender fullness of their young breasts.
He rose from where he lay, brushing stray twigs from his clothes, and shook himself as a dog might, flinging water in all directions. The droplets spun and twirled in the sunlight filtering through the trees, catching the light and turning into a thousand tiny prisms. Once again he was struck by the pristine beauty of the woods-the one place he could go without the defiling presence of human beings. He took a deep breath and walked back in the direction he had come from. The comforting jangling of the keys hanging from his belt made him smile, and his hand closed around the freshly sharpened knife tucked away in his pocket.
There was work to be done.
Chapter Nineteen
Lee woke up the next morning in a clammy sweat, anxiety squeezing his stomach like an evil fist.
Mornings were the worst. With the demands of the day looming, the terror could drain him of will, crippling him and leaving him paralyzed. Sometimes he knew the reason for his anxiety, and sometimes he didn't. It was much worse when he didn't. Then it would grip him hour after hour, pressing like a vise upon his consciousness, until even the simplest action, like brushing his teeth, required an enormous act of will.
Today he knew the reason for his anxiety: it was Kathy Azarian. Meeting her had upset his carefully calibrated world. He feared that whatever control he had managed over his emotions would be thrown to the wind. More than anything, he wanted never to return to the months following his sister's disappearance.
That was when it had started-when the darkness had descended around him, a blackness that he had never known before. Since then, he had come to know the many faces of depression. Most often, it would hit him first thing in the morning, upon waking, a cold, hard hand around his heart and a burning, as though his soul were on fire. Familiar objects become foreign, food lost its ability to comfort, landscapes he once found charming looked utterly blank. There was no seeing beyond the thick fog of pain.
Now, lying in bed, he felt the familiar restlessness coupled with frozen immobility. He lay curled up in his bed for a while, stomach churning, his mind circling around itself like a lion pacing in a cage. He looked over at the digital alarm clock next to his bed. The red numbers read 10:32, the dots between them flashing like warning signal lights.
At one point after Laura's death, he had developed a fear of his answering machine. He dreaded getting up in the morning and seeing the blinking red light indicating he had messages. It was like the glaring red eye of a great, devouring beast waiting to swallow him whole. He was terrified of other people's needs and demands on him, afraid he would fail them-or worse, that he would be engulfed by them.
He was also certain that each message would be the police calling to say they had found his sister's body. In spite of his certainty that she was dead, he dreaded receiving that call.
He pulled himself out of bed, dragged himself to the bathroom, bathed, and shaved in a haze, hardly aware of what he was doing, as though he were sleepwalking. He forced himself to look at the answering machine. To his relief, there were no messages.
Hands trembling, he picked up the phone and called his therapist. After leaving a message, he felt what little will he had draining away with each passing minute. He went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and tried to imagine desiring food. No coffee, not today-when he was this jittery, caffeine was the last thing he needed. He stared at a bowl of bananas on the table, but they looked uninviting. He sat down at the piano but couldn't focus on the notes in front of him.
Finally, the phone rang. He picked it up on the second ring.
'Hello?'
'Hello, Lee, it's Georgina Williams.' Her voice was cool and yet intimate, with just the right amount of professional detachment.
He got right to the point. 'Do you have any openings or cancellations today?'
'Actually, I have one in an hour, if you can get here that quickly.'
'Great. I'll see you in an hour.'
He put the phone down and forced his breath all the way down into his belly, making himself exhale slowly. Then he went to the kitchen, snagged a banana from the bowl, and forced himself to eat it.
An hour later he was seated in the familiar office, with its comforting collection of objects, books, and paintings. A vase of carnations sat on the table next to Dr. Williams, casting off an aroma of nutmeg.
'Okay, you're anxious today,' Dr. Williams was saying in her smooth, cultivated voice. 'But are you anything else?'
'Sad, maybe.'
'Anything else?'
Lee looked at her. 'Like what?'
'Like…angry, perhaps?'
His stomach burned-boiled with-yes, rage.
'Okay,' he said, 'so I'm angry. What do I do about it?'
'Well, allowing yourself to acknowledge it is a start. Then you might tell me all the things you're angry about.'
Lee felt his jaw tighten.
'Okay,' he said stiffly. 'I'm angry at my mother for not recognizing the truth: that Laura is gone, that she's never coming back. She just can't accept that Laura is dead.'
'So you're angry at your mother for holding on to hope.'
'Yes. There's a time to let it go, to see reality for what it is.'
'What if reality is too painful?'
'Reality is often too painful. That's not a good excuse. You still have to face it.'
'So you wish your mother had your courage?'
'Yeah, I guess I do. Because then I could-I could grieve with her. It's something we could go through together, instead of living in these parallel realities.'
Dr. Williams nodded, sympathy stamped across her high-cheekboned face. 'Yes, it's hard when people we care about continue to disappoint us.'
'There's something else.' How to say it? 'I've met someone.'
Dr. Williams folded her elegant hands in her lap and leaned back in her chair. 'Well, that sounds like a good thing.'
'It sounds great-but it feels scary.'
'Why don't we talk about why it feels scary?'
'Well, it's a chance to have something I want, but it's also a chance to fail, to lose what I want.'
'So as long as you don't want anything you're safe?'
Lee considered the question. 'Yeah, pretty much. That's no way to live, though. The thing is, I'm not sure I'm ready for something like this. I mean, the timing-I feel caught off guard.'
'Wouldn't it be great if opportunity only knocked when we asked it to?'
'Do I sense a little sarcasm?'
'No, not at all. Just irony. I don't think it's unreasonable for you to feel that way at all, but life often throws you a curve just when-'
