From the doorway, Sadie watched the woman dress. Laura May was a plain creature, at least to Sadie’s critical eye, and her fair skin made her look wan and insubstantial despite her full figure. But then, thought Sadie, who am I to complain of lack of substance? Look at me. And for the first time in the thirty years since her death she felt a nostalgia for corporality. In part because she envied Laura May her bliss with Earl, and in part because she itched to have a role in the drama that was rapidly unfolding around her.
In the kitchen an abruptly sobered Milton Cade was blabbering on the phone, trying to rouse some action from the people in Panhandle, while Laura May, who had finished dressing, unlocked the bottom drawer of her dressing table and rummaged for something. Sadie peered over the woman’s shoulder to discover what the trophy was, and a thrill of recognition made her scalp tingle as her eyes alighted on her .38. So it was Laura May who had found the gun; the whey-faced six-year-old who had been running up and down the walkway all that evening thirty years ago, playing games with herself and singing songs in the hot still air.
It delighted Sadie to see the murder weapon again. Maybe, she thought, I have left some sign of myself to help shape the future. Maybe I am more than a headline on a yellowed newspaper, a dimming memory in aging heads. She watched with new and eager eyes as Laura May slipped on some shoes and headed out into the bellowing storm.
VIRGINIA sat slumped against the wall of Room Seven and looked across at the seedy figure leaning on the door lintel across from her. She had let the delusion she had conjured have what way it would with her; and never in her forty-odd years had she heard such depravity promised. But though the shadow had come at her again and again, pressing its cold body onto hers, its icy, slack mouth against her own, it had failed to carry one act of violation through. Three times it had tried. Three times the urgent words whispered in her ear had not been realized. Now it guarded the door, preparing, she guessed, for a further assault. Its face was clear enough for her to read the bafflement and the shame in its features. It viewed her, she thought, with murder on its mind.
Outside, she heard her husband’s voice above the din of the thunder, and Earl’s voice too, raised in protest. There was a fierce argument going on, that much was apparent. She slid up the wall, trying to make out the words. The delusion watched her balefully.
“You failed,” she told it.
It didn’t reply.
“You’re just a dream of mine, and you failed.”
It opened its mouth and waggled its pallid tongue. She didn’t understand why it hadn’t evaporated. But perhaps it would tag along with her until the pills had worked their way through her system. No matter. She had endured the worst it could offer. Now, given time, it would surely leave her be. Its failed rapes left it bereft of power over her.
She crossed toward the door, no longer afraid. It raised itself from its slouched posture.
“Where are you going?” it demanded.
“Out,” she said. “To help Earl.”
“No,” it told her, “I haven’t finished with you.”
“You’re just a phantom,” she retorted. “You can’t stop me.”
It offered up a grin that was three parts malice to one part charm. “You’re wrong, Virginia,” Buck said. There was no purpose in deceiving the woman any longer; he’d tired of that particular game. And perhaps he’d failed to get the old jazz going because she’d given herself to him so easily, believing he was some harmless nightmare. “I’m no delusion, woman,” he said. “I’m Buck Durning.” She frowned at the wavering figure. Was this a new trick her psyche was playing? “Thirty years ago I was shot dead in this very room. Just about where you’re standing in fact.”
Instinctively, Virginia glanced down at the carpet at her feet, almost expecting the bloodstains to be there still.