Dark Rivers of the Heart

technique to me. But before and after… he came down here, that same man, and he tortured women, girls, hour after hour, for days in some cases. He moved with ease between this world and the one above."
        "I'm not going to keep a gun ready, point a gun at you, like I'm afraid you're some kind of monster, when I know you're not. Please, Spencer.
        Please don't ask me to do that. Let's just finish this."
        In the deep quiet at the end of the catacombs, he took a moment to prepare himself Nothing moved anywhere in that long room. No rats, misshapen or otherwise, dwelt there any more. The Dresmunds had been instructed to eradicate them with poison.
        Spencer opened the black door.
        He switched on the light.
        He hesitated on the threshold, then went inside.
        Miserable though the dog was, he padded into that room as well.
        Maybe he was afraid to be alone in the catacombs. Or maybe this time his misery was entirely a reaction to his master's state of mind, in which case he knew that his company was needed. He stayed close to Spencer.
        Ellie entered last, and the weighted door closed behind her.
        The abattoir was nearly as disorienting now as it had been on the night of scalpels and knives. The stainless steel table was gone."
        The chain so one moment the room appeared to be hardly larger than a casket, but in the next moment it seemed infinitely larger than it actually was. The only light was still the tightly focused bulb in the black ceiling fixture.
        The Dresmunds had been instructed to keep all lights functional.
        They had not been told to clean the abattoir, yet only the thinnest film of dust veiled the walls, no doubt because the room was not ventilated and was always shut up tight.
        It was a time capsule, sealed for sixteen years, containing not the memorabilia of bygone days but lost memories.
        The place affected Spencer even more powerfully than he had expected.
        He could see the glimmer of the scalpel as if it hung in the air even now. … barefoot, carrying the revolver in my left hand, I hurry down from the studio where I shot my father, through the back of the cupboard into a world not anything like the one behind the wardrobe in those books by C. S. Lewis, through the catacombs, not daring to look left or right, because those dead women seem to be straining to break out of their plaster I have the crazy fear that they might pull loose as if the plaster is still wet, come for me, take me into one of the walls with them. I'm my father's son and I deserve to choke on cold wet plaster, have it squeezed into my nostrils and poured down my throat, until I'm as one with the figures in the tableaux, unbreathing, a harbor for the rats. My heart's knocking so hard that each beat makes my vision darken slightly, briefly, as ifthe surges in blood pressure will burst vessels in my eyes. I feel each beat in my right hand too. The pain in my knuckles throbs, lub-dub, three small hearts in every finger.
        But I love the pain. I want more pain. Back in the vestibule and descending the stairs into the room of blue light, I repeatedly rapped the swollen knuckles of that hand with the revolver that I held in the other Now I rap them hard again in the catacombs, to drive out all feeling but pain. Because… because equal to the pain, dear Jesus God Almighty, I still have it on my hand, like a stain on my hand. the smoothness of the woman's skin. The full eyes and resiliency of her breasts, turgid nipples rubbing my palm. The flatness of belly, the tautness ofmuscles as she strains against the manacles. The lubricious heat into which be ford my fingers against all my resistance, against her terrible had-dazed protest. Her eyes were locked with mine.
        Pleading with her eyes. The promise of her eyes.
        But the traitor hand has its own sense memory, unshakable, and it makes me sick. All the feelings in my hand make me sick, and some of the feelings in my hart. I have such disgust, loathing, such fear of yseo.
        But other feelings too unclean emotions in ha oizy with the excitement of the hateful hand. And at the door to the black room I stop, lean against the wall and vomit.
        Sweating. Shuddering with chills. when I turn away from the mess with only my stomach purged, I force myself to grab the lever-action handle with my injured hand, making pain shoot up my forearm as I