Chapter 6
"These mountains...they are alive?"
"How's that?"
"Is there turbulence beneath them - lakes of fire and liquid glass, hands that grasp at the heavens and fall back in failure. Power unfettered but for the weight of this stagnant crust."
"Y'mean volcanoes? Hell, no. Closest thing we've got to a volcano is Lolly Kimble winning Blackout at the Flamingo Bingo. That woman yells louder than a cow givin' birth to a porcupine."
"I have done battle in worlds where volcanoes exploded under our feet, and continents screamed. The air itself burned. Our glory was all-consuming."
"I'll bet ol' Lolly could've given those continents a run for their money."
"It was nothing you could imagine."
"I guess not...sounds like you miss it, though."
"I...miss it. Yes."
Mr. Burkle pulled a rectangular bale of hay from a stack in the barn and carried it to the building's lean-to, where he broke it into blocks in a trough.
"Fred drew her mama 'n me a little picture of what you used to look like. We were kinda curious - what were all those holes running down your chest for?"
"Egg cases."
"...Yeah, Trish told me I probably shouldn't ask."
"I have decided that I do not dislike this place. At times I find it pleasing. It has a desolate beauty."
"Thanks. We've always thought it was pretty nice, too."
"Why do you keep beasts of burden here? They seem to serve no purpose."
"Oh, Fred and her friends used to ride 'em for fun; now they're just living in retirement. Wouldn't be the same without a couple of old horses on the place."
"They are pets. I understand now. I too had pets. I would have Spike for a pet, but he has refused."
"I'll bet he has."
"Tonight is the primary feast night of your midwinter holy time. He said that this is when you will begin to open the offerings under the sacrificial tree."
"Yep, a few tonight, but most of them in the morning. We got a couple for you, too, if you want to drop by for a little while tomorrow."
"Your household pays me tributes! This pleases me greatly."
"We don't pay tributes to anyone but the Presbyterian Church and the IRS. These are presents. C'mon, it's getting close to supper time. I don't know how you got up there, but it's a good two-story fall off of that barn, and the roof's pretty slippery."
It's almost like I never went away; like nothing bad ever happened. Fred reveled in this night. The house was filled with people, neighbors and old acquaintances who drifted in and out on gusts of laughter. Candles burned in fat little jars. Plates of food, tamales and gingerbread and Durkee green bean casserole, performed daring feats of balance on outstretched, careless knees. Fred threaded her way to a folding table in the corner, where a noisy card game was in progress involving eighty-year-old Mr. Eberson, Spike, some guy in a Gimme cap whose name she couldn't remember, and Terry Watson. (She did remember Terry, a flamboyant friend from high school now acknowledged by her parents' community as a notorious but tolerated homa-SEXshul.) She leaned over behind Spike and wrapped her arms around him, bussing him loudly on the cheek.
"Darling, where's your headdress?" Terry smiled. He was wearing one of those ridiculous headbands with a sprig of mistletoe suspended out in front of his forehead by a pipecleaner, and on anyone else it would have looked childish and idiotic. Terry wore it with aplomb.
"They say that mistletoe was sacred to the ancient Celtic tribes," Mr. Eberson noted. "It also played a part in the demise of the Norse deity Baldar, the beloved god of light. Got any threes, London?"
"Nope, you've already pinched 'em all. Go fish."
Fred grinned at a sudden inner voice and whispered into Spike's ear, "Illyria says that Baldar was a big wuss." She giggled as he barked out a laugh and almost knocked his drink over. The guy whose name she couldn't remember pushed his cap a little farther back on his head and looked confused.
"Go Fish? Hell, I thought we'uz playin' Hearts."
"That was last round, Mate. See, got it all right here on the little score pad. The one labeled 'Bridge,' except that I don't think even Watson's that gay."
Fred pulled up a chair and sat down cross-legged in it and watched the game go on. Her eyes drifted to the window, past the porchlight and into an inky black point beyond it. It's not The Void Black, though. Not Pylea Black, or Jasmine Black, or the black of Wolfram & Hart. This is Home Black, and it's safe.
The nightmare announced itself in its usual fashion, with little spasms and gaspings and fingers clutching at the air. They weren't very frequent now for either her or Spike, but they hadn't relinquished their hold entirely. For Fred they took the form of dark rooms for which she could find no doorway, and on rare occasions sunlit fields in which she tried repeatedly to hide from the green-skinned people she knew were coming for her.
Spike's, she'd learned, were far worse. A mocking entity who took the shape of the dead. A thousand gibbering voices, some hurling righteous anger, others shrieking nonsense. Memories of childhood turned garbled and confusing. Sex and violence and rivers of gore. One that he'd begun to call "The Glass Ceiling"; in it he swam up from the bottom of a lake, but always hit a layer of ice at the surface. The ice never broke, no matter how hard he pushed at it, and the people he could see through it, the people walking across its top (he'd let a name slip once - Willow - and Fred suspected that Angel and Buffy walked there as well), never responded to him.
There were bad dreams rooted in loneliness and rejection, dreams of abandonment and loss of hope, and these she had more trouble getting out of him than the guilt-induced or frightening dreams. Now, hours after the Christmas Eve guests had departed and the world had gone to bed, she awoke to find him in the grip of one. He was weeping and grinding his teeth, and his fingernails had torn completely through the bedcovers.
"Spike." She kept her voice low; gave his shoulder a little shake. "Wake up."
He sat up suddenly with a hoarse cry, and would have knocked her sideways if she hadn't anticipated it and leaned out of the way. She reached for the nightstand lamp and turned it on as quickly as she could.
His body was sweating and trembling like a racehorse, the muscles drawn tight as bowstrings. Fred stroked her hand down his back in a soothing motion. "Shhhh. Shhhhh." For a moment she thought he was going to be sick, and then he squeezed his eyes shut and groped blindly for her.
"What was it about?" He was hugging her so hard that she had to wiggle her face up out of his chest to speak.
"The people. Ones I killed. Ones I tortured," he muttered into her hair.
"They know you're sorry. They know you'd make it right if you could." She believed that. She hoped that if she said it to him often enough, he'd believe it someday, too. They were quiet for several minutes, rocking each other, drawing comfort from the familiar ritual. Finally he straightened a little and drew a shaky breath. From next door came the sound of a car starting up, and a rooster in someone's backyard henhouse squawking in protest. "Bad dream's all over now," Fred murmured.
Spike gave a small, hollow smile. "'It faded on the crowing of the cock.'" At her questioning look he added, "Hamlet. Bit with Horatio and the king's ghost. 'Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes / Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated, / The bird of dawning singeth all night long: / And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad: / The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, / No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, / So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.'"
Fred's eyes locked on his face, transfixed. Then without a word she pulled his mouth down to hers and cemented it there.
Do you have any idea how much you move me, my darling?
In the afternoon of December 27th, Oz loaded Jordy into his car and began the first leg of the journey home. Their late start was unavoidable; time-consuming necessities had had to be done: a trip to the hospital to clean Jordan up and examine him for injuries and signs of molestation (thankfully, there proved to be none of either), then to the sheriff's office for the regulation forms and statements. ("We've charged the five with kidnapping. I don't see any need to press charges on the young woman; according to the boy, she wasn't in on any of it, and she appears to have been sort of a hostage there herself.") Free now finally, they drove north to U.S. Highway 82, watching the sun and the clock on the dashboard.
"Will Mom be out of the hospital when we get back?" Jordy had asked the question over and over since their phone call to his father. Oz answered it again.
"Maybe. She's awake, but her head's still pretty sore." The abbreviated version of events he'd given his little cousin had not included that Uncle Ken had developed one hell of an infection from his cuts and was only just now getting out of the hospital himself, or that Jordy had clawed him to ribbons, or that Jordy had knocked Aunt Maureen down the stairs. ("She tripped and bumped her head while she was trying to scoot you back into the basement. Guess she should've put on a crash helmet first, huh?")
"Do you see a place to stay yet?" The kid was tense and worried, but he also looked ready to fall asleep standing up. Oz hoped that that would be the case all night.
"Yeah, I think down this way ought to work." They pulled off onto a deserted side road and found an abandoned house to park the car behind. Oz brought the blankets out and cracked the doors, just as he had the two previous evenings. He tucked the blankets around the child and turned off the dome light. "It won't feel cold for very long," he promised him. They settled back in their seats and watched through the windshield as the sun went down and turned into an orange smear on the western edge of the horizon.
"Did I miss Christmas?"
"No. It's still Christmastime."
The smear was gone. Oz began to hear a singing, high and primordial, not in his ears but in his brain. Drawing sensations ran up and down his body like electric currents. The air around him no longer felt comfortable, but thick and close, and he wanted to break out of the den and run...to run...feel the ground the ground the sniff the air can smell again everything clear want to EAT