Oh! Lord! What IS that?

It"s not a person who pushed you to the floor, it"s the stench that plowed out of the room. It"s an awful hot rotten smell mixed with another stench like latrine dirt on a sweltering day.

You pick yourself up and look into the room- -and that"s when you scream a hundred times louder than when Mr. Morris was pushing the sewing needle into the tip of your nipple.

You"re looking down at a naked woman dead for days, spread-eagled on a blood-caked bed. A large ax had been dropped right between her legs.

Just before you fall backward, you think you noticed one more thing: A b.l.o.o.d.y fetus on the floor, but it"s tiny, not much bigger than a field mouse. It looks like someone had squashed it under their shoe.

Footsteps thunk up the stairs, and now you think you also hear a dog barking.

The second man gags, "In the name of-What"s that stench? p.i.s.s?"

"What the h.e.l.l-" The marshal looks into the room.

The other man helps you up, but looks like he wants to throw up over the stair-hall rail. They all got enough of a look.

"Guess we done found Mrs. Gast..."

"somethin" pure evil"s goin" on in this place." He jerks his head. "Where"s that dog barkin"?"

The other man leaves you to lean against the rail. "This door here."

You bring a hand to your chest. "It"s locked..."

Ka-KRACK!

His booted foot implodes the door. More meaty rotten stench gusts into the hall, so dense it"s like a cloud, and a skinny mud-tan mutt tears out of the room and disappears down the stairs. But the man is already on his knees and then he sidles over. He"s pa.s.sed out.

The marshal looks in the room but when he turns back to you it"s with a face leeched of all color, and though it can"t be true you could swear that in the time it took him to look into that room, some of his hair turned gray.

He puts his hand across your eyes and turns you around. "You get out"a this house, girl. You get out right now, and don"t come back."

"But, sir, what"s in the-"

"You get out now! You run to the town square"n ring the bell and tell every man to get on up here to help me."

"But-"

"Go!" He shoves you toward the steps. You stumble down the staircase. You can hear him weeping, "G.o.d, protect us, my dear G.o.d, protect us..."

Downstairs, the s.p.a.cious foyer seems smaller now, and very dark.

When you turn, your heart freezes again and you almost scream.

There"s a man sitting at a desk, scribbling. He looks up at you as if irritated.

"Who are you, child?" a creaky voice asks.

"Harriet..."

"Oh, yes. The wh.o.r.e..." He gets back to scribbling. You recognize him a moment later from the stupid red hat and metal nose: one of Mr. Gast"s employees, who once paid to watch you s.h.i.t.

"You should leave here," he mutters without looking at you. "Even in the grievous sin of your wh.o.r.edom, you are more blessed than anyone to ever set foot here."

You don"t understand him at all.

He stands up at the desk. In his hand is a sheaf of oblong papers, which he slips into one of the desk"s many letter slots. "I won"t be needing these anymore"-his tiny eyes scan the dark room-"just as this place will no longer be needing me."

Now his hand is extending, his palm full of gold coins. "Take this. I"ll write you a receipt."

Your mouth hangs open as you shake your head no.

His fingers pluck up one coin. "At least take this ten-dollar piece. It belongs to you, does it not?"

"No..."

"My time here is at an end, and so is yours." He removes his false nose to reveal gnawed holes. "Say your prayers, fornicatress. You"ve much to be grateful for. You will live a long, long life, and you will have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and you will die on the day before Trotsky is murdered."

Your stare gapes. "What?"

He walks away into a side hall.

It"s as if the house ejects you; you nearly fall down the front steps. Mr. Gast"s corpse has turned on the rope again, to face your exit. You stumble down the path, exhausted by your witness. Before you begin to run, you see the last edge of the sun melting over the distant cotton and soya fields, backlighting so many skulls on sticks, and you also see the tan mutt that escaped the room upstairs humping the other stray dogs in the yard, and that"s when you feel as if Lucifer himself has just blown you a kiss...

You fall to your-

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

I.

-knees before the toilet to vomit harder than he ever had in his life. Holy ever-living h.e.l.l, Collier thought in the mad, wincing turmoil. He didn"t remember stumbling to the bathroom, but he did remember the nightmare...

With each pulse of vomit, the alarm pulsed in the bedroom. The images from the nightmare a.s.sailed him, and ghosts of discomfort throbbed at his a.n.u.s and his left nipple. When he was done, his stomach squeezed dry, his vomit floated in the toilet like an inch of oatmeal.

The worst dream of my life...

He sat on the bathroom floor, head between his knees.

It was the first time he"d ever dreamed he was a woman- Not just a woman, a Civil War wh.o.r.e...

When he could bear the buzz of the alarm no more, he straggled up and smacked it off. It was twenty-five before seven. Oh, s.h.i.t, he recalled. Church. While showering, the distress in his belly sharpened when he recalled the ludicrous incident with Lottie and, worse, the awful hallucination of those four small hands t.i.tillating him...

And the dog.

I got the triple whammy last night, he groaned to himself as he dressed. And didn"t J.G. Sute say that someone was murdered in the bath closet?

And was that trace smell of urine his imagination or...

Downstairs he heard early risers chatting over the light breakfast Mrs. Butler served every morning. Collier stepped quickly past the dining room door, so not to be seen. Then he turned for the door and noticed- The fancy antique desk sat recessed within the wall, close to the small portrait of Mrs. Gast. The same place it was in the dream. Collier knew his dreaming mind had been quite creative last night, producing the morbid dream out of pieces of things he"d heard. My name was Harriet and I just got raped every which way, and then I saw that weird little dude sitting at that desk, the guy with the messed-up nose. Of course his mind had remembered Dominique"s story of a similar man sitting at the same desk during the wedding reception. He reread the tiny metal plate: ORIGINAL MAPLE WRITING TABLE-QUEEN ANNE-STYLE-SAVERY AND SONS-1779. It was no big deal, he knew, but...

In the dream, I saw the guy put a stack of papers...

His fingers fished around one by one through the letter slots. The slots were quite deep. In one he found an inexplicable business card that read PHILTY PHIL"S BAR! ST. PETE BEACH, FLORIDA. The card was obviously new. He forced his fingers down deep into the very next slot- Something there...

With finesse and some aggravation, his forefinger and middle finger managed to seize something and pull it out.

A sheaf of very old, heather gray sheets of paper, oblong-shaped, about seven inches by three. The same things he"d seen the man in the dream put in this self-same desk.

Don"t freak out, Collier warned himself. Up front, it seemed impossible, but coincidence more easily explained it. I noticed them when I first saw the desk, but wasn"t consciously aware of it...

Or so he hoped.

The stack seemed about sixty pages thick, and some were white instead of the heather gray. He"d seen one before already, in one of Mrs. Butler"s displays. They were paychecks from the era, and he supposed they might even be moderately valuable to a collector. He read the first one.

RECEIVED OF: Mr. R.J. Myers, AGENT OF THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD COMPANY, Fifty DOLLARS.

The date: April 30, 1862, and at the bottom was scribed a signature: Windom Fecory.

Windom Fecory, Collier thought back. The man whom the bank is named after. The man with the gold nose...

Collier peeled off a few of the checks and put them in his pocket. Maybe Mr. Sute knows exactly what these things are. The rest he put back in the slot.

But what of the rest of the nightmare?

Morris, the john in the wh.o.r.ehouse, he thought. Didn"t I see his name on something in one of the display cases? One of Harwood Gast"s rail workers, no doubt. But it could still be explained by a subconscious recollection; even the dull but precise pain in his left nipple could be explained. Collier had to wonder if he was hunting for proof of something supernatural now. I wonder what a therapist would say. "Well, Doctor, last night I dreamed I was a woman and I got corn-holed by a rugged railroad worker. Oh, and I also got drunk with a bunch of gay guys earlier."

Why bother trying to figure it out?

The morning air outside refreshed him; he was at the church in less time than he thought. As he waited for Dominique, some other people standing outside the church door seemed to be eyeing him, so he moseyed away so not to seem abrupt.

"What are you doing over here?" Dominique asked, appearing around the corner. Collier was stunned. She wore a refreshing camel tan wrap-dress with a smart belt. Her eyes glittered in the morning light.

"Oh, I-"

"I keep forgetting, the Prince of Beer doesn"t want to be made," she giggled.

"Exactly. Especially at church."

Collier wasn"t prepared when she gave him a peck on the lips. Her soap and shampoo, as usual, turned him on in a big way; even her mouthwash and toothpaste seemed enticing.

"I...missed you," he uttered, and then felt ridiculous afterward.

"Good," she said, and took his hand. The chattering precongregation-mostly middle-aged and elderly couples-began to enter the church when the steeple bell began to clang.

She said very chirpily, "Let"s go in now and ask G.o.d to forgive us for our sins."

"Sure," Collier said. In my case, it better be a long f.u.c.king service...

II.

"All right, b.i.t.c.h. You want it bad, so you"re gonna get it. Bad."

"Yes, yes!" J.G. Sute had huffed.

That"s how it had started, but how it had ended was another story...

Naked on the bed, the 300-pounder looked like an obese cartoon. It was less than an inspiring image, and worse were the dream fragments that haunted Jiff from last night"s nightmare. Jiff had dreams like that sometimes, and never understood it. Civil War dreams, along with the most awful images, and last night had been the worst. He"d seen wagons full of people so skinny they looked like living skeletons. Most were naked but the ones still clothed were stripped by slaves. Several male Indians stood around, waiting, with knives in their belts, their eyes keen and patient. The place was so hot. Next thing Jiff knew he was shoveling coal into a vast furnace, and he"d been able to see people bubbling inside...

Jiff bit his lip till the images were gone.

He stood naked in front of his p.r.o.ne and cringing client. For the course of the next hour came pleas, like: "I love you, I love you," then a hard slap! and "Please! I deserve it! I deserve the pain because I"m not worthy of your love," then a harder smack! and, "Jiff, my love. I need you to hurt me..."

Like that.

Throughout the regimen, however, shreds of Jiff"s nightmare kept pecking at his mind: women and old men, plus children, bald and starving, standing in a line but- A line for what?

Aw, G.o.d...

Exactly what use Jiff made of the rubber glove need not be mentioned, nor need it be mentioned what and how many areas of J.G. Sute"s corpulent body he"d used the "Naughty Girl Clips" on. His client had wanted pain this time, and it was pain he"d received, until he was a sobbing, sniffling, quivering ma.s.s.

Debas.e.m.e.nt, too, was on this morning"s one-hundred-dollar agenda; hence, the wine goblet. It need not be mentioned what fluid other than wine Jiff filled it with and then forced Sute to consume.

"I"m so unworthy-I"m sc.u.m! s.h.i.t on me if you like!"

Even for a hundred bucks, Jiff was not quite up to that. As a "grand finale," however, he slapped his client up a few more times, then took a big hock in his face, but while he was engaged in these final tweaks, he swore he could still see the stoked flames from the dream furnace, thought sure he could still hear the screams...

When services had been properly rendered, J.G. Sute sobbed tears of joy as his elephantine body shuddered.

"My love, I could die now..."

Freak show"s over. Jiff loped to the bathroom sink to wash up. I just cain"t do this s.h.i.t anymore. When he returned to the bedroom, he was relieved to see that Sute had wiped his face off and donned his robe. The man looked dreamy-eyed now, his demented needs slaked. "That was wonderful," he sighed.

"Yeah, yeah." Jiff stood listlessly at the liquor cabinet. He wasn"t going to tell the man that this was his last trick with him. "Mind if I have a shot?"

"What"s mine is yours, my love."

Jesus. Jiff"s eyes scoured the shelves: Asombroso tequila, Macallan thirty-year-old scotch, Johnnie Walker Green. s.h.i.t, he ain"t got no Black Velvet? He poured himself an inch of something and sat down bare-a.s.sed on a William and Mary wing-back chair.

Now that his perverse duties were over, his nightmare filtered back into his head.

"Jiff, you look inconsolable."