The Darkest Evening of the Year

“A little more than four months.”

“Where did you get her?”

“Carl didn’t say. He just brought her home.”

They were southbound on the Coast Highway, scrub and shore grass to their right. Beyond the grass lay the beach, the sea.

“How old is she?”

“Carl said maybe two years.”

“So she came with the name.”

“No. He didn’t know her name.”

The water was black, the sky black, and the painter moon, though in decline, brushed the crests of the waves.

“Then who named her?”

Janet’s answer surprised Amy: “Reesa. Theresa.”

The girl had not spoken this night, had only sung in that high pure voice, in what might have been Celtic, and she had seemed to be detached in the manner of a gentle autistic.

“Why Nickie?”

“Reesa said it was always her name.”

“Always.”

“Yes.”

“For some reason… I didn’t think Theresa said much.”

“She doesn’t. Sometimes not for weeks, then only a few words.”

In the mirror, the steady gaze of the dog. In the sea, the sinking moon. In the sky, a vast intricate wheelwork of stars.

And in Amy’s heart rose a sense of wonder that she was reluctant to indulge, for it could not be true, in any meaningful sense, that her Nickie had returned to her.

Chapter 5

Moongirl will make love only in total darkness. She believes that her life has been forever diminished by passion in the light, when she was younger.

Consequently, the faintest glow around a lowered window shade will burn away all of her desire.

A single thread of sunshine in the folds of drawn draperies will in an instant unravel her lust.

Light intruding from another room—under a door, around a crack in a jamb, through a keyhole—will pierce her as if it is a needle and cause her to flinch from her lover’s touch.

When her blood is hot, even the light-emitting numerals of a bedside clock will chill her.

The luminous face of a wristwatch, the tiny bulb on a smoke detector, the radiant eyes of a cat can wring a cry of frustration from her and squeeze her libido dry.

Harrow thinks of her as Moongirl because he can imagine her loose in the night, silhouetted naked on a ridge line, howling at the moon. He doesn’t know what label a psychologist might apply to her particular kind of madness, but he has no doubt that she is mad.

Never has he called her Moongirl to her face. Instinct tells him that to do so would be dangerous, perhaps even fatal.

In daylight or dark, she can pass for sane. She can even feign wholesomeness quite convincingly. Her beauty beguiles.

Especially in purple, but also in pink and white, bouquets of hydrangea charm the eye, but the plant is mortally poisonous; so, too, the lily of the valley, the blossoms of bloodroot; the petals of yellow jasmine, brewed in tea or mixed in salad, can kill in as little as ten minutes.

Moongirl loves the black rose more than any other flower, though it is not poisonous.

Harrow has seen her hold such a rose so tightly by its thorny stem that her hand drips blood.

Her pain threshold, like his, is high. She does not enjoy the prick of the rose; she simply does not feel it.

She has total discipline of her body and her intellect. She has no discipline of her emotions. She is, therefore, out of balance, and balance is a requirement of sanity.

This night, in a windowless room where no starshine can reach, where the luminous clock is closed in a nightstand drawer, they do not make love, for love has nothing to do with their increasingly ferocious coupling.

No woman has excited Harrow as this one does. She has about her the ultimate hunger of the black widow, the all-consuming passion of a mantis that, during coitus, kills and eats its mate.

He half expects that one night Moongirl will conceal a knife between mattress and box springs, or elsewhere near the bed. In the blinding dark, at the penultimate moment, he will hear her whisper Darling and feel a sudden stiletto navigate his ribs and pop his swelling heart.

As always, the anticipation of sex proves to be more thrilling than the experience. At the end, he feels a curious hollowness, a certainty that the essence of the act has again eluded him.

Spent, they lie in the hush of the blackness, as silent as if they have stepped out of life into the outer dark.

Moongirl is not much for words, and she always speaks directly when she has something to say.

In her company, Harrow follows her example. Fewer words mean less risk of a mere observation being misconstrued as an insult or a judgment.

She is sensitive about being judged. Advice, if she dislikes it, might be received as a rebuke. A well-meant admonition might be interpreted as stinging criticism.

Here in the venereal aftermath, Harrow has no fear of any blade she might have buried in the bedding. If ever she tries to kill him, the attempt will be made between the motion and the act, at the ascending moment of her fulfillment.

Now, after sex, he does not seek sleep. Most of the time, Moongirl sleeps by day and thrives in the night; and Harrow has reset himself to live by her clock.

For one so ripe, she lies stick-stiff in the darkness, like a hungry presence poised on a branch, disguised as bark, waiting for an unwary passerby.

In time she says, “Let’s burn.”

“Burn what?”

“Whatever needs burning.”

“All right.”

“Not her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking.”

“She’s for later.”

“All right,” he says.

“I mean a place.”

“Where?”

“We’ll know it.”

“How?”

“When we see it.”

She sits up, and her fingers go to the lamp switch with the unerring elegance of a blind woman following a line of Braille to the end punctuation.

When he sees her in the soft light, he wants her again, but she is never his for the taking. His satisfaction always depends on her need, and at the moment the only thing she needs is to burn.

Throughout his life, Harrow has been a loner and a user, even when others have counted him as friend or family. Outsider to the world, he has acted strictly in his self-interest—until Moongirl.

What he has with her is neither friendship nor family, but something more primal. If just two individuals can constitute a pack, then he and Moongirl are wolves, though more terrible than wolves, because wolves kill only to eat.

He pulls on his clothes without taking his eyes from her, for she makes getting dressed an act no less erotic than a striptease. Even coarse fabrics seem to slide like silk along her limbs, and the fastening of every button is a promise of a future unveiling.

Their coats hang on wall pegs: ski jacket for him, black leather lined with fleece for her.

Outside, her blond hair looks platinum under the moon, and her eyes—bottle-green in the lamplight—seem to be a luminous gray in the colorless night.

“You drive,” she says, leading him toward the detached garage.

“All right.”

As they pass through the man door, he switches on the light.

She says, “We’ll need gasoline.”

From under the workbench, Harrow retrieves a red two-gallon utility can in which he keeps gasoline for the lawn mower. Judging by the heft of the can and the hollow sloshing of the contents, it holds less than half a gallon.

The fuel tanks of both the Lexus SUV and the two-seater Mercedes sports car have recently been filled. Harrow inserts a siphon hose into the Lexus.

Moongirl stands over him, watching as he sucks on the rubber tube. She keeps her hands in the pockets of her jacket.

Harrow wonders: If he misjudges the amount of priming needed, if he draws gasoline into his mouth, will she produce a butane lighter and ignite the flammable mist that wheezes from him, setting fire to his lips and tongue?

He tastes the first acrid fumes and does not misjudge, but introduces the hose into the open can on the floor just as the gasoline gushes.

When he looks up at her, she meets his eyes. She says nothing, and neither does he.

He is safe from her and she from him as long as they need each other for the hunt. She has her quarry, the object of her hatred, and Harrow has his, not merely whatever they might burn tonight, but other and specific targets. Together they can more easily achieve their goals, with more pleasure than they would have if they acted separately and alone.

He places the full utility can in the sports car, in the luggage space behind the two bucket seats.

The single-lane blacktop road, with here and there a lay-by, rises and falls and curves for a mile before it brings them to the gate, which swings open when Moongirl presses the button on the same remote with which moments ago she raised the garage door.

In another half-mile, they come to the two-lane county road.

“Left,” she says, and he turns left, which is north.

The night is half over but full of promise.

To the east, hills rise. To the west, they descend.

In lunar light, the wild dry grass is as platinum as Moongirl’s hair, as if the hills are pillows on which uncountable thousands of women rest their blond heads.

They are in sparsely populated territory. At the moment, not a single building stands in view.

“How much nicer the world would be,” she says, “if everyone in it were dead.”

Chapter 6

Amy Redwing owned a modest bungalow, but Lottie Augustine’s two-story house, next door, had spare rooms for Janet and her kids. The windows glowed with warm light when Amy parked in the driveway.

The former nurse came out to greet them and to help carry their hastily packed suitcases into the house. Slender, wearing jeans and a man’s blue-and-yellow checkered shirt with the tail untucked, gray hair in a ponytail, eyes limpid blue in a sweet face wizened by a love of the sun, Lottie seemed to be both a teenager and a retiree. In her youth she had probably been an old soul, just as in her later years she remained a young spirit.

Leaving the dog in the SUV, Amy carried Theresa. The child woke as they ascended the back-porch steps.

Even awake, her purple eyes seemed full of dreams.

Touching the locket Amy wore at her throat, Theresa whispered, “The wind.”

Carrying two suitcases, followed by Janet with one bag and with Jimmy in tow, Lottie led them into the house.

Just beyond the threshold of the kitchen door, still in Amy’s arms and fingering the locket, Theresa whispered, “The chimes.”

Cast back in time, Amy halted. For a moment, the kitchen faded as if it were only a pale vision of a moment in her future.

The child’s trance-casting eyes seemed to widen as if they were portals through which one might fall into another world.

“What did you say?” she asked Theresa, though she had heard the words clearly enough.

The wind. The chimes.

The girl did not blink, did not blink, then blinked—and plugged her mouth with her right thumb.

Color returned to the faded kitchen, and Amy put Theresa down in a dinette chair.

On the table stood a plate of homemade cookies. Oatmeal raisin. Chocolate chip. Peanut butter.

A pan of milk waited on the cooktop, and Lottie Augustine set to making hot chocolate.

The clink of mugs against a countertop, the crisp crackle of a foil packet of cocoa powder, the burble of simmering milk stirred by a ladle, the soft knocking of the wood ladle against the pan…

The sounds seemed to come to Amy from a distance, to arise in a room far removed from this one, and when she heard her name, she realized that Lottie had spoken it more than once.

“Oh. Sorry. What did you say?”

“Why don’t you and Janet take their bags upstairs while I tend to the children. You know the way.”

“All right. Sure.”

Upstairs, two secondary bedrooms were connected by a bath. One had twin beds suitable for the kids.

“If you leave both doors open to the shared bath,” Amy said, “you’ll be able to hear them if they call out.”

In the room that had one bed, Janet sat on the arm of a plump upholstered chair. She looked exhausted and bewildered, as if she had walked a hundred miles while under a spell and did not know where she was or why she had come here.

“What now?”

“The police will take at least a day to decide on charges. Then Carl will need to make bail.”

“He’ll come looking for you to find me.”

“By then, you won’t be next door anymore.”

“Where?”

“Over a hundred sixty people volunteer for Golden Heart. Some of them foster incoming dogs until we can find each one’s forever home.”

“Forever home?”

“Before we make a permanent placement of a rescued dog, we have a vet make sure it’s healthy, up-to-date on all its shots.”

“One day when he was gone, I took Nickie for her shots. He was furious about the cost.”

“The foster parents evaluate the dog and make a report on the extent of its training—is it housebroken, leash friendly.…”

“Nickie’s housebroken. She’s the sweetest girl.”

“If the dog has no serious behavioral problems, we find what we hope will be its forever home. Some of our fostering volunteers have room for more than visiting dogs. One of them will take in you and the kids for a few weeks, till you get on your feet.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Most golden-rescue people are a class apart. You’ll see.”

In Janet’s lap, her hands worried at each other. “What a mess.”

“It would have been worse to stay with him.”

“Just me, I might’ve stayed. But not with the kids. Not anymore. I’m… ashamed, how I let him treat them.”

“You’d need to be ashamed if you stayed. But not now. Not unless you let him sweet-talk you back.”

“Won’t happen.”

“Glad to hear it. There’s always a way forward. But there’s no way back.”

Janet nodded. Perhaps she understood. Most likely not.

To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.

Amy said, “It might be too late to help the swelling, but you ought to try putting some ice on that split lip.”

Rising from the arm of the chair, moving toward the bedroom door, Janet said, “All right. But I heal fast. I’ve had to.”

Putting one hand on the woman’s shoulder, staying her for a moment, Amy said, “Your daughter, is she autistic?”

“One doctor said so. Others don’t agree.”

“What do the others say?”

“Different things. Various developmental disabilities with long names and no hope.”

“Has she had any kind of treatment?”

“None that’s brought her out of herself. But Reesa—she’s some kind of prodigy, too. She hears a song once, she can sing it or play it note-perfect on a child’s flute I bought her.”

“Earlier, was she singing in Celtic?”

“Back at the house. Yes.”

“She knows the language?”

“No. But Maev Gallagher, our neighbor, loves Celtic music, plays it all the time. She sometimes baby-sits Reesa.”

“So once she’s heard a song, she can also sing it word-perfect in a language she doesn’t know.”

“It’s a little eerie sometimes,” Janet said. “That high sweet voice in a foreign tongue.”

Amy removed her hand from Janet’s shoulder. “Has she ever…”

“Ever what?”

“Has she ever done anything else that strikes you as eerie?” Janet frowned. “Like what?”

To explain, Amy would have to open door after door into herself, into places in the heart that she did not want to visit. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I meant by that.”

“In spite of her problems, Reesa’s a good girl.”

“I’m sure she is. And she’s lovely, too. Such beautiful eyes.”

Chapter 7

Harrow drives, and the silver Mercedes conforms to curves with the sinuous grace of free-flowing mercury, and Moongirl simmers in the passenger seat. No matter how good the sex has been for her, Moongirl always rises in anger from the bed. Harrow is never the cause of her rage. She is furious because she can only have carnal satisfaction in a lightless room.

She has put this condition of darkness upon herself, but she does not blame herself for it. She imagines herself to be a victim and instead blames another, and not just another but also the world.

Drained of desire by the act, she remains empty only until the last shudder of pleasure has passed through her, whereupon she fills at once with bitterness and resentment.

Because she has the capacity for ruthless discipline of the body and the intellect, her undisciplined emotion can be concealed. Her face remains placid, her voice soft. Always she walks without a single

footfall thae is lithe, graceful, with no telltale twitch of tension in her stride or gestures.

Occasionally Harrow swears that he can smell her fury: the faintest scent of iron, like that rising from ferrous rock scorched by relentless desert sun.

Only light can vaporize this particular anger.

If they lie together in the windowless room in the daytime, she wants afterward to be in the light. Sometimes she goes outside half clothed or even naked.

On those days, she stands with her face turned to the sky, her mouth open, as if inviting the light to fill her.

Although a natural blonde, she takes the sun well. Her skin is bronze even into the creases of her knuckles, and the fine hairs on her arms are bleached white.

By contrast to her skin, the whites of her eyes are as brilliant as pure arctic snow, and the bottle-green irises dazzle.

Most often she and Harrow make loveless love at night. Afterward, neither the stars nor the moon is bright enough to steam away her distilled fury, and though she sometimes refers to herself as a Valkyrie, she does not have wings to fly into the higher light.

Usually a bonfire on the beach will reduce her anger to embers, but not always. Occasionally she needs to burn more than pine logs and dried seaweed and driftwood.

As though Moongirl can will the world to meet her needs, someone ideal for burning may come to her at the opportune moment. This has happened more than once.

On a night when a bonfire is not enough and when fate does not send her an offering, she must go out into the world and find the fire she needs.

Harrow has driven her as far as 120 miles before she has located what requires burning. Sometimes she does not find it before dawn, and then the sun is sufficient to boil off her rage.

This night, he drives thirty-six miles on winding roads through rural territory before she says, “There. Let’s do it.”

An old one-story clapboard house, the only residence in sight, sits behind a well-tended lawn. No lamps brighten any window.

The headlights reveal two birdbaths in the yard, three garden gnomes, and a miniature windmill. On the front porch are a pair of bentwood rocking chairs.

Harrow proceeds almost a quarter of a mile past the place until, prior to a bridge, he comes to a narrow dirt lane that slants off the blacktop. He follows this dusty track down to the base of the bridge and parks near the river, where sluggish black water purls in the moonlight.

Perhaps this short path serves fishermen who cast for bass from the bank. If so, none is currently present. This is an hour made more for arsonists than for anglers.

From the two-lane county road above, the Mercedes cannot be seen here at the river. Although few motorists, if any, are likely to be abroad at this hour, precautions must be taken.

Harrow retrieves the two-gallon utility can from the luggage space behind the seats.

He does not ask her if she has remembered to bring matches. She always carries them.

Cicadas serenade one another, and toads croak with satisfaction each time they devour a cicada.

Harrow considers going overland to the house, across meadows and through a copse of oaks. But they will gain no advantage by taking the arduous route.

The target house is only a quarter-mile away. Along the county road are tall grasses, gnarls of brush, and a few trees, always one kind of cover or another to which they can retreat the moment they glimpse distant headlights or hear the faraway growl of an engine.

They ascend from the riverbank to the paved road.

The gasoline chuckles in the can, and his nylon jacket produces soft whistling noises when one part of it rubs against another.

Moongirl makes no sound whatsoever. She walks without a single footfall that he can hear.

Then she says, “Do you wonder why?”

“Why what?”

“The burning.”

“No.”

“You never wonder,” she presses.

“No. It’s what you want.”

“That’s good enough for you.”

“Yes.”

The early-autumn stars are as icy as those of winter, and it seems to him that now, as in all seasons, the sky is not deep but dead, flat, and frozen.

She says, “You know what’s the worst thing?”

“Tell me.”

“Boredom.”

“Yes.”

“It turns you outward.”

“Yes.”

“But toward what?”

“Tell me,” he says.

“Nothing’s out there.”

“Nothing you want.”

“Just nothing,” she corrects.

Her madness fascinates Harrow, and he is never bored in her company. Originally, he had thought they would be done with each other in a month or two; but they have been seven months together.

“It’s terrifying,” she says.

“What?”

“Boredom.”

“Yes,” he says sincerely.

“Terrifying.”

“Gotta stay busy.”

He shifts the heavy gasoline can from his right hand to his left.

“Pisses me off,” she says.

“What does?”

“Being terrified.”

“Stay busy,” he repeats.

“All I’ve got is me.”

“And me,” he reminds her.

She does not confirm that he is essential to her defenses against boredom.

They have covered half the distance to the clapboard house.

A winking light moves across the frozen stars, but it is nothing more than an airliner, too high to be heard, bound for an exotic port that at least some perceptive passengers will discover is identical to the place from which they departed.

Chapter 8

Having moved the Expedition from Lottie’s driveway to her own carport next door, Amy opened the tailgate, and Nickie leaped out into the night.

Amy remembered coming out of the Brockman house and finding the tailgate open, Jimmy trying to run away and the diligent dog herding him toward home.

He must have freed Nickie with the expectation that they would escape together. Having endured four months with Carl Brockman as its master, any other dog might have led the boy in flight.

As Nickie landed on the driveway, Amy snatched up the red leash, but the dog had no intention of running off. She led Amy around the vehicle, into the backyard. Without any of the usual canine ritual, Nickie squatted to pee.

Because Amy had two golden retrievers of her own—Fred and Ethel—and because often she kept rescue dogs for at least a night or two before transporting them to foster homes, she assumed that Nickie would want to spend some time sniffing around the yard—reading the local newspaper, so to speak.

Instead, upon completion of her business, the dog went directly to the back porch, up the steps, and to the door.

Amy unlocked the door, unclipped the leash from the collar, stepped into the house, and switched on the lights.

Neither Fred nor Ethel was in the kitchen. They must have been asleep in the bedroom.

From the farther end of the bungalow arose the thump of paws rushing across carpet and then hardwood, swiftly approaching.