She blew the snow away from the door’s flange and found the keyhole. The sound of the turning tumblers seemed to scratch across the darkness. She leaned on the door and it swung inward.
The odor that came out at us was as cool as autumn, as cool as the air in the Hollis root cellar. I could see in only a little way. There were dead leaves on the stone floor. She entered, paused, looked back over her shoulder at me.
“No,” I said.
“Do you love?” she asked, and laughed at me.
I stood in the darkness, feeling everything begin to run together — past, present, future. I
wanted to run, fun screaming, run fast enough to take back everything I had done.
Nona stood there looking at me, the most beautiful girl in the world, the only thing that had ever been mine. She made a gesture with her hands on her body. I’m not going to tell you what it was. You would know it if you saw it.
I went in. She closed the door.
It was dark but I could see perfectly well. The place was alight with a slowly running green fire. It ran over the walls and snaked across the leaf-littered floor in tongues. There was a bier in the center of the vault, but it was empty. Withered rose petals were scattered across it like an ancient bridal offering. She beckoned to me, then pointed to the small door at the rear. Small, unmarked door. I dreaded it. I think I knew then. She had used me and laughed at me. Now she would destroy me.
But I couldn’t stop. I went to that door because I had to. The mental telegraph was still working at what I felt was glee — a terrible, insane glee — and triumph. My hand trembled toward the door. It was coated with green fire.
I opened the door and saw what was there.
It was the girl, my girl. Dead. Her eyes stared vacantly into that October vault, into my own eyes. She smelled of stolen kisses. She was naked and she had been ripped open from throat to crotch, her whole body turned into a womb. And something lived in there. The rats. I could not see them but I could hear them, rustling inside her. I knew that in a moment her dry mouth would open and she would ask me if I loved. I backed away, my whole body numb, my brain floating on a dark cloud.
I turned to Nona. She was laughing, holding her arms out to me. And with a sudden blaze of understanding I knew, I knew, I knew. The last test. The last final. I had passed it and I was free!
I turned back to the doorway and of course it was nothing but an empty stone closet with dead leaves on the floor.
I went to Nona. I went to my life.
Her arms reached around my neck and I pulled her against me. That was when she began to change, to ripple and run like wax. The great dark eyes became small and beady. The hair coarsened, went brown. The nose shortened, the nostrils dilated. Her body lumped and hunched against me.
I was being embraced by a rat.
“Do you love?” it squealed. “Do you love, do you love?”
Her lipless mouth stretched upward for mine.
I didn’t scream. There were no screams left. I doubt if I will ever scream again.
It’s so hot in here.
I don’t mind the heat, not really. I like to sweat if I can shower. I’ve always thought of
sweat as a good thing, a masculine thing, but sometimes, in the heat, there are bugs that bite —
spiders, for instance. Did you know that the female spiders sting and eat their mates? They do, right after copulation.
Also, I’ve heard scurryings in the walls. I don’t like that.
I’ve given myself writer’s cramp, and the felt tip of the pen is all soft and mushy. But I’m done now. And things look different. It doesn’t seem the same anymore at all.
Do you realize that for a while they almost had me believ-ing that I did all those horrible things myself? Those men from the truck stop, the guy from the power truck who got away.