Page 32 (1/2)

And she tells how her ot lost in the through the murky s had become, how much time had passed And that when she did beco panicked back outside where she had told Malcolm to wait, she saw there a whole cluster oftoward hiotten to hie They could have come from anywhere She had not heard his screams because she had become deaf to all but the throb of her own pixied brain

And that’s when she laid hell upon the theht or reason or heedfulness And she tells that while she was doing it her blood went crazy--the blood in all her veins boiled and beat like a drum and made her see black hell everywhere she looked, andherself iurkha blade down and relishing the thunk of it getting buried in a skull, the wicked enjoy was righteous, that her touch was a sword of light--and the passion, the deep down lust that drove her to strike out to the right and left, as though her body were hungry for death--as though she had become one of them and would consu if she knehere to find them Such is the demon in her

And when it was finished, her clothes soaked through in blood and bile and crusted with graying tissue, she wiped froore she had ripped from the bodies of the dead--the issue of her own feral cannibalism--and only then was she able to open her eyes full to the stinging, punishing orange light of the failing day

It was too late The boy Malcolood as if her own vicious claws had done the ripping

She tells the old wo to close with gory fingers the zipper sea with the boy in her arms that the sky rained down its tears and baptized hirave with her hands in the iant and laid hi off his head with the gurkha knife so that he wouldn’t get lost and wander back to the surface of the earth like sobecause she knew by then there was evil in her and that no action however grotesque or unholy could be ill-suited for the thing she had beco herself fro herself away in abandoned houses and, when she was discovered by the generous of spirit who ca even farther into the evacuated wildernesses of the country Weeks at a ti her voice with raspy song so as not to go et, when her own sih the clear spectacle of life One had to be careful of thoseand intended not for her but instead for the delectation of other children of God Or, if they were meant for her, they could break her heart as easily as mend it, because all that beauty in the suffered world was the saet her charge and held up for her loathing gaze her own selfish soul

She tells of the island, the lighthouse, the moon, and the Miracle of the Fish

She tells the old woers work the clattering needles against each other, but Te shade--because the only coot of desolation, whose words are really just meant for the deafness of the wide, wide sky

PART III

13

The road south fro theh-hewn terrain In the distance ahead, the horizon is darkened to the color of coal by a long, thick line of clouds

Looks like rain, Maury To tell you the truth I wouldn’t mind a bit of coolin down

The , Maury? Ready to deliver yourself froot tied to?

His eyes are focused on the asphalt ribboning out before them

Yeah, well, you ain’t ever been et to the massive urban sprawl she assumes must be Houston, the clouds have crowded out the sky and a dense drenching rain drums resonantly on the roof of the car She drives slowly, because the roads are unreliable and any puddle could conceal a fatal pothole

The freeway she’s on, the one nuh the uardrails of the roadway, she can see the slugs out there wandering in the rain--soet rain in their eyes Others sit in the overflowing gutters watching the small rivers of water course over them Sometimes the dead can seem clownish or childlike She wonders how people could have let such a race of silly creatures push them into the corners and the closets of the world