Forever Odd

came into sharper focus, and I felt that I might momentarily see even deeper than the molecular structure of it all.
        Yet simultaneous with this new clarity, in everything within my view, I detected a transcendental mystery that I had never before perceived, a transforming revelation waiting to be accepted. A chill of a character not easily conveyed worked through me, an awe that felt more like reverence than like dread, although dread was a part of it.
        You might think that I’m struggling to describe the heightened perception that frequently accompanies mortal jeopardy. I’ve been in mortal jeopardy often enough to know what that feels like, too, but this metaphysical incident was not the same.
        Like all mystical experiences, I suppose, when the ineffable seems about to be made clear, the moment passes, no less ephemeral than a dream. But after passing, this one left me electrified, as if I had been zapped by a different kind of Taser, one designed to energize the mind and force it to confront a difficult truth.
        The nasty truth before me was that Datura, for all her lunacy and ignorance and laughable eccentricities, was a more formidable adversary than I had acknowledged. When it came to committing extreme violence, she had as many eager hands as Kali, and my two hands were reluctant.
        My plan had been either to bolt from the hotel and get help or, failing that, to elude this woman and her two enforcers long enough to convince them that I had in fact escaped and that they themselves ought to flee before I sent back the authorities. This was not a plan of action as much as it was a plan of avoidance.
        Listening to Datura rant, apparently somewhere near the junction of the corridors-much too near for comfort-I realized that while rage might be an impediment to clear thinking in most people, for her it sharpened her cunning and her senses. Likewise, hatred.
        Her talent for evil, especially for the vicious brand of it that once went by the name wickedness , was so great that she seemed to be possessed of uncanny gifts to rival my own. I might be persuaded that Datura could smell the blood of her enemy while it remained in his veins, and follow the scent to spill it.
        Upon her arrival, I had put on hold my plan to make a break for the north stairs. Making a move while she lingered in the vicinity seemed suicidal.
        Avoidance most likely would not be possible. Yet I wasn’t eager to hasten a confrontation.
        In the light of my new and more fearsome perception of this disturbed woman, I began to steel myself for what survival might require of me.
        I recalled another grim fact about the four-armed Hindu goddess that inspired me not to underestimate Datura. Kali entertained a thirst for horror so unquenchable that she had once decapitated herself in order to be able to drink her own blood as it spouted from her neck.
        Being a goddess only in her own mind, Datura would not survive decapitation. But when I recalled her vile stories of the cries of murdered children in a Savannah basement and the sacrifice of a seamstress in Port-au-Prince, which had seemed so delectable to her in the telling, I couldn’t pretend that she was any less bloodthirsty than Kali.
        And so I remained behind the door, in shadows that were often relieved by storm light, listening to her curse, then rant. Soon her voice softened to the degree that I could make out no words at all, but there was no mistaking the urgency of it, the insistent frenzied cadences of rage and hate and dark desire.
        If Andre and Robert spoke-or dared to try-I didn’t hear their deeper voices. Only hers. In the degree of their obedience and self-effacement, I read the souls of two true believers, as ready to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid as any cultists had ever been.
        When she fell silent, I suppose I should have been relieved, but instead I got that Brussels-sprouts feeling. Intensely.
        I had slumped wearily against the wall. I stood straighter.
        In my two-hand grip, the shotgun, which had come to seem like nothing more than a tool, suddenly felt alive, slumbering but alive and aware, as guns had always felt to me before. As in the past, I worried that I would not be in control of the weapon when the crisis arrived.
        Thank you, Mom.
        When Datura ceased talking, I expected to hear movement, perhaps doors opening and closing,