The Husband

sense of being encroached upon.
    She sits up with a start, the air mattress squeaking under her, the chain rattling against the floor between manacle and ringbolt.
    "It's only me," he assures her.
    Holly's eyes strain at the blackness because it seems that the gravity of his madness ought to condense the darkness around him into something yet darker, but he remains invisible.
    "I was watching you sleep," he says, "then after a while, I was concerned that my flashlight would wake you."
    Judging his position by his voice is not as easy as she might have expected.
    "This is nice," he says, "being with you in the numinous dark."
    To her right. No more than three feet away. Perhaps on his knees, perhaps standing.
    "Are you afraid?" he asks.
    "No," she lies without hesitation.
    "You would disappoint me if you were afraid. I believe you are arising into your full spirit, and one who is arising must be beyond fear."
    As he speaks, he seems to move behind her. She turns her head, listening intently.
    "In El Valle, New Mexico, one night the snow came down as thick as ever it has anywhere."
    If she is correct, he has moved to her right side and stands over her, having made no sound that the wind failed to mask.
    "The valley floor received six inches in four hours, and the land was eerie in the snowlight..."
    Hairs quiver, flesh prickles on the back of her neck at the thought of him moving confidently in pitch-black conditions. He does not reveal himself even by eyeshine, as might a cat.
    "...eerie in a way it is nowhere else in the world, the flats receding and the low hills rising as if they are just fields of mist and walls of fog, illusions of shapes and dimensions, reflections of reflections, and those reflections only reflections of a dream."
    The gentle voice is in front of her now, and Holly chooses to believe that it has not moved, that it has always been in front of her.
    Startled from sleep, she should expect her senses to be at first unreliable. Such perfect darkness displaces sound, disorients.
    He says, "The storm was windless at ground level, but hard wind blew at higher elevations, because when the snow abated, most of the clouds were quickly torn into rags and were flung away. Between the remaining clouds, the sky was black, festooned with ornate necklaces of stars."
    She can feel the nail between her breasts, warmed by her body heat, and tries to take comfort from it.
    "The glassmaker had fireworks left over from the past July, and the woman who dreamed of dead horses offered to help him set them up and set them off."
    His stories always lead somewhere, although Holly has learned to dread their destinations.
    "There were star shells, Catherine wheels, fizgigs, girandoles, twice-changing chrysanthemums, and golden palm trees...."
    His voice grows softer, and he is close now. He may be leaning toward her, his face but a foot from her face.
    "Red and green and sapphire-blue and gold bursts brightened the black sky, but they were also colorful and diffusely reflected on the fields of snow, soft swaths of pulsing color on the fields of snow."
    As the killer talks, Holly has the feeling that he will kiss her here in the darkness. What will his reaction be when inevitably she recoils in revulsion?
    "Some last snow was falling, a few late flakes as big as silver dollars, descending in wide lazy gyres. They caught the color, too."
    She leans back and turns her head aside in fearful anticipation of the kiss. Then she thinks it might come not on her lips but on the nape of her neck.
    "Shimmering with red and blue and gold fire, the flakes slowly glimmered to the ground, as if something magical were aflame high in the night, some glorious palace burning on the other side of Heaven, shedding jewel-bright embers."
    He pauses, clearly expecting a response.
    As long as he is kept talking, he will not kiss.
    Holly says, "It sounds so magnificent, so beautiful. I wish I'd been there."
    "/wish you'd been there," he agrees.
    Realizing that what she's said might be taken as an invitation, she hurries to entreat him: "There must be more. What else happened in El Valle that night? Tell me more."
    "The woman who dreamed of dead horses had a friend who claimed to be a countess from some eastern European country. Have you ever known a countess?"
    "No."
    "The countess had a problem with depression. She balanced it by taking ecstasy. She took too much ecstasy and walked into that field of snow transfigured by fireworks. Happier than she