The Mysteries (22 page)

I'd just checked my watch for about the tenth time in as many minutes when I heard the faint sound of bells jingling rhythmically.

The back of my neck prickled. I jumped up and, despite the brightness of the moon, switched on my brand-new flashlight, sweeping it about like a light-saber.

And there she was. Amy Schneider, only a few yards away, stumbling through the woods, looking miserable. She had on a big, saggy, knitted pullover and jeans. Her hair hung in lank rattails around her face. Even when I shined the light directly at her she didn't seem to notice me, far too absorbed in picking her way over the uneven ground.

I heard the bells again, and a sound like whispering, and quickly flashed the light around, looking for the source. But all I could see were trees and shadows. The shadows clustered in odd places, melted away, then regrouped, giving the impression of people moving, dashing from bush to bush, just outside my main line of vision, always faster than the eye could see.

I couldn't afford to worry about that. I knew what I had to do. I stuffed the flashlight into my pocket and stepped right in front of Amy, my arms open. She walked into my embrace like a sleepwalker. As soon as her body met mine, she stiffened, and would have pulled away if I hadn't held her tightly.

She went limp in my grasp. I staggered, and had to struggle to keep upright. She was a big girl, nearly as tall as I was, and her deadweight was a real burden. Had she fainted? I whispered her name.

No response. Seconds ticked past, lengthening to minutes, and the weight in my arms was unrelenting. Although she pressed heavily against my chest, I couldn't feel her heart beating or hear her breathing.

My own heart began to race in terror. Was she dead?

I gave her a shake.

Still no response, and her head lolled worryingly.

I'd learned about the kiss of life in a first-aid course, but I couldn't stretch her out into the approved position without letting her go. What should I do?

Go with your instincts. Do what seems right.
I could almost hear Fred's gentle Scottish burr in my ear, and for a moment I seemed to feel her lips on mine again.

I took a deep breath, steadied Amy's head with one hand while gripping her firmly with the other, and pressed my mouth to hers, and exhaled.

Immediately, my breath filled her lungs, and I felt vitality surge through her. She came to life in my arms, and quite suddenly began to kiss me back. Her tongue thrust into my mouth, her arms snaked beneath mine, and she clung to me.

She felt absolutely wonderful. It had been so long since anyone had kissed me like that, and I was starved for sex, for female warmth and affection. I opened my mouth wide and kissed her back, at the same time pulling her even harder against me. We were both wearing so many layers of clothes that her body remained a shrouded mystery, yet instinct joined with imagination to make me vividly aware of her large, soft breasts. Her hands dug into my back; as she held on so tightly, I thought it was safe to slip one of my hands around to fondle her breasts. Through the thickness of her sweater I couldn't even tell if she was wearing a bra, yet I was sure I felt her nipple grow erect beneath my teasing fingers.

She rose up on tiptoe and ground her pubic bone against mine: thick denim rasped against corduroy, and our belt buckles met with a grating clink. Then she began to fumble at my belt. She seemed desperate to get into my pants, and I was more than happy to let her, yet one small, rational bit of my brain raised a warning that penetrated the fog of lust:

This can't be for real.

This sort of thing happened in movies, not in real life—not to guys like me. She didn't even know me.

So what was going on? Was I being set up for something?

Visions of satanic covens and human sacrifice, and blood-drinking vampires, tumbled through my brain. After all, it was Halloween.

I caught Amy's hand just before she could undo my zipper, and, reluctantly, pulled away from her sweet, ravenous mouth. “Slow down,” I mumbled, gripping her hand tightly. My eyes darted everywhere, seeing threats in every shifting shadow, looking everywhere for the danger except in her face.

It happened in an instant. I realized abruptly it was a
man's
hand I held; it was not a woman but a man pressed close against me. Even as I turned disbelieving eyes to his face I recognized through some other sense—smell, perhaps, or a tactile memory going back to infancy—that the man I embraced was my father.

“Dad?”

He looked at me without understanding. Then, all at once, recognition lit his eyes, followed immediately by a look of loathing. I might have been the most disgusting creature on the face of the earth. With a grunt, he tried to pull away from my grasp.

I almost let him go, pained more than I can say by the expression on his face. But then I remembered Fred's solemn instructions, and a line from “The Ballad of Young Tam Lin”:

But hold me fast, and fear me not . . .

And I gripped him just as tightly as I had held Amy.

I stared into my father's face—knowing this was not my father but only his appearance—and held on grimly as he wriggled and writhed, panting hard with the effort to free himself. Yet he didn't try to lash out at me, to hit or kick or bite.

This time I watched closely, yet the change when it came was just as sudden and shocking as before.

I was still holding a man, but he was no longer anything like my father. He'd become a young stranger, a malevolently handsome, devilish-looking youth with golden eyes, long black lashes, and lips like Mick Jagger. And, while I blinked in surprise, he moved his arms and sent long, cool fingers to stroke my back, my neck, finally to twine in my hair.

As he moved to kiss me, I jerked my head back out of reach. He pulled me, painfully, by the hair, dragging my face toward his and, like a striking snake, he struck with his tongue. He kissed me, probingly, insinuatingly, and pressed his hard, undeniably masculine body against mine.

I've never in my life been sexually attracted to a man, but I'm not homophobic, and it never seemed to me either shameful or impossible (although, I admit, disturbing) that someday I might feel just the tiniest bit aroused by some mysteriously attractive bisexual . . .

But this was not that time.

My erection—legacy of Amy's embrace—died abruptly.

His tongue in my mouth, his hands on my body, sickened me. I felt under attack in the most revolting way and I couldn't do anything about it.

This isn't a man, this is Amy
—I told myself that again and again, denying the urge I felt to fling him violently away and throw up. I kept my mouth firmly clamped shut and tried to resist his relentless assault on my body. Yet whatever I did somehow made it worse: I was aware each time I flinched or wriggled in a vain attempt to escape that my movements excited him more. I could feel his penis pressing against my leg, getting bigger and stiffer, seemingly ready to burst out of his pants.

I was so revolted, even with my endless mantra of
this is really Amy, think of Amy and hold on,
that I didn't know how much longer I could stand it. If he went much further, I'd have to sock him. How far was too far?

Hating him, hating myself, I hung on. I held him even tighter, wishing I had enough strength in my arms to squeeze him unconscious, or break a couple of ribs . . .

That was when I realized I was holding a woman again, squeezing her tightly.

But this was a different woman, bare-armed, scantily clad . . .

Looking down, I saw my mother: dressed only in her underwear, and wriggling lasciviously in my arms, her eyes half-closed, a wide and willing smile on her face.

I'd thought nothing could be worse than that devilish young man wanting to rape me, but this—my own mother, begging for it—was infinitely more horrible.

Where were the snake, the lion, the bear, the burning brand that Janet had to endure before she won back her young Tam Lin? Those, I could have dealt with.

Telling myself, yet again,
this is really Amy,
I shut my eyes and held on tight, trying not to feel her nibbling at my earlobes and brushing kisses down my neck.

How long that went on, I don't know, but eventually she changed again. Suddenly she was Carl Voorhees—nasty little freckled bully, my nemesis from grade school—and then someone, or something, I don't know, reeking of sewers, hideous, slimy—then, finally, it was again Amy.

Only, this time, she was dead.

I stared down in horror at the slumped body. She wore nothing but a dirty T-shirt and underpants. Her skin was faintly blue. There was no doubting this time: she wasn't just unconscious, and she hadn't recently passed on. This thing that I held had been dead for days, if not weeks. The corpse was stiff and cold and the smell—although I had never encountered it before, the smell of death was unmistakable.

Only the fact that I'm a stubborn bastard made me keep hanging on.

It had to be another illusion. Had to be.

I gritted my teeth, shut my eyes, and held on tightly and, although I'm not a believer, I prayed to anyone listening, anyone with the power to save her.

I opened my eyes and saw that the night had passed. Darkness had dimmed to grey, and over on the horizon the sky was getting light. And in my arms was a dead body.

I began to cry. I couldn't help myself. It was rage more than sorrow. After all that, after winning through every trial, this was what I got? It was so unfair!

I went on clutching the heavy, dead body as I wept, still unwilling to admit defeat. Maybe it wasn't quite morning yet. I hadn't heard a cock crow. The sun wasn't actually up, was it? What was the official moment when All Hallows Eve ended and all the spirits had to flee back to the Otherworld, leaving this one to the living?

Staring down at Amy's body, I wondered what had happened to her clothes. Why was she only in her underwear? Had someone killed her? Had she died of exposure?

Then I remembered the last thing I had to do.

It was a nightmare, trying not to let her go while I took my coat off, then grappling with the corpse, forcing her stiff, dead arms into the sleeves of my well-padded storm jacket, but, sobbing and cursing like a lunatic, I did it.

And then she was in the jacket, in my arms, and it was now light enough for me to see the change that rippled across her face, like a breeze over the surface of a pond. Her death had been another illusion, the final trick. Now, once more, she was alive, warm and flexible within my arms. She opened her eyes and gazed at me.

“Thank God,” she murmured. Then, pulling gently away from me, she began to shiver convulsively. “Christ, I'm freezing! Will you take me home?”

19. Elidurus

In the twelfth century, there lived an elderly Welsh priest, Elidurus, who often spoke of events that had befallen him in his youth. At the age of twelve, although he loved his books, he often found the discipline of his instructors too harsh, and one day, to avoid a beating, ran away and hid in a hollow riverbank.

After he had been hidden there for two days without eating, he was visited by two small men who offered to lead him to “a country full of delights and sports.” He agreed, and followed them along a path leading down below the earth. There he saw a beautiful country, although it was only dimly lit, and the nights were especially dark, without moon or stars. He met the king of that country, and became the friend and playmate of his son. All the men and women there were small of stature, but well proportioned, not dwarfish, and all had beautiful golden hair, which the men wore hanging to their shoulders.

After a little while, Elidurus returned home, but he went back to visit the wonderful country under the earth several times. He told no one but his mother about where he went, for his new friends were very mistrustful of the people who lived above the ground, considering them dishonest and unreliable. The boy's mother was inclined to think her son was lying when he talked about the many wonderful things he had seen. She wanted proof, so he promised to bring her a present made of gold, and the next time he played with the king's son, Elidurus stole a golden ball and quickly ran off with it.

However, Elidurus was seen by the same two men who had first led him to the underground kingdom, and they followed him, catching up to him just in front of his parents' house.

He was seized by the shoulders from behind, forced to stop. Turning, he saw his former guides, their faces no longer friendly, but now stony with disapproval.

“I didn't mean to take it,” he stammered. “I'll bring it back. I only wanted it to show my mother.” He held the ball out apologetically.

There was to be no forgiveness. One of the men snatched the ball away from him, and both spat words at him he didn't understand but could guess were curses.

Overcome with shame, the boy ran after the two small men, but they seemed to have vanished. When he reached the usual spot on the riverbank he searched in vain for any sign of an entrance to the underground road he had used before. He continued to search for almost a year, but was never able to find it again.

Even as an old man Elidurus still had vivid memories of the time he had spent in that underground kingdom. He remembered some words and phrases of the language they had spoken there, which he had picked up so readily as a child; he remembered the games he had played there, the taste of the saffron-flavored, milky puddings, the beauty of the land, and the kindness of the people he had so thoughtlessly betrayed. He could never speak about his time there without weeping, and never, until his dying day, ceased to mourn his loss.