Nutjob stepped away from the door, an unpleasant frown on his scruffy face. "Here it comes..."

The thin, haggard shadow crossed the floor as the goilem entered the room, its shining, clay-caked face expressionless. Across its shoulder was slung a sheet-draped corpse. Asher looked on in marveling pride. More proof of the power of the melech, S"mol. Over a hundred years old and it still serves us so well.

"That thing still gives me the creeps," D-Man muttered.

"Please, you"ll hurt our servant"s feelings," Asher joked. He pointed to the table, whereupon the bone-thin figure set down the corpse. "You"d be surprised to know that this thing once had a name, D-Man. It was Yerby."

"Yerby," D-Man mouthed, looking away.

"Repose," Asher said to it. The thing trudged to its box, lay down in it, and closed the lid.

"It did all of the digging," D-Man added. "Saved us some elbow grease, that"s for sure."

"It serves us well, just as it served my ancestors," Asher remarked. "But nothing lasts forever. It"s old, but now..." He put his hand on the sheeted corpse, then pulled off the sheet. "This one will be even stronger, fresher, more vital, just as Gavriel Lowen intended. Our providence is nearly upon us, and you men have done very well."

Both D-Man and Nutjob gulped at the sight of the corpse, a shapely woman still in burial clothes. Even after so much time in the ground, it could almost have been mistaken for a woman asleep.

"Don"t stink none at all," Nutjob said.

"And it still looks almost alive," D-Man added.

"The sorcery of the new age, men," Asher said. "Embalming. And come tomorrow night, it will be so much more than almost alive." He led them back down the hall to the cafeteria in which food had never been cooked. When they looked in, several addicts tended the flank of ovens, baking down base-cocaine into crack. The heating process actually caused a crackling sound, hence the name. But the other side of the room?

Asher extended his hand. "Behold my sorcery..." Some of the clay from one of the pilfered barrels had by now been removed in chunks, each chunk added one by one to metal drums. Water was added in small amounts, the clay then pestled until sufficiently mixed; the process was repeated over and over. "The hilna, men, the blessedly cursed clay of the Vltava River. Gavriel Lowen didn"t live long enough to receive the shipment but now... we"ve reclaimed his treasure, to finish his great work."

D-Man and Nutjob could scarcely comprehend the words. "Can we-can we-" D-Man began.

"You may leave now, my good friends," Asher said as several addicts slopped more clay into more metal drums. "Just remember that faith bids its proper rewards..."

IV.

Judy awoke the next morning in more gelid sweat; she was shaking for crack, but at least had managed to not smoke any after they"d gotten back from the crab house. As her eyes clicked open, Seth was sitting on the bed"s edge, talking into his cell phone: "You"re kidding me! What the h.e.l.l are we doing wrong?" A strained pause. "I know, d.a.m.n it. Yeah, you"re right. I"ll catch the first plane down."

"What"s wrong?" Judy asked when she ground herself to full wakefulness.

"I"ve got to go to Tampa-today. More quadratics problems." And then he rushed to the shower.

I look like such s.h.i.t, she told her reflection. Sooner or later he"ll know I"ve got something more than a cold.

"Why don"t you come with me?" he asked, toweling off after the shower, then quickly dressing. "Don"t know how long it"ll take, but-"

"I"ll stay here and hold down the fort," her id answered for her. "I"m still feeling kind of lousy, anyway."

He paused with a concerned look, touched her cheek. "Are you all right? Seriously."

"It"s just a cold," she sluffed. "I"ll be fine." Then she whisked out of the room. "I"ll make you some coffee."

Downstairs, she clenched through the task, then loaded his laptop in its case for him. I"ll get it all out of my system while he"s gone, she vowed. She knew that twenty pieces of crack awaited her in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I"ll crack it up, then quit when he comes home. But this was just more of her id-and deep down she knew that. She"d made similar vows in the past and never honored them.

"d.a.m.n, this is really screwed up," he said once downstairs with his suitcase. "If we don"t get this bug fixed we could miss the deadline for the sequel." He rushed a kiss, and said, "Sorry this is such short notice." He"d already grabbed his bags, and was heading for the door.

Judy, robe-clad, followed him in a daze: "Have a safe trip, and call me when you get there."

"I will, I will, and-d.a.m.n it!" he exclaimed. "I have to take the Tahoe to the airport. You"ll be stranded here."

"Don"t worry," she a.s.sured him. "I"ll have an excuse to ride my bike."

"Okay, bye-and keep the alarm on. Love you!" And then he was driving away.

I love you, too, she thought, her willpower already corroding. When the Tahoe could no longer be seen, a sickening trance took her back inside where she got the key, then came back out and opened the bas.e.m.e.nt doors. But her curse made her cringe; she couldn"t get down the steps fast enough.

She swayed the flashlight around, growing frantic as she hunted for what should"ve been left. There, in the gap between two barrels, the plastic bag glimmered. She snapped it up, stared, then yelled aloud, "That lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" The bag contained but three pieces of crack, not the twenty promised. Was she actually crying when she lit the first piece? For herself, or for knowing that the three meager pieces would scarcely last an hour? She shuddered as she inhaled, the fumes, first, seducing her with wondrous promises, but then leaving her short-changed by the effect. It was never good enough, never like the very first high, but it kept forcing you to do it, anyway. The corrupt euphoria seemed like a tongue licking her raw brain. G.o.d, it"s so good but so awful... The second piece went as fast, leaving her to sit slumped on the dirt floor, buzzing for twenty minutes. Save the last piece-DO it! she screamed through the high. She put the bag and pipe in her pocket, shrieking at herself. She was about to bolt out when a thought surfaced through her glittering daze.

Those men. What did they do? What did they need down here? She looked around with the flashlight. Did they take more of the barrels? But a quick count showed her six remained.

But...something looked different, didn"t it?

They"ve been moved.

She was sure of it at once. The barrels had been moved across the dank room. Why? she asked herself. Why on earth... The hidden door remained closed and unnoticeable. They must not know about it. She looked down closer in the beam of light and easily noted the footprints, and-Great! came the sarcasm-the tiniest end of a joint. She pushed dirt over it with her foot.

But why move the barrels? Almost as if...they were checking for something beneath them...

She sat upstairs and cried for an hour, then slept convulsively for two more. In and out of sleep, she prayed, but the prayers seemed feeble, insincere. G.o.d, forgive me in my state of disgrace. My sins are horrendous but I know your mercy is infinite. Take this burden off me, I beg you. But even as the words abated, she still cringed for that last piece of crack.

Eventually she forced herself to shower, then put on a sundress with nothing underneath; she didn"t want to feel constricted. But...What am I doing? The craving for that last piece bit into her like bear-trap jaws. I"ve already been around this block, and I can"t do it again. For the second time, she fantasized of killing herself; then, she thought: If I don"t quit, I"ll do it, I will.

But how? There was no gun in the house, and no way to asphyxiate herself. She couldn"t see herself cutting her throat, knew she didn"t have the courage.

The bas.e.m.e.nt. There was rope down there.

That"s how I"ll do it...IF I can"t quit.

But there still remained that last piece in the bag. That"ll be the last piece I ever smoke, one way or another. She decided she"d go out to the fields, smoke it there, then throw the pipe deep into the switchgra.s.s.

She was out the door. Stalking across the front yard, then across the road. The wide ser vice path in the field seemed to suck her into it just as she"d soon be sucking the smoke through the pipe. She walked hurriedly, blanking her mind. The last piece, the last piece, the last piece. She walked a quarter mile into the field without being conscious of it. The fingers of one hand rubbed her cross, the fingers of the other rubbed the crack bag. Make sure there are no workers out here, her paranoia finally told her. Now she walked with eyes peeled, and turned into the narrower foot path heading east. A few minutes later, she stopped. Her humanity flitted away; she opened the baggie, loaded the pipe. She stared at it, hating herself.

"No!" she suddenly shouted. She thought of her rapists, and what they"d done to her. She thought of the past and what she"d done to herself, and then she saw a picture of herself prowling sidewalks at night, hoping for a trick. She remembered the leering faces when she"d get into a stranger"s car; she remembered the revolting smells and sickening tastes, and then, lastly, she saw herself hanging by the neck. "No!" she bellowed again and threw the loaded pipe as far as she could into the switchgra.s.s. I"m not going to be a junkie, and I"m not going to kill myself! The gla.s.s pipe arced end over end in seeming slow motion, then irretrievably vanished.

Silence followed, like the silence after an explosion. "I"m not going to smoke crack," she whispered. She stalked off, farther down the path, unaware that soon she"d be at that odd circular clearing, which was only a few hundred yards shy of the cemetery where she"d been orally raped. She walked quickly, nearly jogging, as if her addiction were in chase. Still barely cognizant of her actions, she stepped into the clearing- -and almost shrieked.

A man stood there, turning at her entrance. Judy"s heart slammed because for a moment she thought it must be one of the masked men...

"Oh, it"s you, Miss...I"m sorry, I forgot your name." "Judy Parker," she droned in the after-scare. "Seth Kohn"s girlfriend. You"re Mr. Croter, the Realtor who sold Seth the Lowen House."

"Yes, yes, nice to see you again," he said, but seemed distracted as he meandered around the clearing. "What brings you way out here?"

"I...was just taking a walk," she told him, trying to unclench herself. "I came out here the other day when Seth was working."

"Really? Well, let me ask you something. These circles of stones-when you were here earlier, were they...like this?"

Judy had to wrestle back her attention. What"s he talking about? But then she looked down at the ten circles of stones in the dirt, which formed a large circle in all, and the eleventh circle in the center. She focused, and noticed that they were splotched with something, darkened, and semishiny.

"No, they weren"t," she said slowly. "They were just bare stones. And is that..."

"I know, it looks like blood," Croter said. They both stooped for closer inspection. Could be paint, she told herself, but then why would someone...

Croter explained, "I drove by here last night and saw lights in the field. Lights that seemed to be coming from this exact spot-"

And two nights ago, I saw lights out here, too, Judy remembered.

"-so I thought I"d come out here and have a look." His expression turned stolid. "Yes. Somebody poured blood on these rocks."

"Within the last two days," Judy added. What a strange thing. Was it really blood? But suddenly they both paled when a breeze shifted, and filled the clearing with a ghastly odor.

"Smells like something dead," Croter gasped. Wincing, he approached the wall of switchgra.s.s and pushed aside an armful of stalks, then, "Holy s.h.i.t!"

Judy held her breath and looked. Her stomach lurched. "Oh, gross!" she exclaimed of the pile of headless animal carca.s.ses. It looked like five or six of them. Just like in the... "You"re not going to believe this, but the other day I found an old graveyard not far from here, and there were dead dogs there, too. Headless dogs."

Croter urged her away, toward the entrance. "I guess that explains where they got the blood."

The strangeness-as well as the revulsion-at least diverted Judy"s consciousness. Croter led her back down the path to the wider ser viceway. "Mighty strange, mighty strange," he said. At the main path, he turned north, away from the Lowen House. "My car"s right up here, I"ll give you a ride back."

"Thank you," she muttered. As she walked away, she glanced over her shoulder, in the direction of where she"d thrown the crack pipe. I"m going to quit! So don"t think about it! Croter"s old blue Pontiac was parked just out of view on the path, behind an outcropping of switchgra.s.s. Judy walked to the car, fingering her cross and trying to banish the anguish running through her nerves. Thank G.o.d he didn"t see me.

"I guess we should call the police, I mean, about the dead dogs and the blood."

He let her in the car. "Not much point in that, not around here. The police aren"t good for much. Anyway, enough of all that. How are you and Seth liking the house?"

"It"s great," she said without much enthusiasm. "We had a break-in, though."

"What!"

"Yeah, that was pretty strange, too. Did you read the article in the paper about the old steamboat they found on Seth"s property?"

"Oh, yes. Something about an earthquake decades ago, diverting the river. Was there anything of value on it?"

"Not really," Judy said. "There were old shipping barrels on it, so Seth paid some men to move them into our bas.e.m.e.nt. Turned out to be a waste of time and money."

Croter pulled off, looking at her. His Star of David glimmered. "What was in the barrels?"

Judy laughed thinly. "Broken plates, broken marbles, and coal dust."

Croter"s expression lengthened.

"Anyway," she went on, "a few nights later, somebody broke into our bas.e.m.e.nt and took four of the barrels. Seth filed a police report."

"Why would somebody steal broken plates, marbles, and-"

"Oh, I forgot to add, there were also four barrels of clay."

"Clay?" Croter asked in a tone that quickly lowered. "Yeah. Can you believe it?" In thought she continued, And can you believe that I let the thieves back into the bas.e.m.e.nt later? "Those were the only barrels they stole. The ones full of clay. Between that and headless dogs and blood-spattered circles of stones, I think I"ve had enough strangeness for one week."

Croter drove out of the ser vice path, offering no comment. Instead, he seemed deeply contemplative.

"Maybe it"s some farmer"s superst.i.tion or something," Judy added. "Good luck with the harvest?"

"The blood, you mean?"

"Yeah, sure. I can"t think of any other reason why someone would cover a bunch of circles of stones in blood."

Croter stopped in front of the house. He didn"t respond, just looked at her instead. For the merest moment, he seemed to be afraid of something.

"Well, thanks for the ride, Mr. Croter," she said and got out. He simply nodded, mouthed something in silence, and drove away.

What"s with him? she wondered of his sudden weirdness. Weirder, of course, was the rest: headless dogs and b.l.o.o.d.y stones. She went into the house, but at least realized she"d set her mind not to do crack, had none, yet wasn"t terrified of the prospect. I know it"s not that easy, though. The oddities in the clearing had gotten her mind off it. Suddenly a distant phone rang. My cell phone. I left it upstairs, she recalled and raced up the steps. It must be Seth. Merely thinking his name made her happy. She plunged through the bedroom door- The roughened hand slapped to her throat and squeezed off her scream. The lean stocking-masked face leaned an inch from hers as fingers dug into her throat. "No scream-in"or else I"ll kill ya."

Her eyes bugged; she nodded, and then the fingers loosened.

"Guess that were Sethie-poo callin"," he said. Yes, the skinny one this time, the long-hair. The stinker... A straggly beard or goatee puffed out the chin of the stocking. "When"s he comin" back?"

"In a few minutes," she choked, and then her eyes bugged again when the fingers dug back in. She couldn"t breathe.

"Thing is we saw him this mornin" pullin" onto the turnpike fer Salisbury, so don"t jive me. When"s he comin" back?"

Her voice sounded like grating stones. "Tomorrow, maybe. Maybe a few days. He"s in Tampa."

He threw her down on the bed. "Good. Plenty"a time fer us to have some fun." His wiry muscles bulged when he ripped her sundress off. "Naughty gal, no undies, no nothin". I like that." He p.r.o.nounced the word like as lack.

Judy sat shivering on the bed. Seth"s words floated in her head. Keep the alarm on... How stupid could she be?

"Bet"chew were p.i.s.sed when ya saw we only left ya three rocks."

"You said you"d leave twenty," she replied, even as terrified as she was.

He unfastened his belt. "We was a mite p.i.s.sed ourselves. See, we didn"t find what we was lookin" for."

"What on earth are you looking for?" she defied him again. "You already took the four barrels of clay-for what, I can"t imagine. And I left the d.a.m.n bas.e.m.e.nt unlocked like your friend asked. Why did you move the barrels around? Were you looking for something under them?"

The squished face smiled. "d.a.m.n smart, honeypot. Yeah, we was. But it weren"t there. We checked with a detector thing. So"s I"ll tell ya what we"re lookin" for, so you can help us out."

I wish I had a gun, the thought popped in her head. I wish I could kill him...

"We"re lookin" for a skull. It was buried a long time ago, and it"s somewhere in the bas.e.m.e.nt. But we swept every square inch"a the place and it ain"t there."

A skull. "The skull of Gavriel Lowen," she remembered the macabre information. "Why?"

WHACK!.