The after-image remained: The teeth.

Jesus G.o.d...

Jagged fangs, just like a dog"s or a wolf"s.

Phil kicked the sheets off his bed. He leaned up in the dark and sighed heavily. Another dream, he thought. They"re wearing me out...

This was an understatement. The dreams drained him. He felt hungover and exhausted now, mentally sapped and as physically devitalized as if he"d just dug ditches for six hours.

The dreams were boring into his mind, piece by piece unearthing what had happened that day twenty-five years ago. And there was one thing he was sure of- There were still a few more pieces.

Why couldn"t he remember?

Do I even want to remember?

Phil didn"t think he did.

Vicki was still asleep on the couch, tossing fitfully. Her red hair lay across her face like a crimson drape, and she seemed to mumble things in her slumber. The room was stiflingly hot; sweat shined evenly as lacquer on the V of skin that her blouse exposed. Phil slipped into the bathroom and took a quick, cold shower, but as soon as he stepped out, he was burning up again. With a towel about his waist, he went to his dresser, was about to reach for some shorts, when "Nuh-nuh-no!"

Phil turned and looked quizzically at Vicki. Her eyes squeezed shut against her sleep, and, evidently, against a nightmare. At least I"m not the only one who has them, Phil considered.

"No, pleeeeeeeease..."

Indeed, Vicki was dreaming up a storm, tossing and turning in the torment of her own mind. Phil wondered what she was dreaming about, but then he thought he had a pretty good idea, considering what had happened to her last night.

"Ona... Ona," she murmured on.

Phil"s eyes narrowed.

"Skeet...inner..."

He peered at her.

"Ona...prey...bee."

What?

Phil leaned closer, studying her.

Then, very clearly, and with her eyes shut so tight her face distorted, she whispered: "Mannona."

Dream jibberish?Phil wondered. But...

The word sounded familiar, and now that he thought of it, so had the other words she"d mumbled.

Onn. Ona.

Skeet-inner Ona-prey-bee.

And, especially: "Mannona," the whisper came off his lips.

Phil felt momentarily adrift.

Then it dawned on him. Last night. The ambush at Blackjack"s. Now he remembered. That last Creeker kid, he"d said the same words, right before I blew him away.

Yes...

Phil felt sure of it.

What did the words mean? Or did they mean anything? Was it part of the Creekers" sublanguage? Most were clearly deficient in verbal skills- "Mannona," Vicki again whispered in her sleep.

Then she sprang bolt upright and screamed.

"Jesus Christ, Vicki!" He rushed to her, to try and settle her down. The scream had rung out like a siren, and shocked her awake. Phil leaned over, gently jostling her by the shoulders.

"Vicki, Vicki, are you okay?"

Her eyes were frozen open, bloodshot. She shivered where she sat and just stared...

"Vicki?"

"Oh...oh, G.o.d," she muttered and finally came out of it. She numbly pushed her hair back, her eyes fluttering. Phil could actually see a vein in her neck beating manically.

"Are you okay?" he asked again.

"Yeah. I-"

"You must have had yourself one h.e.l.l of a nightmare."

She paused, catching her breath. Her hand came shakily to her bosom. "I did. It was...awful."

"I guess so. You screamed so loud you probably woke up every stiff in Beall Cemetery."

"Sorry," she wavered. She shook her head, rubbed her eyes. "I have nightmares like that all the time."

"What was it about?" Phil asked.

"Nothing, nothing-"

But Phil wasn"t even thinking. He should"ve been.

Because a moment later the door swung open- "Phil, are you all right?" a worried voice rushed. "I heard someone scr-"

Susan stood in the open doorway.

Awwwwwww, s.h.i.t,was the only thing Phil could think, standing there agape with just a towel around his waist.

The next two or three seconds seemed like two or three years. Plenty of time for Phil to curse himself up and down. G.o.dd.a.m.n it! How could I be so G.o.dd.a.m.n STUPID! How could I have left the G.o.dd.a.m.n door UNLOCKED! Meanwhile, Susan just stood there. The expression on her face showed worry, confusion, and disbelief, all percolating at once. Then the expression hardened. She glanced at Phil, then at Vicki, and then at Phil again.

Then she said, none too quietly, "f.u.c.k you!" and turned around and ran back up the stairs.

Phil ran after her, ludicrously holding the towel around his waist. "Susan, wait!" he yelled.

"Eat s.h.i.t!" she yelled back, thumping up the steps ahead of him. "Eat lots of s.h.i.t!"

"Would you please wai-" Phil began, then barked "Jesus!" as he stubbed his toe on one of the uncarpeted stairs.

He heard Susan"s door slamming shut on the landing above.

The entire house shuddered.

Phil limped the rest of the way up, feeling about as low as a typical snake belly. What could he say that wouldn"t be a foolhardy cliche? He could hear himself now. Susan, let me explain! Or, it"s not what you think! If he said anything like that, it would prove an even worse insult to her.

Pathetically, he asked himself, How do I get myself into messes like this?

No answer was forthcoming.

"Susan?" he said, rapping gently on her door. "Please, open the door and at least let me talk to you."

"f.u.c.k off!"

"All right, you"re really mad now, I understand that. So how about if I come up a little later when you cool off?"

"Blow yourself!"

"Tomorrow, then. Okay? Can we talk tomorrow?" he all but pleaded.

"If I ever see you again, you lying son of a b.i.t.c.h," she shrieked from the other side of the door, "I"ll kick you in the b.a.l.l.s so hard they"ll pop out of your ears!"

Phil took a forlorn step back from the door.

Well, he thought. I guess that means no.

Vicki, of course, was gone when Phil went back to his room. I guess she knows a bad scene when she sees one. He couldn"t blame her for the mishap-he could only blame himself. Susan had told him weeks ago that any sound in his room traveled up to hers through the heating duct. He felt scorned; he hadn"t even done anything wrong.

So what else is new, Phil?

Right or wrong, though, common sense told him that nothing he could say could salvage things between him and Susan.

It wasn"t even 6 p.m. when he was dressed and ready. But ready for what? Eagle"s dead-he was my closest lead, and G.o.d knows where Vicki is. He"d have to start from scratch again, go back to the club tonight, and try to cultivate the trust of another denizen of Crick City"s underworld.

It would take weeks.

But there was still one person he could work on...

He drove the Malibu to Millersville, to the county lockup. He flashed his ID, then signed his gun in with the block sergeant. In a few minutes, Paul Sullivan was brought to the interview room in handcuffs.

Phil sat with his feet up on the desk. "Hey, bub, how"s it going? I"ll bet you thought it was your Aunt Millie coming to visit, huh?"

"f.u.c.k you," Sullivan grumbled.

"Believe it or not, Paul, you"re not the first person to say that to me today. Oh, and I really dig your wardrobe. Brooks Brothers?"

Sullivan sat down, dressed in bright orange prison utilities. "How come I got moved out of PC to general pop?"

Generally new inmates were kept in protective custody for five days, for in-processing, before being moved into the general prison population, but it had been at Phil"s request that Sullivan was transferred immediately. And Phil noticed something else: Sullivan had a black eye and new bruises on his face. "You can thank me for that, Paul," Phil told him. "A sociable guy like you, I figure you"d appreciate the company of your fellow convicts. And with that handsome mug of yours, I"ll bet you got a lot of fans already."

"Motherf.u.c.ker," Sullivan replied. "Half the chumps in there hate my guts. I get in half a dozen fights a day."

"It"s called socialization, Paul. Let me ask you something. Does the word mannona mean anything to you? Or prey-bee? Or skeetinner?"

"Naw. But it sounds like Creeker talk."

"And how would you know that? You know a lot of Creekers?"

"Naw, man, but, you know, they"re all over the place, and a lot of the wh.o.r.es at Sallee"s are Creekers. I hear "em jabberin" all the time. Coupla years back, me and Eagle ran flake with some hillfolk out of Luntville, pretty much the same as Creekers "cept they ain"t all f.u.c.ked up from inbreedin". They told us all about the s.h.i.t the Creekers were into, scared s.h.i.tless of "em. Said the Creekers were cannibals and s.h.i.t like that, and they got some weird religion."

Phil raised a brow. "What do you mean? What kind of religion?"

"I don"t know, why the f.u.c.k should I care? But these hillers also said the Creekers, since they can"t talk right, they kinda got their own language. You been to Sallee"s, you"ve heard "em jabbering that s.h.i.t."

This just proved more of what Phil already suspected. Sullivan"s familiarity with the way Creekers spoke only verified some kind of proximity to them. And it was also pretty obvious that he was hiding something.

"You been a liar and a sc.u.mbag all your life, Paul? Ever think you might want to do something with your life besides be a lying, ugly, redneck, dope-dealing piece of s.h.i.t?"

Sullivan grit his teeth. "Man, if I wasn"t in these cuffs, I"d kick your cop a.s.s up and down the wing. I"d dance on your f.u.c.kin" face, bub."

Phil leaned forward and smiled. "Oh? Well, you sure weren"t doing a whole lot of dancing the other night when we had our little party in your luxurious abode."

"That"s just "cos you didn"t fight fair."

Phil laughed. "Bill me for the coffee table."

"Go ahead and laugh, bub. At least I got ya back, blowing your cover all over f.u.c.kin" town."

"Blowing my cover, Paul? And how did you manage that?"

Sullivan mustered a smile, which made the wedgelike face even uglier. "You think you"re pretty smart, slapping that bulls.h.i.t no-call order on me. So ya wanna know what I did?"

"What"s that, Paulie? I"m dying to know."

Sullivan"s smile came to its peak, like a curved gash in a slab of tenderized steak. "I had one of the guys on the block call Eagle."

"Oh? And this colleague of yours talked to Eagle?"