Don't Go Near The Pool
Alexander Hope

Published by Alexander Hope at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Alexander Hope



Chapter One



In the plush bedroom suite of an expensive tri-level, Timmi Norris screamed out, “Oh, Charles!" She twisted her body in ecstasy on an oversized water bed. The heavy face make-up made the sixteen year-old look like a twenty-one year-old painted to work the streets. She heard the door open on the lower level. There were muffled voices. She jumped up from the master bed; her thin body tripped forward and fell headlong against the bedpost. A large, red knot formed immediately on her forehead.
An oversized bra, stuffed with panty hose, hung, from her frail neck, creating the illusion of two gigantic breasts. She stepped into the jeans that lay crumpled on the floor. She grabbed a light, plaid shirt from the base the bed. For her escape, she ran into the open closet and closed the door behind her. Inside the closet, Timmi slid open a panel in the back of the closet then stepped through.
Timmi stepped from an opening at the side of the house. Her ankle twisted and threw her body inches too close to the edge of the sheer cliff that ran along the side of the giant tri-level house. Timmi recovered her balance and stood trembling on the cliff’s edge. “Twisted Body of Beautiful Teen Virgin Found in Claymore Canyon,” she said. “Breasts Smashed Beyond Recognition,” She recited to the soft, billowy clouds that hovered over Claymore Canyon. The oversized bra slipped from Timmi’s slim shoulders and revealed a much smaller bra underneath. The clips of both bras welded together like a Chinese puzzle. After she threw a long, frustrated tantrum, Timmi looked down and watched the bra hooks fall apart like some magic trick. She threw the oversized bra over the edge of the canyon. The bra floated down toward the canyon floor a thousand feet below. The bra landed on one of many trash piles humped in the desert sand. A tattered, broken-beaked gull tottered up to the bra. He pecked at it, then turned his evil head sideways and looked up toward the tri-level high on the top of the Hill.
Mavis O’Roak, beautiful, sexy, and in her mid-thirties, stood admiring the tight fit, of her new shorts, in the reflection of the mirrored dining area wall. She turned and pivoted and then contoured her hips with her hands. She turned from the mirrors and looked toward her husband, Charles. She pivoted one more time.  “Think I’m beautiful?” she said.
“Of course,” he said.
Mavis continued to look at her image in the mirrored wall. “Tell me!”
“I just did,” her husband mumbled.
Mavis looked frustrated then flipped her middle finger at her husband’s bowed head. She turned directly toward him and clamped her hands on her hips. “I mean, tell me I’m beautiful, without my asking. Cosmo says that men who live with beautiful women and don’t find time to tell them that they are beautiful have married only to acquire a trophy to parade in front of their male peers. The need to prove themselves to other males is proof of some homosexual leanings. You should . . . .”  Charles removed a large, green-gray, soapy-noduled egg from the crate he had been prying open. Mavis covered her nose.  “That smells like rotting flesh.”
“The crate must be all-wet . . . like Cosmo,” he said.
“Better ideas than keeping some smelly, old egg. Why keep that terrible thing?” Mavis moved away from Charles and the smelly egg.
Charles held the egg at arm’s length walked to a set of steel and glass shelves next to the patio doors. He deposited the egg on the top shelf. “Professor Hunter will identify it.” Charles said.
“As what? A smelly, rotting egg?”
Charles turned and stared, at Mavis, while tapping his fingers together in church-steeple style. The ringing of the upper doorbell stopped him from replying. The ringing doorbell caused the smelly egg to rock back and forth, on the glass shelf, with each ring. The egg started rocking so rapidly that a crack appeared in a small, jagged circle around its base. Small pieces, of cracked shell, powdered the shelf’s edge then snowed down onto a smiling picture, of Mavis, on the shelf below. The powder ate through the plastic facing, on the picture, and burned into the 8X10 print, creating a hideous, chinless Mavis.
Mavis and Charles raced up the wooden stairs to the upper landing and the ringing bell.  Charles turned and pressed his back against the large entrance-door. His breath came in short, quick puffs in imitation of Mavis. “Hope it’s the mail lady.” He said, cupping his hands, to his chest, indicating huge breasts. “In one of those see-through uniforms.”



Chapter Two



At the exterior of the huge entrance-door, Bill Norris stood checking his own, handsome reflection in the entrance side-panels. He brushed back his thick, black hair and pulled down on the tight crotch of his tennis shorts. He consciously tightened his stomach muscles. The heavy, wooden door squeaked open. “Hi! I belong to that house.” Bill pointed across the road. “My name is Bill Norris. I’ve come to prove that there are living, breathing human beings on the Hill.”
Charles smiled and took Bill’s outstretched hand. “Thank God! Mavis here was just complaining about the lack of Welcome Wagons in this neck of the woods.”
“I’d have brought the Graffees, from that first house down there, but they’re down the Hill.  Or I could have brought P. J. Drummer, from that house over there, but he hasn’t been seen for twenty years. So I’ll have to be the Wagon.”  Bill reached down and lifted a heavy basket that spilled over with cheeses and spreads and meats. An expensive bottle of wine hung, like a derelict, from a cord looped around its slender neck then looped around the fat wicker handle on the basket. 
Charles held the basket in one arm and unlooped the noose around the wine bottle’s neck. He raised the bottle toward the heavens. “Ah, there must be a God or something akin.” He smiled at Bill Norris. “There truly is human life on the Hill.”
But human life was not what they should have been worried about. Some other form of life, tens of thousands of years old, had slipped past the guardians of Good and had been placed teetering on the edge of God’s blind spot. This spawn of Hell would run rampant, without scrutiny, without guilt.
From inside the egg, something watched Mavis’s, Charles’ and Bill’s movements in the quiet house. It panned down the wooden stairs, stairs to what it viewed as the altar of Vodu, with a priest and a sacrifice standing at the altar’s top. It would need to be in the ritual pond to receive the sacrifice. It focused on the fish pond under the stairs. The water was bad. It was clean. Too clear. Too foreign. It panned past the mirrored dining area, past the kitchen to the shelf: the very shelf it sat rocking on. Rocking back and forth on its nodules. Its view was as though through gauze; nothing was familiar. Etched within the membrane of its pea-sized brain was a matrix of how its ancestor’s habitat looked and smelled Deep in the upper hills of Togo, long before the oily green foliage was sun bleached into sparse, balding mounds, its ancestors were nested at the bottom of stagnant lakes.
Its ancestors had outlived all other prehistoric inhabitants of Togo because the great Lord of the Vodu had chosen them as equalizers. They were the beings that would follow the Disciples ritualized commands. The Disciples of the Vodu believed the world was balanced on an axis of Good and Evil. There could not be too much of either. If so, the world would tilt and roll off into the Great Darkness. It scanned the shelf again. The Lord of the Vodu would watch over it: guiding it toward the ritual pond. The Lord of the Vodu watched from the Underworld, while the enemy watched from the Overworld. When Evil dominated, Liza, a male god would bring balance back. Liza’s agent was a great, white bird. If Good dominated, Mondt would come from the Underworld and with the help of the Creatures, from the stagnant lakes, Mondt would bring back the balance. Through the crack in the egg, it panned out through the patio doors at the back of the expensive tri-level wombed by hills with blossom-dotted undergrowth. The scum-covered swimming pool in the center of the patio electrified its ancient memory. Its ancestors were sure to be at the bottom waiting for it to come home. The Lord of the Vodu had watched over it.
Empty moving cartons cluttered the flagstone patio occupied only by a golden retriever that laid on the warm patio surface. The retriever’s fur was stirred by the same breeze that hassled the moving cartons. There was not much for a dog to do. The cartons began to roll toward him. Tom, the retriever, lay on his back, one eye squinted. He watched the box roll in his direction. It just kept on rolling. Just before it reached Tom, he sprang up, stretched, and rambled toward the patio doors. He snouted his way through one patio door, sliding it slowly, and then wedging his body side to side.  Tom turned and watched the small moving carton batter itself against the exterior wall of the house. He scratched at the parquet, walked in a circle, then plopped down. Tom was restless. The house smelled funny. There was a strange feeling that he was being watched. He looked toward his master and Mavis standing on the landing at the front of the house. He rolled his red-brown body against the glass and steel shelves. On the top shelf, the egg rocked back and forth on its nodules. It teetered for one miraculous second then rolled over the edge of the shelf. The heavy egg crashed to the floor inches from Tom. Stiff-legged, Tom jumped up, sniffed at the egg, and then hit it with his snout. Like a drunken tennis ball, the egg wobbled toward the open patio door. Tom flipped it again with his snout and launched it over the door’s runners and out onto the patio.
Tom followed then snouted the egg again. He jumped back. A single, twisted claw darted from an opening in the egg. The claw dug into Tom’s tender nose. He turned his head from side to side, and then danced around the egg, barking hysterically. Angrily, he batted the egg into the scummy pool. 
Mavis came running through the open patio doors. As she ran, she pulled at the leg of her tight shorts.  “Tom! You bad dog! What are you barking at?” Mavis walked over beside Tom. They both stood looking into the scummy pool-water.  “Dirty, creepy . . . huh, Tom?” She patted his head.  “Something’s in the pool . . . huh Tom? It’s such a waste to spend millions of dollars on a house and location and be too pigheaded to pay the stupid pool-maintenance bill just because it was not part of the agreement in escrow. Charlie-boy thinks he is going to out-wait the pool company. What an idiot . . . huh Tom?”
Patting Tom’s head, Mavis slowly rotated her head toward noise coming from the side of the house. She looped her long fingers through Tom’s collar and led him slowly toward the side gate. She released Tom and stepped up onto the gate frame and cautiously peeked over. Timmi, Bill Norris’ skinny, teen daughter was scurrying across the road toward Bill’s house. Mavis walked back to the patio doors. She studied her reflection in the door’s glass. She patted her long hair then adjusted her tight shorts. 
Charles watched her through the glass. “You look delicious. Bill Norris couldn’t keep his eyes off your new shorts.” The patio door glass made her reflection look oblong and ugly as she walked toward him.
“He admired the cut.” She said.
“He admired what’s under the cut. He only invited us over because he wants to get some.” Charles put his hands on her shoulders, and then slid his hands to her hips. She slapped his hands away. He backed away from her; he backed onto one of the leather-upholstered bar stools that lined the breakfast counter. He stared with hate at Mavis.
Mavis moved back toward the patio doors. She let out a sigh. “Bill Norris invited us over because he felt sorry for anyone who lives by a cesspool.”
Charles turned to her. “I’ll take care of the damn pool!”
Mavis stared at the pea soup color of the pool water. It made her stomach queasy. “You’re just stubborn. Pay the pool company so we can use the damn pool.”
“I’m not paying the previous owner’s bill.” He came up behind her and clamped his strong hand on the back of her neck. “Nothing’s going to rise from the pool and eat you.”  She twisted away from him and then stood silently looking through the patio doors at the putrid pool. Mavis was jarred from her thoughts by a nudge from Charles. 
He pushed her toward the stairs, snapping at the backs of her beautiful legs with his large, white teeth. “Nothing from the pool is going to get you and eat you.” He snapped again at her escaping legs. Mavis twisted around behind him, goosed him, and then dashed up the stairs to the master suite
Charles caught Mavis and pushed her onto the oversized, custom waterbed. He pounced on her. “The Togo Fons like to make love to their mates for days at a time. We have the entire weekend.” He rolled off Mavis and began unbuttoning his shirt. Mavis darted from the bed. Charles jumped from the bed and grabbed her. He pushed her face-down on the bed and sat on her while he finished undressing. Mavis twisted and tried to escape but Charles placed his strong hand on the back of her head and pushed her face into the waterbed. Before she blanked out from lack of oxygen, Charles lifted his hand.
“Okay! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” Mavis said.
After jumping from her, he grabbed the small vanity chair from the bedside and held it straight out with one hand. He took his belt in the other. He bounced around, in his under shorts, in front of the bed, jabbing the chair in her direction and cracking his belt, and shouting. “Huh! Huh!”
Unimpressed, Mavis, sitting in the center of the bed demurely ignoring him, turned her back and slowly unhooked her halter top and dropped it coyly over her shoulder toward the dancing, puffing Charles. She sat naked from the waist down. Turning slightly, she gave Charles a quick peek at her breasts, and then she quickly pulled the bedspread over her head. After much movement under the cover, Mavis’s hand reached from the blanket-tent; crooking her little finger, she dropped her scanty shorts and panties on the bed then snaked her hand back under the blanket.
Charles dropped the chair and belt. He creped toward the motionless blanket. He began to circle it with his arms. Mavis sprung up and threw the blanket over him. She jerked a pillow from the bed, and while standing, she began pounding him with her overstuffed weapon. “Take that, you animal!” She pounded viciously on him with the pillow. Charles climbed up on the bed—it was rocking like the Columbia in a Norther—then stalked toward Mavis. He was a blanket-shrouded sea creature pursuing his victim. Mavis kept slamming him with the pillow.
Charles enveloped her in the blanket. Charles in his best sea-creature’s voice, said, “I’m going to eat you . . . delicious Mavis.”
They wrestled around on the bed. Mavis tried to wiggle free. She laughed and giggled, and then her head popped up from the blanket. Expectation kept her breathlessly silent. The creature-blanket moved slowly down her body. The blanket stopped. She undulated slowly, her arms folded high across her forehead. She was a racked love slave. She tried to scramble free from the persistent creature. “Stop, Charles!” she giggled, “. . . .No more!”
His lanky body floated up onto her and she was held tightly. He finished quickly. He rolled to the side.
“Hey, Lover, I thought you were going to make love to me for days?”
“Maybe tomorrow.” He whispered .
Charles dosed off. A lost look clouded Mavis’ face and pulled her attention to the balcony doors. Slowly her attention moved around the room to the open closet door. A shadow moved inside the closet. Mavis shifted Charles’s sleeping hand from her breast. She stepped from the bed.  Looking directly at the closet door, she moved to it and jerked it open. Tom moved his golden body lazily from the shadows. Mavis grabbed Tom’s snout. “Tom! You scared Hell out of me!" She swatted him on his wagging butt and walked toward the bathroom.
In the dimly lit closet, Timmi stepped from behind the hanging clothes, pulled back the hidden panel in the back of the closet, and stepped through.
Mavis stood at the balcony door. Her naked shoulders were slumped as she looked at the depressing scene below. The virgin buds on the shrubbery that guarded the pool’s periphery made the scum-covered pool more sinister. Moving boxes still cluttered the patio, waiting, as if to be used by some giant child as keepsake boxes for all the things that hid at the bottom of the scum-covered pool.



Chapter Three



Months later, the patio, no longer cluttered with moving boxes, had luxuriant greenery, but green, almost black, scum covered the pool. Mavis and her stepdaughter, April, stood, at the balcony doors, looking down at the putrid pool. April wore tight shorts and a see-through top over her luscious, twenty-year-old body. April looked at the pool while she spoke to Mavis, “Mother, this is ridiculous. I’ll get Dave and his buddies to clean it.”
Mavis shook her head no. “When Charles gets back from Baltimore, he’s going to pay the bill . . . or I will.” She flopped down on the settee. “How is your David? Is he still restricting your movements?”
“He tries.”
“I thought he took your car keys after that thing with your orthodontist?”
“I promised to be a good girl.” April walked toward the master bedroom door.
Mavis stood up and looked, through the balcony doors, at the pool. “That pool’s creepy. There must be things in it.”
“As scummy as it is, there must be tons of things in it.”
“I mean things that are maybe alive.”
“Mother, you’re nutty as ever.” Mavis and April walked down the stairs to the entrance landing. “Have the damn pool cleaned. Let’s have a party and invite a bunch of horny men.” She stopped at the entrance door and brushed Mavis’s hair back with both hands. “Let’s show them the sexiest mother-daughter team in town.”
“I would break a promise I made to your father if I participated in your party.”
“It’s break a promise or dry up like some tottering, old nun. You need to break some promises. I’m sure you haven’t brought a stray home since you landed on this sunny shore. Dear, old Dad has been gone eighty percent of the time. You must have a fantastic vibrator . . . or you’re just letting yourself turn sour like that damn pool.” April pulled open the heavy, entrance door. April fell back when a dirty, gray gull swooped within inches of her face. The gull cawed as it glided around the side of the house that hung on the edge of Claymore Canyon. The gull folded its tattered wings and dove straight to the bottom, of the canyon, almost a thousand feet below. The gull tottered across the sandy floor and stopped at the rim of a small garbage pile. Its broken beak pecked at a rotting banana peel, then rooted under an old Italian loafer baked by the year-around rays of the sun.
The gull glided on the afternoon wind, swooped and turned several times. The gull landed on the edge of the net-less basketball ring with its backboard bolted to Mavis’s three-car garage. April and Mavis stood beside April’s shiny black-on-black Supra that sat smiling in the cool shade that painted the front of the garage. April walked cautiously around the car. She kept her eyes pinned on the treacherous gull. She bent down and took a small stone from the planter. She threw the stone overhand at the gull. The stone bounced off the backboard and struck the gull. The gull dove toward April. It swooped and turned when April ducked. It dove at Mavis and released a ring from its tattered beak. The ring struck Mavis on the forehead. The gull flew away cawing.
“Damn! He hit me with something!”
April ran to help Mavis. She bent down and picked up the ring. “It’s a ring. That damn gull found your ring.”
“It couldn’t be mine.”
“There’s an M on it.” She showed the ring to Mavis.
“It’s a coincidence. Beside its a man’s ring.”
“It’s an omen!” April put her arm around Mavis. She looked toward the sky. “Best get off this Hill.”
“Now, who’s the nutty one?”
Across the road, Bill Norris over-watered his flowers as the sight, of the two beautiful women being attacked by the gull, distracted him.
April pointed in Bill’s direction. ”Damn! Does he look good! No wonder you stay on the Hill eighty percent of the time.”
“His name is Bill.” Mavis whispered.
“What?” April said loudly.
“His name is Bill.”
April lifted Mavis’ hand in a Rocky Balboa style and wagged the hand, by its thin wrist, in Bill’s direction. “She’s down but not out. Hi, Bill! You’re gorgeous!”
He smiled and flexed his pecks in mock imitation of a Charles Atlas ad. “Don’t put up with Manny. Spray him. He’ll stay away.”
Mavis and April walked toward Bill. “You named that beat-up old gull, Manny?” April said.
“No, the residence of the Hill, past, present, and I would surmise, future, call him Manny because he appeared when Manny Scartossi disappeared. Some think he’s the ghost of Manny Scartossi . . . past occupant of your house.” Bill looked over at Mavis.
Mavis looked down at the ring in her hand. She palmed it so Bill couldn’t see it.  “You best be going.” Mavis said to April. Mavis smacked April’s heart-shaped rump. The beautiful rump walked over and slid behind the wheel of the Supra. Mavis went around and sat backwards across the corner of the passenger’s seat. Facing April, Mavis had her long legs hung out of the open door. She watched Bill whip the hose from an uncompromising bush. “You’re way too loose.” Mavis kept her eyes on Bill across the road.
April reached over and unbuttoned two of Mavis’s blouse buttons. “If you’d loosen up, you might land him.”
“I’m not trying to land anyone. You make it sound like I’m out trolling. I promised your father I would be good.”
“What promises did he make you?”
Mavis didn’t answer. She pulled herself up and out of the tight, little car. She stood for a moment, outside April’s car, forcing April to lean across the passenger’s seat in order to speak to her through the open door. “When dear old dad first brought you home, I thought you were just another in a long line of women my father used and abused and then discarded. But when he came to me not long after the posting of the nuptials and told me you were having an affair with Iron=man Jackson, or whoever your Nautilus instructor happened to be, I decided I wanted to be like you.” April lit two filtered cigarettes and handed one to Mavis. “For the first time, dear old dad was being treated in kind. But now he has you feeling guilty. Screw it! Invite Billy-Boy to our party. If you don’t do him, I will.” April stretched her tight body over the passenger’s seat and pulled the car door shut. She started the hot, little engine and drove away. She waved at Bill.
As though he was grabbing at a palm-sized fly, Bill motioned to April. She made a screeching u-turn and pulled up next to him. Holding the spray from the hose away from the hand-polished Supra, Bill spoke to April but watched Mavis across the road. April spun the still spotless Supra around and pulled up next to Mavis who was headed toward her house. “He thinks you’re the greatest thing since condoms.” April patted Mavis’s hand that was now resting on the top of the lowered window glass. “That’s my interpretation. I told him you’re available” She kissed Mavis’s fingers then drove away dusting Mavis’s lower legs.
The light road-dust brought out the fine stubble on Mavis’s lower legs. She bent forward, exposing the tops of her breasts, and brushed the dust from her legs. She stood up and buttoned her blouse. Bill was still watching. She headed for her open entrance door.
“Mrs. O’Roak. Your dog!” Bill shouted. He pointed toward Tom who was sniffing greenery a block up the road.
Mavis looked toward the golden retriever, then waved a thank you to Bill, but quickly dropped her hand to the blouse buttons that had reopened. She ran toward Tom. Her short-shorts rode higher with each step. She could feel Bill’s eyes. She caught up with Tom. “Tom, be a good dog. If he’s still watching, wag your tail.” While lifting his leg on the last pungent bush, Tom, without missing a beat or a drop, wagged his tail. “Tom, you’re amazing! I wonder if Gerald Ford could pee and wag at the same time.” She laughed and led the resisting retriever home.
Bill watched her come back up the road. She was brushing her beautiful hair from her eyes. Her beautiful hand was pulling her tight shorts from between her legs. She looked toward him. She self-consciously lifted her hand. She turned up the walkway to her house then disappeared into the tomb-like house. Mavis O’Roak was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
In the afternoon shadows of the second-story window of Bill Norris’ house, Timmi flipped her middle finger at Mavis’ disappearing back.
Inside Mavis’s tri-level, Mavis bounced down the stairs, moved rapidly to the patio doors, the pool glowed black with scum. She jerked the heavy curtain closed in disgust. She took a cigarette from the coffee table, lit it, and walked to the pantry behind the kitchen. From the jumble of pans and dog paraphernalia, she dug out her easel and paints and brought them back to the family room. On the easel, she placed a half-finished canvas. It was a fair attempt to copy an Ansel Adams photograph, but hers had a ghost-like creature swirling in the thundering tide. She picked up a brush. She dropped it back on the pallet. Moving trance-like she was drawn to the mirrored dining area. Her reflection brushed Its hair back, put out a cigarette in the palm of Its hand. It screamed, turned and looked over a slender shoulder at Itself, then took a closer look; pressing the lines from the corners of Its deep blue eyes. 
Mavis left the mirrored dining room and walked up the stairs to the entrance. She peeked through the curtains on the entrance door side panel. Bill’s front yard was empty.
Mavis’ naked body was muted by the steam-glazed glass of the burning shower. The phone rang. She stepped from the shower. Her long fingers twisted a towel across her breasts. At the phone, she looked back at the steam filled bathroom. She rearranged her towel: opening it wide to give the phantom in the shower a better look.
“Charles?” she said.
“What are you doing, Love?” Charles asked.
“Thinking of you.”
“Where are you?”
“In the bedroom. Getting ready to take a shower.”
“Are you horny?”
“Now that I’m talking to you.”
“Can’t you wait till I get home.”
“You best be home by Friday or I’ll rent a husband for my housewarming.”
“Just for the housewarming?”
“You best get here and solve the damn pool problem.”
“Screw the pool. Pick me up at National at three tomorrow. Be good, Love.”
Mavis hung up the dead phone. She looked up at a plaque above the bed and read it out loud. “Beauty . . . The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.” Charles hated the plaque. Mavis laughed, lit a cigarette, readjusted the towel across her breasts, and then walked to the balcony doors. At the balcony doors, she looked absently at the cigarette and grimaced at its bitter taste. A beautiful, multicolored bird was perched on the end of the diving board with the Graffee’s gray cat crouched several feet behind it. Mavis turned slightly from the door to snuff her cigarette. A flash came from the pool. The bird disappeared. Mavis turned her head back to the door. She sensed the movement in the water and looked quickly toward the sky. The bird had no time to fly away. The blue, afternoon sky was empty except for a few white-on-white clouds.



Chapter Four



Stumbling around the settee, she ran toward the stairs. Tom jumped down from the settee and galloped after her. They dashed down the lower-level stairs. She tried to pull back the heavy curtain on the patio door, but it caught. She slipped between the curtain and the door and looked at the cat on the tip of the diving board. The cat’s back was arched as though a blast of air had hit it in the stomach. Mavis bent down to stop Tom from following her out into the pool area. A flash came from the pool, and the cat was jerked, screeching, into the scum caked water. Mavis stood up in time to see the cat’s spear like tail disappear into the choppy green-black water.  “Something’s in the pool!” Mavis turned quickly and became swaddled in the heavy curtains.
Tom saw a chance for a tug-of-war game and began pulling on the end of the curtain. Mavis struggled with the curtain and Tom and then pulled herself free. But she fell forward and, when she jumped up, she hit her head on the underside of the breakfast counter. She was out cold.
Tom’s smelly kisses helped to wake Mavis. “Yuck! Kal-Kan!” Mavis crawled couscously from under the breakfast counter and stood by the wall phone. She lifted the receiver and dialed.
“Diamond. Sammy speaking.”
“If I pay the bill today, will you clean the pool today?” Mavis says.
“Mrs. O.? Wait, you’ll have to talk to Hulk, I mean Mister Shears.”
Mavis held the phone to her ear and waited but her eyes never left the patio doors.
“Shears speaking.”
“If I pay the bill today, will you clean the pool today?”
“Can’t. All scheduled up.”
“Please, Mister Shears, I have to pickup my husband from the Airport, tomorrow. I want the pool to be a surprise.”
“That idiot will be surprised all right.”
“He’s stubborn."
“A stubborn idiot. If you bring the keys, the money, and admit he’s a stubborn idiot, I’ll send Sammy over in the morning."
“I’ll bring the key and the money, now. When I get there, I’ll tell you all about the stubborn idiot I married.”
Mavis came running out of the house. She buttoned a paint smock over her naked body while she brushed her hair with the other hand which was also holding her check book. She threw the brush and check book into the station wagon and got in and continued to button her smock while she started the car and screeched out of the driveway.
Across the road, Bill argued with Timmi but watched Mavis’ departure. “Don’t tell anymore of those crazy stories. You’re just like your mother . . . the one neither of us wanted to be around.”
“I swear, something’s in that Mavis’ pool.” Timmi crossed her heart.
“I told you not to hang around her house.”
“You’d like to hang around her house. You’d like to do more than that.”
Bill slapped his daughter across the face. He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the house. “No more smart mouth! Stay away from her!”
Timmi broke loose and raced toward the Graffees’. Timmi swung open the Graffees’ front door without knocking. Mary Jean Graffee sat at a long table by the bay window looking through some old story boards of two of her favorite movies she had produced. Timmi stumbled down the stairs and stopped next to her. “I hate him! All he wants to do is beat on me and blame me for his lonely, pathetic life. I wish he would die. Be torn apart by the thing in that Mavis’ pool. Or maybe he will be shot by my Charles. He is going to have that Mavis and that Mavis is going to like it. Charles will find out and shoot both of them.” She pointed her finger and made a pop sound with her lips. “He beat me again.”
“Where are the marks?”
“They’re covered.”
“Show them to me and I’ll call the proper authorities.”
“They’re gone now.” Timmi walked around the living room. “He slapped me. He was going to beat me but I got free and ran away.”
“If you are telling the truth, you can stay here. But I must speak to your father first.”
“I’m telling the truth, but I just come over to talk.”
“Anything special on your mind?”
Timmi moved up close to her and put her arm around her shoulder. “I need to tell someone about the house.”
“Your house?” She turned in shock and looked up at Timmi. “Is he molesting you?”
“Oh, yuck! No! I mean the O’Roak house. The new people. You know the handsome man and the bimbo with the big boobs.” She reached down and placed her hand over Mary Jean’s mouth. “I know, in your day you never used the word boobs. But let me finish. Something’s in the pool. I’m not a liar . . . not about this. I’m not crazy. Something’s in the pool. Old lady Scartossi put it there. Actually Dan put it there.”
“Dan who?”
“Dan, Lord of the Vodu.”
“Voodoo?”
“No. Vodu. V O D U. Old lady Scartossi was into some kind of religion from Africa . . . you know, the Claymore Coven they wrote about after her freaky death.”
“Guadelupe Scartossi died by human hands, not something from the pool.”
“I know how she died. I was there,” Timmi said.
“Timmi, don’t lie to me to make the story better. Just tell the story.”
“There’s something in the pool. I saw it eat a bird and Shake Spear.”
“Shake Spear has not been eaten. He just left here chasing a bird.”
“He won’t be back.”
“Timmi, someday you should be a writer. All writers are consummate liars.”
“You’re just like the rest.” Timmi started toward the door.
“Stay where you are, young lady. I’m not saying anything negative. I love you. I want you to stay with us. And if part of that is listening to some of your tales, that’s okay. Sometimes Llife makes friends of odd bedfellows. Certainly in Hollywood. Timmi, child, you may be the answer to a dilemma.”  Mary Jean stood and walked to the French windows at the back of the house. She looked out and made sure her husband was still bowed over the radish patch in his precious garden. Returning, she knelt down with great care next to Timmi. “I have a project I want to do, but Victor is against it. You and your vivid imagination can help. I want to produce a horror film, but Victor says we are retired and that all horror films are trash any way. To have a writer of any repute come to the house would be impossible. But you can sit and talk, and before school starts next week we could have the basis of a good story. I want to shoot it in the Showscan process. It’s fantastic. The audience becomes part of the goings-on. When we show the thing in the pool and Guadelupe’s Claymore Coven we will look for images that envelope the audience.”  She stood up slowly and moved back to the table by the bay window. “Look here. I’m going to give you a quick lesson in cinematography. We will be the first women to film a full length story in Showscan. We can make that story of yours grab the audience and pull them into the horror.” Mary Jean Graffee drew a great burst of air into her troubled lungs then sighed a long sigh.  “You will tell your story exactly as you feel it. Don’t ever try to impress me with off-the-wall images. Just tell your lies and let me decide which lies we are going to use.  Now look here.”
Timmi learned that day about 35mm film. Twenty-four frames per minute. What ever that meant. The human eye could see sixty frames per minute. So a movie just looked like a movie. But this Showscan guy figured out how to shoot a movie in sixty frames or something like that. So the human eye thought that the thing on the screen was real. Mary Jean Graffee and Timmi Ann Norris were going to make a horror movie that would scare the crap out of everyone because their eyes would think it was real, Timmi thought. The thing was, it was no story: it was the truth. If it took too long to get the story down on paper, there would be a lot more blood to write about. The thing in the pool was going to get somebody. Hopefully that Mavis and Billy Boy.



Chapter Five



The next morning, a misty gray image pushed through the heat vapor and became a Diamond Bright pool maintenance truck pulling itself up the Hill and into Mavis’s driveway. Sammy Aldrege jumped from the truck. He wore a tank top dripping with blood red letters that read: “IF IT MOVES. EAT IT!” He wore shorts on his slim, tan, thirty-eight-year-old body. He walked down the path, along the side of Mavis’ house, toward the pool area. A huge portable radio swung from his hand. The radio was nine hours into twenty-four hours of Elvis at full blast.
He use to hate coming all the way up Claymore Canyon Road just to clean some crazy, old lady’s ancient swimming pool. The pool had a converted box filter with a large vault under the drain. If any dirt got caught in the vault, a person could sweep and sweep the damn pool and it would still look like a crap pool. The joint looked spooky too. The old broad that died there was spooky as Hell, he thought. She walked around naked. That was spookier than anything. Her body was a burned-out leather bag with giant nipples. Her skin folded, brown fold over brown fold on every inch of her body. She offered old Sammy lots of action. But old Sammy declined. Said he had the drips. Weird, old broad. Some kind of weird sex drive. She’d come over to him while he swept the pool and she’d run her bone-hard fingers over his cheek and chin. Each time, a picture would flash in his little, pea brain: a beautiful, olive-skinned girl with deep bottomless eyes.  He fell in love. And lost about two hours in his brain, then he would be standing toe to toe with the crepe-skinned corpse named Guadelupe Scartossi.  He knew old lady Scartossi’s grandson, Tony. What a jerk! He drove a tow truck and owned a shabby, rundown garage that catered to foreign car owners. He looked like some reject from a special effects shop in Culver City. The whole family was spooky. Tony’s mother, Antonia, owned a restaurant that should have been condemned way back in the thirties.
One time, just before Guadalupe Scartossi was nailed to some kind of marble slab, Sammy came back up the Hill to retrieve a canister of chlorine he had accidentally left earlier. He went to the back through the side gate and just kind of looked through a small tear, in the patio door curtains, when he was bent over to pick up the canister. He saw about thirty naked children dancing around in the semidarkness of the spooky house. Sammy got out of there fast. He had heard about how much time -- bad time -- child molesters got in L.A. County Jail. And everybody would sure as Hell think he was involved, the way he showed his jewels all over town. But now beautiful Mavis O’Roak lived at the house. The house was still spooky because of so few windows, but he would crawl through twenty spooky houses to get at Mrs. O.  He tried the gate key Mavis gave to Sears. It didn’t fit. He sat his heavy boombox up on the fence then climbed over, “Damn! I knew it. Scum green.” He unclipped a long handled net from the fence and stuck the net into the green-black water. The net stuck and held he tried to pull it loose but failed. “No chance!” He unclipped another pole from the fence. Put the pole in the water and tried to use it to dislodge the first pole. He failed. He knocked on the patio door. No answer. He used a credit card to open the patio door. “In the house!” He moved toward the kitchen. “Mrs. O, you home? You back form the airport yet?”  Sammy picked up the phone receiver and dialed.
“Diamond. Jimmy speaking.”
“Let me talk to Hulk.”
“He’s not here. You cleaning Mrs. O’s pool?”
“I’m not gonna.” He took a small picture of Mavis from the top of the counter. It was one of twenty picture of Mavis.
“Mrs. O. there?”
“Yeah. Upstairs waiting for old Sammy.” Behind Sammy, the aluminum handles moved in unison around the pool’s edge. They moved slowly but steadily toward the patio doors.
“BS!,” Jimmy said. “You’re not banging Mrs. O., and you’re probably not banging that Turner woman neither.”
“No BS. Fact is, you can do the Turner pool. Nancy’s not much in the sack, but she gives good gifts.” Sammy fingered a gold medallion around his neck. “Damn, Jimmy, I got to go. Mrs. O. is calling.” Sammy hung up the phone, finished shaping Mavis’s picture, put the treasured picture in his wallet, and then wedged the wallet back into his tight shorts. After walking across the lower level, the pool bum took the stairs two at a time toward the master suite.  Someday in the very near future, he thought, Mrs. O. would be begging him to come on up.
When Sammy reached the doorway to the master suite, Tom, the golden retriever, just disturbed from a deep sleep, jumped down from his place on the settee and charged at Sammy. Sammy turned and leaped down the stairs, losing his balance, then crashing into the stairway wall. He jumped to the entrance landing.  “Come on, doggy. I won’t hurt you.” Sammy dumped a potted tree in front of Tom and scrambled down the last stairs. “Your owner’s not gonna like it if my beautiful body gets scarred.”  Sammy spun around under the stairs and sloshed through the reflecting pool. He lost his shoe and went back after it. Bending over, he fished out his shoe and watched Tom stop at the edge of the goldfish pond. Tom paced at the pond’s edge, growling. Sammy stood puffing in the middle of the pond. He dumped a goldfish from his shoe, and then stood on one foot, like a very tired bronze flamingo, putting on his shoe. He bent forward, put his hands on his knees, breathed in the precious air.
He was going to get a job someplace where there were no dogs and no water and wealthy, sex-starved women, he thought. Maybe in a borax mine in the California desert. He would screw around Point Dume and Malibu, and, maybe, Santa Monica for about six months and get rid of all his juices. Then he would go up to the desert, work the mines or become a monk, or read a book. He would change his life. But first he would have to get his muscular butt out of the damn fish pond.  He hated golden retrievers; they were such faggy-looking dogs, like some twit Englishman with long red hair.  “Afraid of water, fag?” Sammy moved a foot closer to the edge of the pond. “I could stay here all day. Your mistress will come home and beat your fag butt.” Sammy moved a foot closer to the edge. “I eat doggies like you for breakfast. You think you’re the first mutt that ever tried to get a piece of me?” Sammy started to step from the pond. “Think again, idiot dog!”
Snarling and growling like a rabid coyote, Tom put his front paws on the edge of the pond.  Sammy sloshed over the edge of the pond and darted out from under the stairs just as Tom spun around the front of the stairs almost catching Sammy’s ankle with his snapping teeth. Sammy’s hand shot out and pulled a chair into Tom’s path. “Doggy, don’t do this to me.”  Great gulps of air dried his throat and burned his lungs with searing pain. He would stop smoking if he got out of the damn house, he thought. He wouldn’t stop Pot, of course not.  He kicked Mavis’ easel. It tumbled sideways and puked red paint onto the virgin-white carpet. Galloping through the paint, Tom left red prints in a zigzag pattern across the room. Sammy reached the patio doors. He slammed through, guillotining the fingers of his left hand. “Oh! Damn! Damn! Damn!”
The staccato blast of the radio and the throbbing pain in his left hand pounded bile into Sammy’s throat and nostrils. He leaned against the patio doors, trying to pry his shoe on with the fingers of his good hand. But the cramped position caused his stomach to pump more bile. He spat a dead-mouse pattern on the gray patio surface. Holding the bottom of his tank top over his nose and mouth, he began coughing and gagging. His fast-food lunch rapidly covered two squares of the hot patio surface. He wiped his mouth on his forearm then turned and shouted,  “Damn dog! I should kill you and throw you in this scum pond.”
Tom clawed frantically on the glass of the patio doors. Blood red-paint streaks slashed the glass like test strokes for a drunken Picasso painting. Tom barked hysterically. 
Sammy stood on one foot. He was trying to force his new Ked up over his long wet toes. He choked on the stench coming from the pool. Failing in his efforts to put the Ked on, he threw the offending shoe at the blasting radio and made a direct hit. The aluminum handles in the pool had moved directly across from Sammy. Sammy’s eyes widened and continued to stare over his cupped hands. Blinking sporadically, his eyes focused and refocused on every shadowed, malevolent crevice of the patio, then refocused on the balcony door.  Timmi Norris peeked from the window like some caged animal happy to be safe and sound behind glass and steel.  “What are you looking at?” he spat toward her. He hopped around the pool to his toppled, still-blasting radio. He’d seen the little bitch before, he thought, watching him from the top window across the road as he unloaded his stuff from the old Diamond Bright truck. The little bitch must never go to school on Tuesdays. Maybe she was house sitting Mrs’ O.’s joint. Where the Hell was she when the dog was attacking?
He held his cupped hands over his nose but peeked over them at the aluminum handles that were following him. They passed him as he reached the radio. They sat menacingly between him and his escape—the locked side gate. He tried to shuffle past the handles, but swayed, toward the pool, completing an off-balance Chaplin before he stumbled into the water. He thrashed around in the scummy water. His hands appeared at the edge of the pool to grope their way toward the shallow end.  He pulled himself up over the edge then looked up toward the balcony door. Timmi stood with her hands cupped to her mouth; fright burned in her eyes. “You want to see something?” Sammy slipped out of his tank top and shorts and threw them toward the balcony. He stood naked at the edge of the pool.  Hell, he had really gone over the edge. The broad couldn’t be more than fourteen, he thought. All he needed was to be picked up for exposing himself to some minor. They would have his pretty butt in the county jail. But the kid was screaming like the sight of him naked was blowing her mind. Damn! She will freak out and call the cops! Sammy thought.
Teeth clamped onto Sammy’s face. He was jerked into the foul water. The putrid water swirled and spun then stilled and became smooth as the surface of an expensive billiard table. Tom clawed more frantically at the patio doors.
Timmi stood frozen at the balcony door. She saw the shadow in the bottom of the pool.  "Oh! Damn! It got the pool guy," she said. He’d been trying to show himself to her every Tuesday for more than a year. Right out there on Clayton Canyon Road in front of God and everyone. Something was always happening at the house on Tuesdays. It was Tuesdays that she used to sneak into the house. It wasn’t her father’s future-action bimbo's  then; it belonged to Old Lady Scartossi.  She was over a hundred years old. Timmi ditched school then and stood in the upper window of her house and watched the pool guy load his truck. She wasn’t there to watch him. She knew that, as soon as he was gone, all the old weirdos would start arriving.  The Claymore Coven met on Tuesdays. From Timmi’s secret place on the upper landing, she watched as the old, shriveled octogenarians disrobed and marched around with candles and dead rodents. They marched on a huge, red, five-pointed Witches Foot. The Witches Foot was laid as a mosaic into the marble floor and covered from prying eyes by a large fur rug when unused. They marched and chanted and they turned into children who waited for the six-inch steel spikes to glow red-hot in the log-stuffed fireplace.
Suddenly, members of the Sword of Expulsion or something like that came in white robes and clubbed the children. The children changed back into injured, old people and then they fled the house.  When the spikes were molten hot, a leather-skinned skeleton-man came forward, tonged a spike from the hot ashes and moved to the edge of the Witches Foot. From the bowels of the Witches Foot, a blood red marble slab rose through the parting floor. Old Lady Scartossi was strapped spread-eagled to the opaque surface. Blood bubbled and churned under the slab’s surface.  The old lady’s naked body looked atrophied but it pulled and twisted at the restraints. The first glowing spike was driven down through her cadaverous abdomen and into the marble slab with just one quick move of the hand of the skeleton-man. Old Lady Scartossi’s screams always panicked Timmi, but Timmi stayed until all twenty-one red-hot spikes were slammed through the old lady. Old Lady Scartossi screamed and twisted in pain, and her body went slack. Everything went silent.
Timmi’s thoughts were interrupted by Sammy’s harsh whisper from his damaged voice box. “Help me!” He crawled crablike in the shallow end toward the edge of the pool. His throat was slit; one eye was torn from his face. Green-black water poured from the eye socket. He reached his trembling hands out toward the end of the pool. Then disregarding the searing pain, he snapped his head upward like some smashed mechanical toy programmed to seek out the balcony and the catatonic Timmi. “Help meee!” Teeth flashed, then clamped on the back of Sammy’s neck and jerked him back into the deep water. His legs cartwheeled high into the air and splashed down behind his submerging head. The water whirl pooled. Sammy disappeared. Silence.
Timmi saw the movement in the water. There would be proof that she was not a liar, she thought. Mary Jean and everybody would believe her. Something was in the pool.  Sammy bobbed face up and his good eye focused on Timmi. His arms and legs draped straight down in the water; his spinal cord had been severed. The raw socket of his missing eye started twitching. Damn! he thought. That was how it was. You finally decide to straighten up you act and the whole earth opens up and sucks the life right out you. It was the worst nightmare old Sammy had ever had, bar none. He must have ate too much popcorn before bedtime. Probably got a hull caught in his colon. He would wake up. It would be a sunny day. Some thing started towing him. His head trailed in the water. His battered body, towed by the unseen Creature, moved slowly around the edge of the pool, with his head trailing face up. His body moved faster and faster around the pool until it moved at a maddening speed. Whipped around the pool, Sammy’s body became a blur, and then the Creature jerked him into the swirling water. The water calmed.
A popping sound came from the far end of the pool. Sammy’s body bobbed up under the diving board. He puked what was left of his intestines into the churning water. Pain spun from his groin to his brain, then drilled out through his skull, splintering it and shooting the splinters back into his raw nerves, he thought if the nightmare didn’t stop, he would die. Hell! He wanted to die! He was screaming for mercy but his mouth was clamped shut. His head rested against the narrowest part of the swimming pool. His head began to wag, smashing slowly against the right side of the pool’s edge then the left -- right -- left, right, left, right, left, rightleft, rightleft, rightleftrightleft.  Sammy prayed for unconsciousness. Pain burned through his skull and exploded in his brain. He couldn’t feel his legs. Some impossible thing was spinning him around a scum pond on top the evil Hill. Faster back and forth, his blood-matted head wagged like a rag doll. His head smashed the pool’s edge faster and faster, and then in a frenzy, his body was snapped straight up, his skull smashed against the underside of the diving board. Sammy was yanked down into a whirlpool. Green-black swirls churned in the pool.
Green-black swirls of the polished stones in Mavis’s earrings shone in the late afternoon, California sun. The station wagon moved quickly off Pacific Coast Highway, moving rapidly up Claymore Canyon Road’s twisting path.
Timmi watched the slate green water in the pool. If she told her father even a small portion of what she knew about the evil house and the scum-green pool, her father would slap her silly or gouge his fingers into her arm or drag her to her room and throw her against the wall. He would call her a liar.  He would phone her bimbo mother and tell her that her idiot daughter was a liar. No one would believe her. Only that Mavis. Maybe the thing in the pool would get that Mavis. And her father.  Get them together when they’re screwing on the patio table.



Chapter 6



Mavis looked fantastic in her Baltimore chic. She drove, as usual. She decided to wear the outfit Charles had bought her the last time they were at the Mt. Royal. She wanted him very happy before she gave him the news. He was going to be Teed—real Teed—Teed with a capital T.  A deer darted out a couple of yards in front of the land bridge. “Oh, Charles, did you see that?”
“Never mind the damn deer. Tell me!”
“Tell you what, Charles?”
“No damn games. Tell me!”
“Five thousand six hundred and twenty dollars.” She whispered.
“What!”
“Five thousand six hundred and twenty dollars!” She repeated loudly.
“I heard what you said. I was starting to ask if you were insane.” He turned and stared directly at her. “Stop the damn check!”
“Diamond Bright required a cashier’s check. I’m sure Mr. Shears hammered it . . . as they say.”
“I’ll hammer him.” He glared at the Diamond Bright truck blocking the driveway.
“You’re not going to cause a scene about the bill are you? Remember, your temper got us excommunicated from Boston.”
“You’re bobbing breasts got us excommunicated from Boston.”
“You son-of-a-bitch.”
“Face it! You and Bill Norris will get us excommunicated from the Hill,” he said.
“Good! I hate this Hill!”  She pulled the wagon to the curb some distance from the house.
Charles trudged up the driveway. Mavis followed. Charles banged the luggage down at the entrance and walked back to the truck and punched violently at the Diamond Bright sign on the truck’s side. A dent formed just above the B. Charles rubbed his damaged hand. He smiled.
Timmi still stood frozen with shock at the balcony door. Tom’s insistent barking snapped her out of the catatonic state, but she couldn’t stop shaking. The conjured image of the thing in the pool was inside her brain gnawing at her synapses. Suddenly, a key rattled in the entrance door. Timmi ran back through the bedroom, and with knee-jerk reaction, she stooped and picked up Sammy’s gold medallion. She staggered toward the closet door.
Mavis unlocked the front door. She pushed it open. The potted tree fell out against her.  Tom came running, through the door, wagging his entire body. “Damn! What happened!” Mavis shouted. The lower level was in shambles: Charles’s favorite chair was tipped over, Mavis’ easel was knocked down, paint was splashed on the expensive carpet. The new French phone lay broken at the patio doors. Red streaks striped the door glass. “Charles! Blood!” she screamed, and pointed at the patio doors.
“It’s paint. From the carpet. Your idiot dog, Tom, went berserk from being locked up. The pool guys probably teased him through the glass. Probably acted like they were going to come in. He got protective and went berserk.”  He walked down the stairs. “I’ll sue the bastards for five thousand six hundred and twenty dollars for the damage.” He laughed and looked toward Tom sitting on the landing wagging his tail. “Good boy! You’ve saved the day, Tom. Good Boy!” He turned back toward living room. “We’ll wait till they finish the pool . . . then we sue.”  Charles walked back up the stairs and through the entrance. “Give me the keys, Love. I’ll drive down and get some paint remover.” he patted his upper thigh with the hand that caught the keys. “Come on, Tom, let’s pee on some bushes.” Charles danced down the front walk with Tom following.
Bending down with an exasperated sigh, Mavis began scooping the dirt back into the tree pot.
Charles turned back toward the entrance. “Mavis, take some pictures and go change before you do that,” he said.
Mavis walked slowly up the stairs toward the master suite while brushing dirt from her trembling hands. Charles would sue she thought. He would win—as always. But the suit would take a long time and the pool would be left unattended again. She would pack in the morning. Go back to Boston. The umbilical would be severed. She would be in Boston by tomorrow night. She draped her expensive clothes on the bed and walked in bra and panties to the dresser. Once there, she took out shorts and a blouse, put them on, checked herself in the mirror, put on her new sandals and checked the mirror again, turned, looking over her shoulder at her reflection. She liked what she saw.  She smiled at the mirror.
Through the open door of the side closet, Timmi watched Mavis’ fashion show. She knew she would never have a body like that Mavis. All men wanted girls with big breasts, she thought. Aunt Agnes said good men wanted women with big brains not big breasts. But Aunt Agnes had no breasts.  She had a big brain. She had no man.
Mavis picked up her clothes from the bed and walked listlessly toward the side closet.
Timmi slipped through the back panel in the closet. She scraped flesh and blood from an inch-wide strip on her back. Reaching back in pain, Timmi dropped Sammy’s medallion and chain in the back of the closet. She walked like she was on a tightrope around the lip of the canyon and came out next to Mavis’ garage. She walked slowly with her arm cocked back, like the broken wing of a bird, trying to feel how deep the cut was. The pain didn’t matter. Her entire body was burning. It was wild; she wanted to go back and watch it all over again. Watch the pool jerk get slaughtered. Her body burned. Even the chilly afternoon sea breeze made no difference. Her body had burned before. When Dory and her held a hose in Dory’s little sister’s mouth and almost blew her stomach out. The brutal beating her bimbo mother gave her made the whole thing even better. The beating brought Timmi to her idiot grandmother’s cottage. And after her grandmother’s ‘accident’ on the cottage stairs, Timmi finally got to live with her father. He beat her. He would die for that. But he let her roam free most of the time. Bad things always happened to people who got in her way. That Mavis was in her way.  Maybe she could hire the Claymore Coven to ask the thing in the pool to eat that Mavis. Eat both of them while they’re doing it. Doing it. Doing it.
In the master suite, Mavis hung up her clothes then closed the side closet door. She looked at her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe closet. She unbuttoned two buttons on her blouse, cocked her  head, then rebuttoned her blouse. She knew the Diamond Bright guys would tear each other apart if she let too much show. She turned toward the balcony door. Looking down at the pool, she froze.  Under the diving board at the far end, the coping was covered with bloody flesh. Blood smeared the entire edge of the pool. Bloody splotches dotted the patio surface around the pool. She screamed and jerked the drapes closed. “Charles, there’s blood everywhere!” She ran to the upper-level stair rail and looked down. “Charles!” She stumbled down the stairs, smashed into the edge of the open door, and fell out of the entrance onto the front walk.
Charles drove back up the road toward the house. He waved at Timmi walking up the road, holding her back as though it had been injured. She was carrying a giant-sized radio. Kids, the bigger the radio, the better, he thought. Ghetto blasters. He began to pull over to help Timmi, but he spotted Mavis, further up the road, sitting on the curb. Her arms were locked around her knees. She was rocking back and forth. Charles jammed the Mercedes to a stop in the middle of the road, jumped out, and stumbled toward Mavis. Tom beat him to her and licked her tear-streaked face.  Charles knelt down.” It’ll be okay, Love.”
“The pool’s full of blood!”
“It can’t be,” he said. He darted toward the house.
“Something’s in the pool,” Mavis whispered to herself. “Something’s in the pool.”
Next to the diving board, Charles knelt and examined the blood on the pool’s edge. It was true—the damn Vodu worked. But on the wrong people. How many pool men did the Creature slaughter? Moving Mavis to the Hill had stopped the cadre of lovers and had set the stage for her demise but Tony Scartossi was supposed to have a handle on things. The egg wasn’t supposed to go into the pool until the Claymore Coven performed its ritual. While Mavis was on some kind of trip with him, Scartossi or his mother or someone from the Coven was to come by and get the egg, bless it, and put it in the scummy water and do a Vodu ritual using the Fon script he had brought back from Togo.  But somehow the damn egg got in the pool. And there had been no ritual. The Serpent was not under the control of anyone.
Timmi walked into the Graffee’s house. Victor was moving the living room furniture around again.  “Timmi, grab the end of this table, and help me move it.” he said.
“I can’t, Mr. Graffee, my back is cut. My father did it.”
“I’ll get Mary Jean.” Victor Graffee walked toward the back of the house. He knocked on the closed door of the editing room. “Jean, Timmi is here. She’s been beaten . . . again.”
Mary Jean came rushing out of the editing room. She was wearing a full-body, rubber apron.  On the front were short pieces of 35mm film, and over her shoulders hung long strips of 70mm film.  She reached out and turned Timmi. Timmi’s shirt was glued to her bony back with blood. Mary Jean gently peeled the cloth away from the young girl’s skin. “Oh, child, it’s going to leave a scar on your beautiful skin.” She took Timmi’s hand and then led her to the guest bathroom next to the entrance.  Victor followed. Mary Jean pulled Timmi into the tiny bathroom, and then poked her head out. “Excuse us! The young lady’s shirt must come off.” She closed the door in Victor’s curious face.   She turned and began whispering to Timmi, “Your father didn’t do this. It’s a scrape of some kind. You were crawling through something on one of your sneaky little spying games and you misjudged the height.”
“I saw it,” Timmi said.
“Keep you voice down. Little old lady Victor likes to eavesdrop.” She turned Timmi toward her. “I don’t want to hear any stories right now. I want to try to understand why you hate your father enough to tell such terrible stories about him.”
“He’s going to hurt me. He wants to hurt me. He just hasn’t done it yet. He’s big. When he does hurt me, he may kill me. Then it will be too late to tell.”
“You must stop your lies about him.” You’ll get him into serious problems. He’ll be put away. An adult male has no defense against the accusations of a female child. Just the accusation of child abuse or child molestation will destroy him forever.”
“Okay! He didn’t do it. But I hate him. I wish the thing in the pool would tear him apart like it did that pool guy.”
“Timmi, the thing in the pool is just an image for our screenplay.”
“It just tore that dumb pool guy apart.” Timmi’s words were punctuated by screaming sirens.  Mary Jean, Victor, and Timmi ran to the front entrance. Five police cars sped across an old  Dodge led the way with a whirling red and green light clipped to its dented top. Lights went on, across the road, high up in P. J. Drummer’s age-twisted dormers.
Charles heard the sirens coming. It had not been more than five minutes since his call, he thought.  They must have flown up Claymore Canyon Road. He needed more time to think. But all he could think of was finding Tony Scartossi and strangling his greasy neck.
Tom sniffed a shoe bobbing against the edge of the pool. At the patio doors, Mavis watched with her arms folded across her breasts. She saw the shoe—the floating, bobbing shoe. It still contained parts of Sammy’s foot. Her hands clamped to her ears. Screams tore from her throat.. She could hear her own heart pounding-padum, padum.



Chapter 7



Later that evening, two pumps sucked the water from the pool. The large canvas hoses were alive.  They inflated and deflated with each surge of water—padum, padum. Charles weaved his way through the patio crawling with police officers, investigators, firemen—working the pumps—and lab men. A young officer carrying a notepad stopped him.
“Mr. O’Roak, how long did you know the victim?”
“Who’s the victim?” Charles said.
The officer referred to his notes. “Sammy Aldredge. He worked for the pool maintenance company . . . Diamond Bright.”
Charles shrugged and walked away.
Inspector Davis squatted on his haunches by the diving board. He tapped his lower teeth with his thumbnail. His knees cramped when he struggled to stand. He watched his lab man probe at the pool’s edge. He fingered through Sammy’s wet wallet retrieved from the slimy pool. Inspector Davis looked up at the expensive house. Every damn year he seemed to have to come to the same house, he thought, for the same damn reason. It couldn’t have been more than a year before when an ancient life came to a screeching halt fifty feet inside the tri-level. They had found Guadelupe Scartossi’s freshly crucified corpse spiked to a marble slab. The damn spikes were somehow pounded through her body and into the slab without cracking the marble—impossible but true. He saw it. Twenty-one spikes formed a cross along her outstretched arms and down her ancient, emaciated body. The lab people said she probably did not die until the first spike was pulled—the one that jerked her heart from her withered chest.  His attention came back to the current Homicide scene.
“The victim was battered continuously against the pool’s edge. The murderer must have held the victim’s feet then swung him,” the lab man said.
“Why did he batter him here,” Davis pointed under the board to the other side, “then walk around the diving board and batter him there?”
“I don’t know. But this entire end of the pool is smeared with brain tissue. There may have been no other damage to his body. Except the foot that somehow got torn loose. It all took an extremely powerful man.”
“Like his boss, Hulk?”
Detective Sergeant Cole walked up to Davis. Tom followed then sat, next to Cole, wagging his tail, while Cole patted the retriever’s head. Davis and Cole stood and watched the pool as it was being drained. A female reporter walked up next to them. She swatted Inspector Davis’s butt. “This have anything to do with the Taylor-Hicks case?” She said.
“Our boy, Sammy, knew the Taylor girl,” Davis said, “and it would be a miracle if he wasn’t banging Mrs. Hicks, but I don’t think Jack Taylor or Artamus Hicks would put a contract out on Sammy. This area attracts death. I’ve been here twelve times in thirty years. People with major problems are attracted to the Hill. All four houses have had homicides.”  Davis was certain it was just another domestic murder. They would dig around and find out that Mrs. O’Roak was screwing Sammy. The husband found out. Beat Sammy to death. Charles O’Roak looked strong and with the adrenalin flowing, maybe he could do superhuman stuff. Why most guys decide to kill their wife’s lover instead of the wife seemed illogical. Or why not just pack up and leave. Charles O’Roak was certain to have a very slim alibi for the time of the crime. Time of the Crime sounded like a special time was set aside to commit mayhem. It was a simple domestic murder: a crime of passion, he though.
The reporter took notes, and then ask, “Is it the usual Husband-Kills-Wife story.”
Davis looked straight into the beautiful eyes of Doan Park. His favorite reporter, he thought. Maybe his favorite person. Asian women were his only weakness. He had only faltered once before. But if she, by some miracle, should like an old, balding Inspector, Doan Park could have him. “Ms Park, you know that I would jeopardize the investigation if I answered that question.”
“Please, Martin, I need a good story,” she said. “I’ll do just about anything for it.”
Cole smiled at Davis and walked away. Davis tapped his teeth with his knuckle. “If that ‘do anything’ bit came with no strings, and if I was twenty years younger, you’d be being chased around this pool.”
“I love older men, but you know I’m from the corrupt media. There are always strings.”  She ran her fingers across his lower jaw. “But if you should ever decide strings are okay. Just whistle.”  She walked away. Her tiny hips swayed in time to the beat of Davis’s heart.
Cole came back. He stood directly in front of Davis so Davis could not continue to watch Doan Park walk away. “Inspector, put your tongue back in you mouth. You’re going to get into deep crap if I don’t protect you.”  Across the pool from Davis and Cole, Mavis stood watching the activities. She wore tight shorts and a revealing halter.  “The Hill attracts some real beauties.” Cole said. “Looks like Mrs. O’Roak is advertising.  Maybe Sammy answered the ad.”
Davis turned his palm over, “I found this in Sammy’s wallet. It was fished from that soup.”  He handed Mavis’s photo to Cole. “Find out why Sammy had it.”
Detective Cole walked over to Mavis. Tom followed, wagging all the way. Cole wondered if the damn dog was friendly with all of Mrs. O’Roak’s lovers. Potential lovers. Potential lover—BS. He had already told his wife, Brenda, what a bad girl he thought Mrs. O’Roak was after he saw her fantastic body moving around at a shopping center on Pacific Coast. Brenda was ten paces ahead of him—not at the shopping center but in his thoughts. She said men usually badmouthed women; to their wives; who they intended to screw. Brenda could always outguess him. But one time in his life he was going to have something perfect. Something so perfect it brought tears to your eyes. Something like Mavis O’Roak. “Mrs. O’Roak, how well did you know Sammy Aldrege?”
Mavis walked past Cole toward a wooden bench. Her hips were magnetic. She brushed back her hair. Above the sounds of the pumps, she answered. “I didn’t know him.” She sat sideways on the bench. She realized , now, the fools were going to make it a murder case where beautiful Mavis O’Roak was fought for by some superhuman stud. Cole was a beautiful stud. Probably married. His eyes attempted to roll back her halter top. Charles asked her not to ware the halter—but screw Charles. She liked all the men watching her every move. They were all hoping her short shorts would get shorter. April was right: why should she make promises that he didn’t make or keep.  Charles had paid to have her nose and breasts and hips done and now he—and she—were flabbergasted by the way all men of all ages stood and stared. She was perfection. Manufactured perfection. But perfection. She should have a perfect life. But stunning beauty, such as hers, brought disaster and ruin because men would do anything to possess her. Detective Cole was no exception. His eyes had already been intimate with her.
Cole moved closer to the bench then placed on foot on it while he stood patting Tom.  “How’d Sammy get this?” He flipped over his free hand in imitation of Inspector Davis.
Mavis took the photograph. It was one taken when they were at Lome on the coast of Togo, she thought. The one-piece French-cut bathing suit looked fantastic. It drove the natives wild. Charles had asked her not to parade around in it while he was gone. But while he was out digging for old, smelly, noduled eggs, she paraded. Her parade attracted the head of the Department of Interior of Togo, Rundi Smith. He was a tall, beautiful, mulatto. He was the first and only black man she had slept with. They did very little sleeping. Rundi was on the down stroke when Charles burst in and declared seventeen of his native diggers had been torn apart by some monstrous creature. Rundi Smith had taken the photo before it all fell apart.  She turned the photo over and tried to read the smudged writing. The note on the back was something about her being a white goddess. It had been intentionally smudged on the trip back.  Mavis flipped the photo back over and handed it back to Cole.
Her other hand dangled over the back of the wooden bench. The acrylic, applied by Sharp Nails, made the stiletto ends of her long, slim fingers appear as a shiny, serving fork ready to stab Sammy’s mucous-covered eyeball sitting just out of reach in the bench-back planter. Her hand stretched out and dropped on the eyeball. The nails jerked back with flesh caked under their spooned ends. The eyeball stuck to one stiletto. Mavis jumped up screaming and trying to brush off the eyeball with her other hand. The gooey eyeball stuck. Cole was knocked sideways by her lunging body.  Everyone turned. Charles thought Cole was trying to physically assault Mavis. He ran to her just as she shook the eyeball from her hand. It fell to the flagstone and skipped sideways into the water less end of the draining pool. Mavis ran to the house—gagging.  The eyeball slid slowly on the scum-covered pool bottom, down to the shallow slime-ringed puddle around the drain at the deep end of the pool , then spun in a whirlpool created by the open, sucking hoses of the pressure pumps, and was violently sucked into the largest pump. The pump choked and stopped. Inspector Davis signaled to cut the other pump. He looked down into the pool. He could see the slim-covered handles of the brush and net, a broken lawn chair, and something that looked like a watch. There was no body. The killer had battered Sammy? Tore off his foot? And hauled the battered and bloody body away?
“Inspector! Over here!” the lab man called out.
Davis turned and walked toward the gate. The lab man, perched on a ladder, inspected the top of the fence. The fence gate was open. From his ladder, the lab man could see the large, empty lots that paraded along the west side of the road beginning at O’Roak’s fence and ending abruptly at a weed-choked lot that housed an old dormered mansion. Flickering light reflected from the window in the dormer that faced the O’Roak’s.
“Somebody’s watching.” The lab man said. He pointed toward the dormer.
Davis walked through the open gate and looked toward the old house. The light continued to reflect from the dormer. “He doesn’t care that we know.”
“That’s P.J. Drummer’s house. He probably knows who did this.”
Davis shook his head. “He would have called if he did. He worked with my father and my father’s father.” Davis walked back toward the lab man. “Find anything up there?”
“The gate’s been climbed, recently.”
“How recently?”
“Today sometime.” The lab man picked at the ivy with a pencil. “Something sat up here . . . something heavy like a large briefcase.”
Inspector Davis motioned to Detective Cole. They walked toward each other. Tom walked along side Cole. “What’d our beautiful hostess have to say before she shish kebabed the eyeball?”  Davis said.
“Says she didn’t know him.”
“Someone climbed the fence. Maybe O’Roak to throw us off. Maybe it was a faked trip to Baltimore. A normal guy doesn’t isolate his wife on the Hill.”
“I agree. It’s O’Roak. But we need a body.”  Tom sat and looked up at Cole then trotted directly across from the drain. He began to bark and whine.
“Man’s best friend wants us to jackhammer the box drain. Sorry, boy. The taxpayers would crucify us,” Davis said.
Cole threw an empty soda can at the drain. It ricocheted off then rolled back and clattered on the steel, drain cover. “Use the taxpayer’s money to convict O’Roak.”
Drummer knew Davis had spotted him watching the cadre of personnel swarming all over the O’Roak’s house and trampling the private property of the Hill. It had been a year ago he used the telescope. It was trained at the same house for the same reason. On both occasions, Drummer felt the presents of Evil. He had felt the same Evil on Tuesday nights when the Claymore Canyon Coven met at Guadelupe Scartossi’s. The Evil burned his lungs and drew him to the telescope. At the telescope, his hands trembled as they focused and refocused until his myopic right eye could make out the back of the Scartossi house. A white-red glow always flowed from the house on Tuesday nights.  It flowed like a white-red river with no bottom or sides or top. As it flowed over the Canyon’s edge, it withered the bushes and plants, that rimmed the part of the Hill, in its path. Just when he focused, it hesitated, as if intelligent, it turned toward him. Then it flashed out. Before. At the front of the house, automobiles were parked on both sides of Claymore Canyon Road—as was usual on Tuesdays. But in the center of the road, with all the doors wide open, was an old VW van with its dented side panels covered with crude, white crosses that looked like they had been painted on with an old broom. The doors at the back and front of the house burst open and twenty or thirty old people stumbled out. Some were helping others: others who had been stabbed or bludgeoned. The old people ran to their cars and jammed in five deep. When the dust cleared, only the VW van remained. Four men charged from the house. They pulled off the white capes emblazoned with glowing, red swords of expulsion. They pulled off their black, ski masks and tumbled into the van. The driver stopped and stared directly at Drummer’s dormered window. The driver made a van-tilting U-turn and sped in Drummer’s direction. Drummer’s old heart pounded in his chest. His late afternoon lunch was cresting the top of his throat and burning his nostrils. The driver of the van slammed on the brakes at an angle to the house and stared through the van’s open window at the dormer. Drummer called 911. Afterward, when Inspector Martin Davis’s people ask him about what he saw, he said he saw an old VW van and that was about it. He didn’t reveal he had had a good look at the van driver.  Inspector Davis will be sending another team, Drummer thought.
Timmi told Mary Jean what she saw, but Mary Jean only listened to the story as fodder for her new screenplay. “Okay, describe how the man was spun around the pool by the Creature,” Mary Jean said.
“You think I’m making it all up. If I’m lying, why are the police there? Why are they questioning everybody?”
“All good writers mix some reality with pot fulls of fantasy. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you saw Charles O’Roak kill the man. That’s not my concern. My concern is hooking the audience.  Now continue.”
“You don’t understand . . . there’s an evil power in that house . . . in the pool.”
“I don’t believe in evil power or any kind of power.”
Timmi sucked in a mouthful of air. “You must believe in God?”
“I pride myself on being much too intelligent to believe in God or Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny.”
“Then if there’s no God, then there’s no . . . .”
“Then there’s no Satan. No Evil. No . . .
“No, I was going to say there was no way we could be on this earth. How did we get here?”
“It always amazes me that the religious always bring it down to that. If we’re not intelligent enough to figure out how we got here, they cop out and create a God. Usually a very unforgiving God. Do you understand that you have been brainwashed by your parents and your peers to believe in God? You parents could have made you believe in anything. All your parents had to do was keep telling you the lie. After a while you’re hooked. The lie could have been that you’d make a really swell homicidal manic. All they had to do was keep telling you the same lie and make sure your teachers and peers told the same lie.”
“Screw all that, how did we get here?”
“Just because I can’t explain how we got here, doesn’t mean there is automatically a God.  Primitive man was not intelligent enough to understand how fire got here, so he worshiped it, made fire his God.”
“But lots of people believe in God.”
“Lots of people believe in astrology and demonology, and witchcraft and mythology, but that doesn’t make any of that crap true. Continue with you story. Tell me about the evil power in the pool.”
“There is no evil power in the pool. The evil power put the Creature in the pool. The Creature is just hungry. It’s tired of cats and birds. That’s why it’s eating people.” Timmi stretched her skinny body. “I’m tired. I don’t want to talk no more,” Timmi said.
“But I would like to finish before your school starts. You’ll have no time then. Time goes so fast. “



Chapter 8



Time moved slowly for Mavis: nothing could erase the Bugle’s headlines from Mavis’ fist-tight brain.  The reporter had dug her yellow journalistic fingers into Mavis’s life, tore it open, and exposed the wriggling innards for God and all to see. But at least they were cleaning the pool—acid bath they called it. Mavis’ soul needed an acid bath, she thought.  Mavis stood at the patio doors watching workmen at the pool. She was not interested enough to try to attract even the one that looked so much like Mel Gibson. The upper bell rang. She ran across the house toward the stairs but paused in front of the mirrored wall and brushed her hair back and admired how sexy she looked in one of Charles’s long-sleeved shirts with shorts under it.  She ran up the stairs to the ringing bell. The heavy, entrance door stuck, but she yanked until it slammed open to Detective Cole.
“I need to talk to you,” Cole said.
“I told you all I know.”
“I have some new information.”
She opened the door. Tom stood, next to her, wagging impatiently. Cole patted Tom’s head, walked down the inside stairs, turned, and then looked back up toward Mavis. God, she was beautiful, he thought. Never once had he screwed around on Brenda, but damn, every once in a while something like Mavis O’Roak came along and he started thinking how it would be to do the dastardly deed with someone other than Brenda. Brenda liked almost anything. But it was amazing how few truly-beautiful women God had created. Maybe God didn’t have enough of the good parts so he threw together anything he could get his hands on. God made some ugly humans but ugliness stood out in women. God made very few Mavis O’Roaks.  Cole hugged Tom while he spoke to Mavis. “Nancy Turner saw Sammy at Havern’s following you.”
“Men follow me.”
“Did you know Sammy was following you?”
“I was shopping at Havern’s. A man followed me. It could have been that Sammy fellow.”  She stretched her long, beautiful legs straight out and plopped them down on the driftwood coffee table.
“When men follow you, does Mr. O’Roak get jealous?”
Snapping back both legs like a startled grasshopper, Mavis jumped up. She walked toward the shelves by the patio doors, her back to Cole. “What does Charles’s jealousy have to do with anything?”
Cole leafed through his note book. “Mr. O’Roak’s plane landed at National at noon, three hours before you picked him up.”
Mavis frowned. “He took the early flight.” But she thought about Charles’s lie to her.  When she picked him up, he went into a great long story about how he almost missed the three o’clock flight. But he didn’t come back to this dreadful house and kill the pool guy—Sammy What’s His Name; he went and screwed Jessica Hunter or some other student lovely. Mavis examined Cole while he leafed further through his notebook. She was startled when he spoke again.
“You two were having problems in Baltimore,” he said.
“Boston,” she corrected. “He went to Baltimore. We came from Boston. They’re two different cities. You must have attended California schools.” She stood fingering a picture of Charles and herself, and then placed it back on the shelf. “Besides, all married people have problems, whether in Baltimore, Boston, or Point Dume.”
“These were serious problems. Serious enough to force a move to this creepy Hill.”
She turned toward Cole. “We had problems, but Charles didn’t kill that man.”
“Sammy Aldrege or the one in Boston?”
“Something in the pool killed Sammy Aldrege,” Mavis whispered.

Cole looked Mavis straight in the eye. “Mrs. O’Roak!” he laughed.
She charged at him. “You idiot!. Charles didn’t kill him. Something inhuman battered that man. Inhuman! No man could have done what that creature did to your precious Sammy!” She snatched his notebook from his hand—the cardboard backing slapped Cole on the side of his face—Mavis threw the tattered notebook across the room. “Get Out! “ She tripped against the jagged edge of the lacquered driftwood table as she turned and ran toward the stairs to the upper level.
Cole watched her dash up the stairs. His eyes snapped from Mavis’s tight shorts to a carving on one of the thick wood stair-supports. It had been there a year ago when he watched one of his officers try to save a dying Guadelupe Scartossi by pulling a glowing hot spike from her heart. The officer, Tiny Biggs, wrapped his mammoth hands around the blistering-hot spike, and in one quick jerk, pulled it from the old lady’s bony chest. Her heart popped out with the spike. Cole had turned away. He was looking toward the stair-support as the carving began etching itself into the rock-hard wood. It etched with each twitch of Guadelupe Scartossi’s heart-less body. It stopped etching when she stopped twitching. It was a five-pointed star. In its center was a circle with a serpent eating it own tail. Cole stared the current etching. It had not been there when he searched the house on the day they found Sammy’s foot and eyeball. Maybe O’Roak was some kind of Devil worshiper like Old Lady Scartossi. He probably etched it in after he mangled Sammy. The sign was some kind of occult thing. Maybe O’Roak thought it brought his superhuman strength. Maybe some of those Goof-Balls were right. Maybe if you truly believed in some power, some outside power, that belief could change you physiological abilities. O’Roak must have gotten strength enough from the symbol to rip Sammy apart. Cole patted Tom’s head then left the house.
Timmi drew the Creature for Mary Jean, but it was not acceptable. It had too many arms and was too big for the pool. “My father says the pool has an old box drain,” Timmi said.
“What’s a box drain?”
“He said it’s like a big, square vault under the pool.”
“That would give us a little more room to hide the Creature”
So they designed a Creature that would fit a square drain in the bottom of the pool, making sure it would not cost an arm and a leg. It would breathe fire, but to do much more would blow the budget by seventy-five or eighty thousand dollars.  To play Mavis O’Roak, they would try to get one of Hollywood’s most beautiful actresses.  But they both admitted there was none as beautiful as Mavis O’Roak. With Mary Jean’s rep and all, they could get about anyone they needed. But the big problem was that the screenplay needed more death scenes, more slaughter of the innocent. Timmi could come up with no more. But she had a feeling that more would come if she was just patient. Timmi hoped the Creature would strike again.  How else could she finish the screenplay? But the chances were zero. The damn pool had been cleaned. Timmi was sure that the Creature survived only in scummy water. But if it came back, she hoped the death scenes would include idiot Mavis and jerk Father. Maybe they could die in the same scene—maybe while doing it in the pool. No, Mary Jean wanted them to be the main characters so they would have to die toward the end and in separate scenes. The bitch Mavis would be hard to kill because she would not go near the pool. Father would be easy; he didn’t believe there was anything in the pool; he would dive in anytime he was invited; he would die.  What would she do if he died? She thought. Live with the Graffees? Not with Bimbo-Mother! Her father had to die. How? Maybe if it rained scum—like acid rain—then the Creature would come back. Please God let it rain scum.
The next morning; it was one of those perfect Southern California days. The sky was clear and an opaque blue. Light fluffy clouds moved slowly away from the ocean. The morning squeaked slowly into Mavis’s breakfast nook. At some ungodly hour, the workmen interrupted her tortured thoughts. She reluctantly moved from her sentry at the breakfast nook and trudged up the wooden stairs. She and Charles had a tennis date with Billy Boy. Beautiful Billy Boy. When he came to the door that first day, she decided she would be a good girl. But every night, since, she had nasty dreams that involved Beautiful Bill. She had decided he would be something special in her life. Maybe her lifesaver. He was most of the reason she had been reluctant to go from the Hill even for a few hours.  There was always that hope that he would be out front watering watering watering. Bill Norris would be an adventure, a succulent meal, something she would savor even if it made her belly ache.  Delicious thoughts ran through her mind.  It was funny, at first she had decided to stay in Boston—not come to the Left Coast. When she arrived on the Hill, Charles’ face dropped a mile. He had been praying she would stay in Boston.
And she almost did, but too many of her peers were on her case: telling her to straighten up her act or please don’t show up at So-And-So’s party or event. She had thought seriously about killing herself.  But then she was sure to go to Hell so she might as well go to California. The first week on the Coast, she had decided she had made a wrong choice, but then she saw Bill. First she saw him watching her from the upper window of his gorgeous house. Then later she saw him getting into his flashy, green Jag. The car was him. She would ride by his side someday. Now she would be content to go across the road and act as though she was interested in playing tennis. She would really be playing “Tease Beautiful Bill.”
Mavis stood at the patio doors looking at the pool. It had almost filled with clear water. She moved from the doors. Her skirted tennis outfit billowed when she walked and revealed ruffled bikini panties. “Charles, I’ve changed the housewarming. Is next weekend too soon?”
Charles came up behind her and put his arms around her. “If it’s not too soon for you.”
“I’m okay. I just feel older. Do I look older?”
He kissed the top of her head. “You look fantastic . . . beautiful . . . sexy.”
She turned in his arms and faced him. He kissed her forehead avoiding her lips. He dropped his hand down and tried to slip his powerful finger under her short skirt.  She twisted away. “Later,” she said. He used his fingers as though he were probing into some sun-crusted dirt at an unimportant dig—one he was expected to search but one he had previously decided “No treasure here.” Might as well do it hard and fast and go on to more important digs. Mavis moved away and stopped in front of the mirrored wall.
“Come on, Mavis, your sexy as Hell. Our new neighbor won’t be able grip his . . . .”
Mavis slugged him on his arm.
As the O’Roaks walked across Claymore Canyon Road to Bill Norris’s house, down the block, Detective Cole left the Graffee’s house and headed across to P.J. Drummer’s.  “The police must think Aldrege’s killer is from the neighborhood.” Charles nodded toward Cole.
Doan Park and a cameraman came from the side of the house. Mavis panicked and ran to Bill’s house but Charles was blocked by the cameraman. “Mr. O’Roak, is it true that you’re the prime suspect in the Sammy Aldrege murder,” Doan said.
Charles said, “No comment.” then pushed past the cameraman. He hesitated then turned back toward the camera and Doan Park’s probing microphone. “Yes I am a prime suspect. The idiot police think I am strong enough to tear a full grown man limb from limb. So their spending taxpayer’s money checking on me, when they should be concentrating on finding the people who did this.”
“People?” Doan said. “I thought there was proof that one person climbed over the fence.”
“I don’t know any of that. Apparently my sources are not as good as yours,” Charles said.
“Are you going to move from the Hill?”
“No.” Charles walked across to Bill Norris’s house.
“He doesn’t look big enough to tear someone apart,” Doan said. “But Boston said he probably murdered the guy there.”
“Maybe he brought back super-human powers from Togo,” the cameraman said. “Maybe you should do a full piece on Togo magic.
Mavis and Charles played doubles on a court on a land terrace below the Norris house. Between each set, Mavis would ask for a break so she could stand and observe the breathtaking view of Claymore Canyon with Big Mountain at its back. The pure white clouds hovered at the tip of Big Mountain and spread soft, white lines across the horizon. God was just across the canyon doing a little artwork, Mavis thought. But Mavis could care less about the beauty of the horizon: only her beauty mattered, and Bill’s appreciation of it. The break between the matches gave her a chance to stand on the edge of the land terrace and turn so the breeze ruffled her golden hair, and the midday light etched her perfect profile from head to toe. Bill would have to have more willpower than a gull with a two-pound clam to stop from coming over. Before the last set, Mavis looked straight at Bill and opened her lips slightly. In the backcourt, Charles watched young, beautiful Inga twitch her behind in the forecourt. Bill reached back and slammed the ball toward Charles. Charles lobbed the ball into the net in front of Mavis.
“Game!” she yelled.
They all walked to the center of their respective sides of the net.
“Next time, Inga plays behind me,” Charles said.
“Charles! You’re embarrassing poor Inga,” Mavis said.
Charles looked back and checked Inga’s buttocks.
“Charles!” Mavis warned.
Inside Bill’s magnificent house, Charles, Inga, and Timmi sat at the bar. Next to Timmi on the corner of the bar sat Sammy’s freshly rubbed radio. Timmi watched Charles lay his large hand on Inga’s exposed leg. Why do men like bleached out blondes who’s hair looks like straw, she thought. Maybe it makes men think of a barn and a roll on the hay, or maybe men think the bleach damages the bimbo’s brain and the bimbo becomes easy prey. Timmi giggled.
Charles turned toward her. “How’s school?” he said.
“I hate school,” Timmi said.
“So did I, but you have to finish. It’s the most important thing in your life.”
“You don’t need education if you got blond hair and big boobs . . . or some supernatural powers.”
Charles looked straight at her. “Powers?”
“You know, like witches have,” Timmi said.
“You believe in witches?”
“Yes.”
“Wow!” Charles turned to Inga. “This kid believes in witches.”
Inga smiled at Timmi. “Well kid, I don’t believe in witches, but I do my own horoscope each and every day and today it said I would meet a tall, dark, evil man. And his name would start with C.” 
Charles patted Inga's muscular thigh and turned back to Timmi. “What would you do if you had supernatural powers?”
“I’d get big boobs and blond hair,” Timmi said.
Charles laughed and kissed Timmi on the forehead, then brushed back her bright red hair. “Red’s nice. And you don’t need supernatural powers to be a blond with big boobs. You need money and a box of dye.” He laughed at his own humor, then swung around and took Inga’s hand and led her out to the side deck.
Across the room, Mavis and Bill moved around in the sparkling light cast from an aquarium.  “Can you come to my housewarming on Sunday?” Mavis asked.
Bill stroked her arm. “Don’t you think it’s a little too early? Will Cole be off Charles’s case by then? He’s been here twice.”  He stroked her arm again. “And that female reporter. She says Charles murdered some guy in Boston, and that he probably murdered the pool maintenance guy.
“Both Cole and that Doan Park are idiots. Charles killed in self defense in Boston. And Sammy Aldrege was not killed by anything human.”  She touched his hand. “Come to the house warming.”
Detective Cole and three other policemen searched the ground cover on both sides of Mavis’s house.  Cole was certain that when O’Roak killed Sammy Aldrege he must have dragged the bloody body remains over to the edge of Claymore Canyon and dumped them. But there were no drag marks. Charles O’Roak was slim but strong. Maybe he rolled the bloody body remains in a tarp and carried them to the edge. Three teams of climbers had searched the canyon, but the sheer walls with tangles of brush could snag and hide Sammy’s body anywhere on its thousand-foot trip. O’Roak did it, he thought, but how? He went to Baltimore, caught an early flight back, used his girlfriend’s—Jessica Hunter's–car, and drove back to the Hill. He crept around the house, set his briefcase on the top of the gate, and surprised Sammy. Something in the briefcase was sharp enough to cut Sammy up badly. How did he get it past the medal detectors at the airport? Maybe he planted the weapon somewhere near the house. Murder One. Premeditated Murder. Death Sentence. Or Life Without the Possibility of Parole. He surprised Sammy. Sammy didn’t just let O’Roak whack him without a fight. Sammy fought so hard his body was torn apart by the psycho Charles O’Roak. Sammy had been in the house when he lied to Jimmy Yodem about Mavis waiting for him up in the bedroom.  Sammy must have decided not to try to clean the scummy pool. He had probably called for his boss in order to beg off. Jimmy Yodem said he could hear it in Sammy’s voice. Yodem said Sammy had been complaining about the ‘scum pond’. He must have been surprised by O’Roak.
O’Rroak chased him with a machete or some knife big enough to cut off body parts. They trashed the house and scared Hell out of Tom. Somehow they ended up back out at the pool.  O’Roak cut him to bits, rolled him up in some kind of tarp, and threw him over the edge of Claymore Canyon. Sammy’s body was trapped somewhere on the side of the canyon. O’Roak hopped into his girlfriend’s car and raced back to the airport to meet Mavis and thus establish his alibi. Maybe a parking guard saw the little BMW parked overnight. His girlfriend denied he had used her car, but she had no witnesses at UCLA to verify that the little blue car was parked there all day while she attended classes.  Maybe he didn’t use the car. Maybe he rented a car at the airport. He used an Avis card in Baltimore and could have used it at LAX. Maybe he didn’t dump the body in Claymore Canyon.  Maybe he dumped the body in the trunk of what ever car he drove. O’Roak did it. It was just a matter of putting together the facts. Crime detection was much easier when you knew who the Perp was.
It was late afternoon when Cole saw Mavis and Charles O’Roak returning from Bill Norris’s house. Mavis tried to ignore Cole and the other policemen. She looked directly at Charles. “I love Bill’s house.”
“Not too much, I hope,” he said.
“Jealous?” She elbowed him.
“Of course.” He elbowed her back.
“I’m the one who should be jealous,” Mavis said. “You were drooling all over that Inga child.” She slugged his arm.  “And Bill’s monster kid drooled all over you. ‘How do you keep so trim, Mr. O’Roak?’ ‘Oh, just call me Charlie.’ I almost threw up.”
At Bill’s house Inga and Bill were discussing Timmi’s idea of taking in a cock fight in Topanga Canyon. Timmi thought the fights were bitchin, Bill didn’t mind them, and Inga got hotter than Hell.  The three sat at the tall black-iron kitchen table eating popcorn and pegging it at each other. Inga was closer to Timmi’s age than to Bill’s, but Bill was acting the most childish. Bill was pegging twice as much popcorn than the other two combined. He liked Inga, she didn’t take any crap from Timmi and Timmi certainly could dish out crap.
“Inga was screwing around with Charles,” Timmi said.
Bill looked very concerned. “Is that true, young lady,” he said to Inga.
“I ain’t no lady,” she said.
“Okay you little tart, is it true,” he demanded.
“I was screwing him around and sideways and up and down,” Inga said. They both began to laugh and started hugging each other.
“You two are sick,” Timmi said. “Just tell Miss Inga Tart to keep her hands off of Charles.”
“Oh, our little girl has a crush. I think the two of you are going to break up the O’Roak’s happy home,” Inga said.
Timmi jumped up and dumped the popcorn on Inga’s head. Inga mugged and let the popcorn catch on her lower lip. Charles laughed. Timmi darted to the door. “Get back here by eight, or we’ll miss the cockfights,” Inga said.
“Screw the cockfights,” Timmi said and ran through the side door.
Inga pulled the popcorn bowl from her head and looked at Bill; they both burst out laughing.



Chapter 9



Across the road. Mavis stood looking at the freshly filled pool. Charles came up behind her. He pressed against her, and then enfolded her with his arms.
“Would you kill for me?” Mavis asked.
“To protect you.”
“I mean . . . would you kill a lover. Detective Cole thinks you killed the pool guy because of me.”
“What do you think?”
“Something in the scummy water killed him.”
“Well, no more scummy water . . . It couldn’t be clearer.” He ran his hands down her back.  “Let’s do it in the pool.”
The stars appeared and reappeared when wind-whipped cloud fragments blew across the stars as God stirred the Heavens. Charles bounced on the diving board. Mavis stood at the pool’s edge in a one-piece French-Cut swimming suit.  “I don’t know,” she said.
“Nothing but me in the pool.”
“That should be enough to keep me out.”
Charles slipped back under and swam near the drain.  Two eyes watched from behind the grated drain cover at the bottom of the pool. As though through a gauzy haze, the Creature watched Charles swim over to the edge and tread water by Mavis’s dangling feet. Charles grabbed her foot and pulled slightly then surfaced. Mavis kicked water at him.  “You promised some pool action,” Charles said.
“Don’t you ever get enough?”
“Not of you,” he pulled her foot a little harder.
“Stay close.”
“We’ll be inseparable.”
The Creature watched through mucus-covered eyes as Charles treaded water and helped Mavis into the pool. They swam to the center of the pool directly overhead, then to the shallow water where Charles could stand. Charles held Mavis cradled in his arms. He kissed her. “Slip your suit off,” he said.
She protested, “There are police all over the place.”
“Screwum, they shouldn’t be snooping this late.”
After twisting around in his arms until she had pulled the scanty one-piece off, she put her arms around his neck and straddled his hips while he slipped his trunks down.  The Creature watched the churning and thrusting in the water for the good part of an hour. It watched as they crawled toward the shallow end and lay naked.  A clank came from the bottom of the pool.
“Here that? Let’s go!” Mavis said. She grabbed Charles’s hand and pulled him from the water and up the pool’s steps.
“It’s just air in the pipes,” he said.
The Creature watched the smoky figures of Charles and Mavis moving quickly out of the pool. Their legs moved rapidly toward the house. Behind them, on the flagstone, a toad, trying not to be stepped on by the moving feet, hopped near the pool then into the water. The patio door slid shut. Another clank came from the bottom of the pool. The toad swam frantically on the surface, but a flash came from the pool and the toad was gone.
Timmi was peeking through the slits in Mavis’ side fence. She ran up the sidewalk next to the house. Spotting Detective Cole at the front of the house, she ran to him, “It’s still in the pool! It almost got Charles and Poop For Brains when they were doing it in the pool.  It just ate a toad.”
“I’ll make you eat a toad if you don’t stop with the wild stories.” Cole turned and walked away but shouted back, “You should be a writer. Make up some BS about creatures who survive in a neighborhood swimming pool.”
The toad and the Creature’s own flesh helped it survive, but it knew it would have to eat more soon.  Its ancestors had the luxury of ten or twelve sacrifices a day, but this was a different time and a different place. The Creature had to survive at all costs. Its instinct fed it the knowledge that it was the last of the line. It had to survive for its genealogy to survive.  
The next day, April stood in the middle of the lower level, her suitcase in one hand and the small hand of her four-year-old daughter, Cleo, in the other. “He found out about my nooners,” she said.
Mavis pointed toward an open door on the canyon side of the house. “Take the guest room and confine your nooners to outside the house.” Mavis knelt and held out her arms. Cleo ran to her and hugged her.
“Cleo wants to swim,” Cleo said.
April turned and shouted, “We’ll all swim.” Swimming might take her mind off the current problem of staying with her step-mother and father, she thought. Dave had been good to her. But he was a bum lay. He had his buddies around all the time. He didn’t earn enough money. She chippied for all those reasons. But most of all she chippied because she needed to be needed even if it was some degrading act or another performed on some drunken salesman from Montana. She had even done it with Tony Scartossi—that fat, little, psycho pervert. Scartossi probably ratted. That smelly, little, incestuous bastard. Or maybe Dr. Feel Good, Roger Dunbar, did what he said he was going to do if she didn’t run away with him to a better place—maybe Irvine. Orthodontists did well in Irvine.  It was unbelievable: here she was only twenty years old and on the verge of divorce. Her mother, not Mavis but her real mother, would say I told you so. Mavis would understand. Mavis was a love. Mavis didn’t judge. Mavis was too screwed up to judge. April’s father would blame everyone but April; Charles O’Roak thought his little April could do no wrong. He had never noticed what a looser she had become. She wondered why she was able to fool all the men in her life but none of the women. Her mother, Mavis, and Antonia could see right through her. Antonia would let her work again. She would work more than just part-time. She would need some real, serious cash to find a place of her own and take care of Cleo.
Naked, April and Cleo splashed each other in the shallow end of the pool. They were unfazed by the strong smell of fresh chlorine. The huge pool looked like a giant, slate blue eye staring into the opaque sky, staring past Mavis who stood at the pool’s edge, in her French-Cut swimming suit, watching the freshly painted drain cover.  April turned toward Mavis. “Come on, Mother. Get in. Take off you suit. It feels sexy.”
“If your father comes home early, both you and he will be embarrassed.”
April wrinkled her nose. “Why, Mother, are you jealous of little old me?” She stood up just enough to bring her heavy breasts above the waterline. “I fantasized about dear old Dad when he was younger. I paraded around nude, but he showed no interest.”
“April, you wonderful, little, crazy nut, you may not have noticed, but we look a lot alike.  I’ve always thought that Charles married me because he couldn’t marry his own daughter . . . at least not in America.”
“Thank you for the complement, but I’m not crazy. And he married you because you look like all of his ex-wives . . . and me. We all are sent to the same plastic surgeon with Dad’s specifications for nose, breasts, and perfect butt.”
A clank came from the bottom of the pool. “Something’s in the pool,” Mavis screamed. “Get out! Both of you!”
“Mother?” April said.
Mavis waded down the steps and took Cleo. “Want to bake some cookies with Grandma?” She carried the smiling child to the house then looked back at April.  With perfect strokes, April swam across the pool.
The Creature watched through the grated drain cover. In the deep end, April swam across and touched the pool’s edge under the diving board, then started back with a slow, graceful, breaststroke toward the shallow end. Directly over the drain cover she stopped and began treading water. The Creature pushed the drain cover again, and then slid it to one side. April was slowly dog-paddling to the shallow end. The Creature started from the drain. It had been a long time since food of any consequence had been in the water—water that held a terrible metallic taste—water unlike any that the Creature’s ancestors had ever encountered. It thought it would change the taste of the food supply, but no matter food was food. Food did not come with regularity to the water.  But the starving Creature would have to wait for another day. April pulled herself from the pool.  She smoothed her long, wet hair across her head as she walked naked from the pool area. She would rummage around in her suitcase or go to Mavis’s closet and find some sexy dress, she thought. She would talk Grandma Mavis into baby sitting. Then she would boogie on down to Antonia Scartossi’s and see if she could find one of those sleazy, macho men who hung out there all day long. She couldn’t bring them back to the Hill. She could do them in the back of Scartossi’s. She started humming, “Sunny Came Home.”
Mavis turned and smiled at April. “Yes, I will watch Cleo while you hit the town. But tomorrow night is my night.”
April pointed her thumb up in the air and skipped toward the stairs leading to the master suite.
Mavis shouted at April, “If you burn a hole in one of my outfits, you own it retail. Don’t take the new black one.”
Timmi and Cole stood on the front lawn. Cole’s unmarked car was parked across the road. “I saw the pool guy get trashed,” Timmi said.
“Why didn’t you come forward?”
“I was afraid.”
“Okay, identify who did it.”
“The Creature in the pool. It has big teeth.”
“You’ve been watching too much ‘Elvira’”.
“Elvira’s got big boobs. I hate women with big boobs.”
“Like Mrs. O’Roak?” Cole said.
“I hope it gets that Mavis.”
“What?”
“I hope the Creature gets that Mavis and tears her boobs off!”
“You need some serious help. You’re too old to be talking like that. You’re too old to believe in creatures in swimming pools.”
“Something’s in the pool. It killed that pervert pool guy. I saw it. It’s going to kill anything that goes into the pool. I don’t want it to kill Charles. He bought this house but he doesn’t know how to control its power. You guys don’t believe it has power. I told you cops what happened to Old Lady Scartossi, but you never believed that either. I hope I never get so old that I think I’ve seen everything and know everything.”
“I haven’t seen everything, nor do I know everything. I do know there are no such things as creatures that live in swimming pools.”
“Dolphins live in swimming pools.”
“So a Rabid Dolphin tore Sammy Aldrege apart.”
“No, something that maybe just stays in the water awhile then goes back into the canyon.”
“When you find me literature on a mammal that lives in the mountains and kills its prey in the local swimming pools then carries its kill back into the mountains without leaving tracks, without a trace, come get me. You got my ear.”
Timmi frowned. She walked back toward her silent house. She turned and gently flipped Cole off. He smiled and flipped her back.



Chapter Ten



Early evening; one week later. Mavis’s ten-year-old niece, Kitty, played with Cleo in the shallow end of the pool. A party was going on in Mavis’s house. Muffled music drifted out to the pool.  The Creature watched Kitty’s and Cleo’s legs from underwater. A small plastic ship floated between them. The Creature knew it had to have food. Devouring its own flesh was against all of its instincts of self-preservation. Before the moon rode high, it would eat flesh. It would rip and tear flesh and smell the blood and fear of the sacrifices. The blood would trigger its digestive processes.
The kitchen and family room were filled with people. They were of all ages. Most had the high foreheads of Intellectuals. They were Charles friends, Mavis thought. Mavis had asked some of the working people from the mall, but only because she didn’t know any others. An invitation had been mailed to the Graffees and Drummer. The Graffees declined because they had to be out of town.  Mavis thought they went out of town so they could decline. There was no response from Drummer.  The only inhabitant of the Hill, Mavis cared about, was coming. Or so he said. He had promised.  He said he would have to drag his ball of fire along. Bill would be the only one she knew at the party.  Charles had invited very strange people. Charles had invited Nicholas Turner which meant Nancy Turner would be trailing along. If her reputation was correct, she would get stone drunk and strip naked by midnight.
Mavis wore a white on white summer dress. She was easily the most stunning woman at the party. April approached her. Her dress had a high neck but the material was transparent and slit on both sides up to her hips. “Where’s your sexy neighbor?” she asked Mavis.
“Not here . . . yet.”
“Been with him . . . yet?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?” April laughed. “Did you screw him?”
“April!” Mavis looked around to see if anyone had heard.
The upper bell rang. Mavis walked across the house toward the entrance. Charles came from another direction. They collided at the stairs. Charles caught her and kissed her. They continued up the stairs arm in arm, jerked open the tight door, and invited in four new party-goers.
Charles introduced the new people: Jack and Louise Carroll, and Jack’s boss, Professor Hunter, and Hunter’s daughter, Jessica. Mavis shook hands all around.  “Charles, find something for our guests to drink. I’ll be along.”
Stepping between the Professor and Jessica, Charles looped his arms through theirs and moved toward the party. The Carrolls followed. Charles turned and looked back at his wife. She stood at the open door looking in the direction of Bill’s house. Charles saw the look in her eyes. It would start again, he thought. He had moved her across country. It would start again—right across the road. Coming to the Hill was supposed to prevent the reoccurrence of infidelity—hers of course.  Men did it women hid it. No matter. She would get hers. She was nothing as a wife. She did no wifely things. She primped all day. Painted some stupid nightmare canvas. Shopped till she dropped. She did wifely things until he had her nose and boobs and butt done. She looked fantastic when they first met, but he wanted her perfect so he paid big bucks to have her retooled. A couple of months after the last surgery, rumors about affairs started. So he made a deal with Scartossi and brought her to the Hill to isolate her from future lovers, and to prepare her to be a sacrifice towards his immortality, but she still rooted out a lover: Pretty Boy Bill Norris. Pretty Boy was in for more trouble than he could possibly handle, Charles thought.
Across the road, Bill and Timmi were coming through the entrance of Bill’s house. They started across the road. “If you sneak out of the party, I’ll find you and beat the crap out of you.”
“If I see you screwing with that Mavis, I’ll rat to Charles,” Timmi said.
He struck her across the mouth. Blood bubbled from the open cut on her lower lip. He pushed a handkerchief against her mouth, and then pushed her toward Mavis’. They were met at the bottom of the walkway by Mavis.
“I thought you might not make it,” she whispered to Bill.
“I wouldn’t have missed seeing you for all of the world.” He hesitated. “Oh, you know my favorite daughter, Timmi.” He nodded toward Timmi.
“I’m his only daughter,” Timmi said. “He wouldn’t take no favorite to no crap eating party like this.”
Mavis looked at the bloody handkerchief. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“Yes,” Bill said. “She tripped coming over here.”
“He bashed me in the mouth like he always does!”
Bill nodded no, and then looked around to see if anyone was listening.
Mavis shrugged. “The children are in the pool. You know the way. Stop at the bathroom and wash that blood off your face.”
Timmi gave Mavis a deadly look, and then ran across the house toward the back patio. As she hurried past Charles, they exchanged smiles.
“Hey, Kid, hold it there,” Charles said. “What happened to your lip?” Charles moved toward Timmi and bent down to the petite teen.
“I bit it,” she said.
“Looks like you should have.” Charles took her by the hand and led her back up toward the guest bath. In the bathroom, Charles sat on the flower-patterned cover of the commode lid and dabbed at Timmi’s cut lip with a knotted-up, wet washcloth. “If he ever hits you again, tell one of your school counselors. If they don’t do something, I will.
“Okay . . . Charles. Charles, do you think I’m pretty?”
“Of course.” Charles continued to dab the cloth gently against her lip.
“Do you want to do it?”
He continued to look directly at the cut on her lip. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”
“I mean, do you want to do me like my father is going to do that Mavis.” Timmi nodded toward the living room. Her lip jerked away from the wet cloth in Charles' hand and began bleeding.
He looked directly into her eyes. “That’s a mighty inviting offer, but our ages are a problem.”
“You think I’m too young. Girls of fourteen can legally do it in Georgia.”
“This ain’t Georgia, and you’re not fourteen.”
Timmi pulled back and looked at him. “I’m sixteen. I’ll be seventeen very soon.”
“When will you be seventeen?”
“In less than seven months.”
“Damn, I’d better start shopping for a gift. I have less than two hundred days.” He looked wide-eyed at Timmi.
“If I was older, would you do me?”
“Of course.”
“How old?” she asked and stroked his hand.
“The day you’re eighteen, call me. I’ll take you on the best date you ever had.”
“I never had a date,” she said.
“With that red hair, and as pretty as you are, you’ll have a million dates by our date time.” Charles stood. “You won’t want poor, old me by then.”
“Yes I will. Do you know that song that says ‘I’ll be right here waiting for you’? That’s what I’ll do.” Charles began to leave the bathroom.
“You know they’re going to do it,” she said. He turned and looked at her.  “They’ll do it when you're gone,” she said.  Charles was silent. “I could take a picture and show it to you," she said. "I have a thirty-five that takes good pictures even in the dark. Or I could use a flash. They would see the flash and chase me. But they would have to beat me to death to get the film. I would swallow it then poop it later—I saw that in a R rated movie . . . .” Charles put his hand on Timmi’s fragile shoulder and kissed her forehead and then left the bathroom.
Mavis and Bill had searched out a private corner and were explaining to each other how they felt when each first saw the other. Charles ran over and took Bill by the arm. “I want you to meet some people.”  Looking back at Mavis, Bill looked like an obedient pet being led to his doom. She smiled in sympathy.
Mavis stood quietly at the patio doors watching Timmi and the other girls, but she was thinking about Bill. She wondered if the thing between them had a future. He had been with a lot of women. Course she was no virgin. He certainly looked good. He used weights or something. Mavis needed a lover who could physically move her around—lift her and move her to a new position or two. He was well read. Mavis hated a lover who could not carry on a conversation after the loving.  Bill was it. She could feel it. She could taste it. They were soul mates. The convenience of him living across the road was just one of Life’s little coincidences. Her mother had told her that it was a miracle to find someone to love who loved you also. There were billions of people on the earth, and each one had a different matrix in their brain telling them who the perfect mate should be. The matrix contained parts of their mother, their father, their sister, their brother, mixed with parts of teachers, preachers, leaders, and movie and T.V. stars. There were millions of different mixes. So for one’s matrix to match up with the endowments of someone who had a mental matrix with your own endowments was a true miracle. Most miracles were not convenient—they had to be searched for with diligence.  But maybe God brought her to the Hill so she could find Bill. God knew she needed someone. Charles was a bigoted philanderer. She needed someone. She needed Bill.
“Miss me?” Bill whispered into Mavis’s ear.  Mavis was startled. She turned and stared at him. "Forget me already?” he said.
“No. I’ve been standing here thinking about us.”
“Don’t think so hard. It’ll cause lines in you beautiful face.” He put his hands on her upper arm and pulled her toward him. “You’re beautiful, Mavis.”
“Most men like the young and tender,” she said. She pointed toward April posturing before a group of men.
“Some men.” He looked over at Charles dominating a conversation with Professor Hunter and Jessica. Charles’s and Jessica’s hips were touching. He looked back toward April. “Did April invite Tony Scartossi?”
“No, I think he’s Charles’ friend. Charles bought the house from Tony’s mother, the older woman over there.” Mavis pointed to a tall, rumpled looking woman standing with Charles and Professor Hunter.
“I know the Scartossis. You should try to keep both Charles and April away from them. They bring trouble. April works sometimes at Antonia’s, doesn’t she?”
“Antonia’s?”
“Antonia Scartossi.” He pointed toward the same rumpled woman.
“Oh, Charles introduced her as Mrs. Manny Scartossi.”
“Yeah, that was the name of her husband and her brother.”
“Her brother and husband had the same name?”
“They were the same person,” Bill said.
“You mean they did it together?” she motioned unconsciously with her fingers through her fist, “and they had Tony?” Bill nodded yes. “Incest ain’t best. Look what it turned out,” Mavis said. They both started giggling.
“Shhh. Don’t get me laughing about something that ain’t funny.” He tried to stifle the giggles with his hand.
“He’s his own first cousin,” Mavis giggled.
“That saves on Christmas presents,” Bill said. They both giggled into each others hands.
Screams came from the pool. Mavis turned to see her niece, Kitty, scrambling frantically over the edge. Mavis jerked open the door. “Aunt Mavis,” Kitty grabbed at Mavis, “she says a man was smashed to bits by a Creature in the pool.” She pointed at Timmi.
Mavis squatted down in the doorway. “They say there’s nothing in the pool. But I would prefer it if you and Cleo came out.”
Kitty pointed again at Timmi. “She’s a liar.”
At the front entrance, Detective Cole slipped through the front door, moved up the stairs to the upper level and around the corner into the shadows. Tom saw him and shifted his position by the upper banister to let Cole pass. Tom stretched and yawned and then wagged after Cole’s tiptoeing shadow. Inspector Davis didn’t condone what he was doing, but Cole knew he would not get fired if he were found out. The Inspector, like Cole, knew O’Roak was guilty. But they had nothing to take to the D.A. The D.A. would laugh them right out of the district if they approached him with what they had. They needed hard evidence; evidence that would show some relationship between Mavis O’Roak and Sammy Aldredge. They needed witnesses—two would do—but there appeared to be none except Timmi Norris with her wild stories to protect Charles O’Roak. The brat probably saw the murder, saw O’Roak hacking poor Sammy into tiny, blood-spurting pieces, but the weird kid wanted to protect O’Roak. Her brain created a creature that lived in the pool.  O’Roak did it. He had no alibi worth salt. He could have easily made it from the airport and back. He had the motive: Sammy was screwing his wife. He had the weapon: access to the museum’s exotic weapons. Cole pictured himself going to the museum and seeing a clean outline of a missing weapon on the ornate wall.  He rummaged through Mavis’s drawers. The see-through stuff was hard to put back. He felt the side of his lip where she had pegged him with his notebook. Being with Mavis got guys hurt . . . or killed.
Downstairs, Bill stuck his head through the open, patio door. “Timmi, cool it out there,” he shouted.  “If you can’t be out there without causing trouble, come inside.”
“Go get screwed,” Timmi said under her breath.
“I heard you,” Kitty said. “I heard you. I’m going to tell.” She started toward the patio doors. Timmi jumped forward and grabbed the young girl’s arm.
“If you tattle one more time, I’m going to stuff your pea-brain head down the drain and watch the Creature suck it dry,” Timmi said.
“There’s no Creature in the pool.” Kitty dove into the pool. She paddled to the center and splashed water toward Timmi who was standing at the edge of the pool. “Liar. Liar. Liar.” Kitty said.
Timmi shouted back at her. “Your crazy aunt Mavis told everybody. There’s something in the pool.”
“Liar!” Kitty screamed.
Through mucous-covered eyes, the Creature watched the argument. Kitty treaded water in the center of the pool directly overhead.
“My father’s going to do it to you crazy aunt Mavis.”
“He must have done it with a pig to get you,” Kitty said.
Mavis stood at the open, patio doors. She heard the Crazy Aunt Mavis bit. Her face registered resignation. She closed the patio door. Timmi watched her close the door. She smiled. Charles would watch that Mavis' every move. He would see that Timmi was right. He would come to her long before she turned eighteen, but she would wait even if it took until she was twenty or over the hill at thirty. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a penny. She tossed the penny into the deep end of the pool. “I wish that Mavis and Dear, Old Dad would take a swim tonight in this pool.”
“What are you mumbling about?” Kitty asked from the center of the pool.
“None of you’re friggen business,” Timmi said.
“You said the F word again. I’m telling.”
“I did not. If you say one more word about me to anyone, I’ll come in there and drown your ugly butt,” Timmi said, and then walked toward the patio doors. She stood outside and watched Charles run his fingers along a young woman’s arm. The young woman was about the same age as Inga; just a few years older than Timmi. It Teed her off to watch Charles touch other girls, but it was good that he was not faithful to that Mavis.
Mavis was sitting on the edge of the driftwood coffee table. “Drink?” Bill said.
“Punch with extra vodka. Extra, extra vodka,” Mavis said. She watched Bill walk away. He moved with the grace of an old world conqueror. Nothing was outside his reach. Nothing would stop him from having it all—including Mavis. She would let him conquer her—maybe not tonight, but soon. The rise and fall of Rome, of breasts, of Mavis. Only Mavis could be put in the Tower of London and end up falling for another inmate. Charles had isolated her, and in her isolation she had found her love. This was it. He was everything she had ever wanted. The matrix in her brain ticked off every corner, and he fit exactly. Charles was finished—not that he would mind. Bill would romance her and some day soon ask her to move from the Hill. This time she would be true. She would never look at another man. And she would never return to the Hill and the wicked pool.  She turned and watched Kitty swim across the pool. Timmi stared through the patio doors near the kitchen. She turned and looked Mavis square in the eyes. A chill started in Mavis’s belly and iced its way to her brain. Timmi was not just some child to try to placate because Mavis wanted to screw her father; Timmi was an evil child, a truly evil child.  Timmi turned and began to walk around the edge of the pool, staring in the direction of the drain. Cleo sat in the shallow end playing with a plastic ship. Mavis turned. She started looking around the room. People were in clusters here and there: Charles and Professor Hunter and his daughter were toward the corner next to the kitchen; the group that April had been posturing for was still talking, but without April; Bill was nowhere in sight. Mavis walked through the crowd. She moved close to Antonia Scartossi. How could the woman show her face? Mavis thought. Everybody knew she had slept with her brother. And that Tony Scartossi was her brother’s son . . . and her son. Mavis would kill herself. But the woman looked her straight in the eye. They were hollow eyes, cheated by life. They did not care what Mavis or anyone else thought.  Mavis moved away quickly.
She stopped to speak to Jack Carroll. “Charles speaks highly of you,” she said.
Jack looked her up and down. “Charles wouldn’t say an unkind word about anyone . . . except Jessi.”
“Jessi?”
“Jessica Hunter,” he said. “Charles kids her about her boyish figure. Anyone would look boyish next to you.”
“Why, Mr. Carroll, thank you.” She walked back toward the dining area but stopped and looked at herself in the mirrored wall, then smiled, smoothed her dress, and looked back at Jack Carroll. He still looked her way. Her head turned quickly back to the reflection in the mirrored wall; a reflection of Bill and April by the goldfish pond under the stairs. They were looking at the fish. Mavis brushed her hair with her fingers and started toward them but stopped when the reflection showed April slowly moving Bill’s hand down her back to the thigh-high slit in her dress. Mavis stormed back toward the kitchen.



Chapter Eleven



Upstairs in the master bedroom, Detective Cole moved around the room looking in dresser drawers and closets. Tom followed behind, pushing his nose into Cole’s upper thigh, trying to get Cole to attempt to pull the large rubber bone from his clamped teeth. Cole tugged a couple of times, but Tom’s growling became alarmingly loud. “Shut your yap,” Cole whispered. “We’re going to get caught.” Tom cocked his head, sat down abruptly on his swishing tail, and let out with a piercing bark. “Jesus! Tom, shut up.” Cole got down on his knees and put his arm over Tom’s shoulders.  Tom quieted down, but began lapping the side of Cole’s dodging face. Cole’s face twitched to the left. Bingo! Wedged under the heavy wooden dresser was the leather-wrapped handle of a weapon. Cole walked on his knees over to the handle and pulled. It was a Malaysian Batik, a butterfly knife used for close combat. He had seen one only once before, but he would always remember. The thick, flat blade had hammered past him and cut off his partner’s head. It was five years ago, but he could still see the blood pumping from Officer Pat Jenk’s open neck. It was a Batik that time and it was a Batik this time, he thought. O’Roak did it with a Batik; he chopped up Sammy. He could get a warrant and come back tonight. But maybe there was more hard evidence right under his nose.
In the kitchen, Mavis dipped some punch, and then poured an extra large dose of vodka. After slugging it down, she poured another. Charles came into the kitchen and gently put his hand on her shoulder. She turned. “Oh! Charles,” she said.
“You okay, Love?” he asked. “You look troubled.”
She kissed his hand. “A little troubled about the children.”
“I’ll have them come in.”
“No. It’s just me.”
Jessica came in, walked over to Charles, and looped her arm through his. “Break it up, lovebirds. I need Charles for a sec.” Jessica walked out with Charles in tow.
A middle-aged woman with partially exposed breasts walked into the kitchen. Mavis tried to hide in the shadows. Nancy Turner, the mattress of the local swingers, approached her. “I told Detective Cole I saw poor Sammy following you around Havern’s. Cole said your husband killed my poor Sammy.” Mavis tried to leave the kitchen, but Nancy Turner grabbed her by the upper arm.  “Sammy never did anything but bring love,” Nancy Turner began sobbing hysterically and beating on Mavis’s back.
An old, heavyset man grabbed Nancy by the back of the neck and dragged her into the pantry. Mavis walked from the kitchen with controlled calm. She was more exasperated than she had been since leaving Boston. She went to the family room but looked the length of the house at the couple under the stairs. Charles and Professor Hunter came up and blocked her view.  “Love, Professor Hunter would like to examine our egg, but I told him it mysteriously disappeared. You didn’t throw it out, did you?” Charles asked.
“What?” Mavis said. She was still watching the couple under the stairs.
“The egg. What ever happened to the egg?”
“I thought you took it,.” she said. She looked toward the pool then rushed through the family room. Before Mavis could open the patio doors, a hand touched her shoulder.
“Mother!” April whispered softly.
Outside, Kitty splashed in the pool, while Cleo sat in the shallow end peeing in the water and laughing a the purple coloring that slowly circled her plastic ship. Timmi stood staring at the drain. “I can swim better than you,” Kitty said.
“I ain’t crazy like you,” Timmi said. “You’ll get yourself eaten.”
Kitty swam toward the shallow end.  Two eyes watched from behind the grated cover. Kitty stopped by Cleo at the shallow end. “I can swim better than her, huh, Cleo?” Kitty said. Cleo nodded.
Timmi laughed. “That dumb kid’s going to get eaten, too.”  A clank came from the bottom of the pool.  “Something’s down there,” Timmi shouted.
Racing to the pool’s edge, Kitty clambered up and stood on the edge looking down at the pool, then screamed at Timmi, “You tricked me. Nothing’s there. Liar! Liar!” She ran to push Timmi into the water but Timmi sidestepped and Kitty tumbled back into the water.  No drain cover blocked the view of the Creature. It watched Kitty plunge deep toward the bottom of the pool, then splash toward the surface. In the distance, the Creature could see Cleo working her way out to the deeper end of the pool. Kitty popped up at the edge of the pool farthest from the patio doors.
Walking around the edge of the pool to the deep end, Timmi stopped , bent down, and looked toward the drain. The Creature could see Timmi’s distorted face. “The thing’s off.” Timmi pointed toward the drain.
“What thing?” Kitty asked.
Timmi bent down further. “You know . . . the drain thing.” Timmi walked around the pool toward Kitty. She was certain something was in the pool. She had been the only one to see the Creature’s work in progress, she thought. Kitty and Cleo were both small—they wouldn’t even be hors d’ oeuvres for the Creature. It had spun old Sammy around as though he was a cheap party noisemaker. The jerky kids wouldn’t mean crap. When Bimbo-Mother used to tear apart Bill with her poisoned words, Timmi thought nothing was as evil as her mother, but mother was small potatoes compared to the Creature in the pool.  Everything on the Hill was evil. Because there were no churches. The steeples on the churches were some kind of antennas. They sent out some kind of protective radio waves. But there were no churches on the Hill so there was no protection. So the Hill let Evil stay. Before she came to the Hill, she had been a good girl with good thoughts most of the time. They didn’t live close to a church, but there must have been one close enough to protect her. After she came up to the Hill, all she could think of was bad things to happen to Mavis and other people who got in her way. She had become evil. She had smiled when the pool guy died. She was evil. She felt powerful. Would she smile when the Creature ate the jerky kids? She had told her father and Cole and Mary Jane about the Creature in the pool, but they all thought they knew it all. They’re brains were padlocked against any new information. Mary Jean would listen, but she was only interested in making her silly movie. Mary Jean was wrong about there not being a God or Satan. There had to be both—and many more entities a person could ask for help or to do good or evil. Life would be too hard to live without help from somewhere. Life could just screw a person around if there was no God or no Satan. Or no Witchcraft or no Astrology. A person would be powerless without something. Hell, life would be a scum-pond if a person couldn’t ask for help to control a situation or control some person who was trying to screw with them. Evil was more powerful than Good. With Evil, you could get back at people. Old Lady Scartossi knew how to use Evil. But Timmi knew she herself had not grown evil enough to let the jerky kids stay in the pool. If the Creature attacked, she would drag both the kids from the pool. She might let the Creature chew off Kitty’s fat, little legs but she would still pull her from the pool. Timmi stood above Kitty while Kitty treaded water at the side of the pool. “It’s down there,” Timmi said.
“You’re a liar!”
“Go see. Here . . . take a stick,” Timmi turned and broke a branch from a bush in the pool planter. She turned back and handed it to Kitty.  Timmi guessed she had become more evil than she had thought or else she wouldn’t have sent Kitty to her certain death. The kid would be torn apart. Maybe she was just bored and looking for something to do.
Kitty dove toward the drain and pushed the cover back over the drain.  Two eyes watched as Kitty’s face moved closer into its view.  Kitty didn’t see anything, but she could smell something. She jabbed the stick into the darkness of the drain. She plunged it through the grating and into the eye of the Creature. Black liquid erupted into the pool.  Deep in the cells of the Creature, a spear drove into its ancient ancestor’s brain, spilling sticky mucous on the rocky beach. Ritual drums echoed through the Creature. Pain tore through its damaged eye. The rock-ended spear had been driven into its ancestor’s brain by Taugtaka the Mammoth Killer. Its ancestor was caged and deprived of moisture, then tied to stakes before the brave Taugtaka the Mammoth Killer would dare to go close. The wooden-shafted spear was driven into its ancestor’s brain then the spear’s shaft was set afire. The shaft burned down to the chiseled rock end, then the molten hot rock split the Creature’s ancestor's brain. The ancestor’s scream split the earth under the cage. The earth vomited purple fire from the Underworld and destroyed all who had attempted to destroy the special Serpents of Dan Lord of the Vodu. The Creature stirred in the drain. Kitty darted for safety. She surfaced and clung on the pool’s edge across from Timmi.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” Timmi said.



Chapter Twelve



“I’m getting out!” Kitty scrambled from the shallow end of the pool. She grabbed the screaming Cleo and dragged her up the steps of the pool and onto the flagstone.
Timmi ran around the edge of the pool. She watched as a shadow in the pool darted after Kitty. She turned and ran with Kitty and Cleo. They jerked the patio doors open. They burst through the open doors. Kitty and Cleo drenched the carpet with water. Mavis, April, and Bill all turned at the same time.  “We saw it!” Timmi screamed.
“It tried to eat me,” Kitty said.
“It’s in the pool.” Timmi took her father’s hand and led him through the open patio doors. Party-goers followed Mavis and April out to the patio and watched as Timmi pointed into the lighted swimming pool water. “I saw it. Honest!” she said to her father.
Bill looked over at Kitty. “Did you see it?”
“Timmi told me,” Kitty said.
Bill turned to Timmi and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Another prank!” He struck her across the face with his open hand. Her lip split open again and whipped a string of blood across her father’s angry face. He wiped the blood from his face and began to strike her again. Timmi looked toward Charles, but the helping hand came from Mavis.
She grabbed Bill’s hand and held it until he dropped it to his side. Mavis put her hands on Timmi’s and Kitty’s shoulders and walked the young girls toward the house. She turned to Bill. “Something’s in the pool.” she said.
Most of the party-goers followed Mavis back into the house.  Tony and Antonia Scartossi knelt at the edge of the pool. “Is it the Serpent?” Antonia whispered.
“It must be. But I didn’t put it into the pool.” Tony said.
They both began chanting, “Oh, Dan, Lord of the Vodu, appear. Heed our command.  Grant your Disciple’s every desire . . . Good or Evil. Light or Dark.” They stopped when April and Bill walked to the other side of the pool.
Bill nodded at Tony.  Antonia grabbed Tony by his hairy wrist and pulled him toward her. She whispered in his ear. He looked down toward the drain, and then accompanied his mother/lover into the house. They slid the patio doors shut then like dark clowns in a cheap carnival they smiled back at Bill and April.
In the upstairs bedroom, Detective Cole was still searching. He had been through every drawer. It was time to search the closets. He opened the side closet door. It was a storage closet that held nothing but old winter coats good for Boston or Baltimore or maybe for California skiing. Some newer clothes hung to the far side. Probably new stuff that had overflowed from the two walk-in closets, he thought. Tom wagged his way into the back of the closet and came back with Sammy’s medallion. Cole patted the wagging retriever while he attempted to extract the medallion from Tom’s clinched teeth. The retriever tugged and twisted and was getting the best of Cole, but Cole jerked hard and yanked the dog toward him. Tom’s pads skidded across the expensive carpet but dug in and stopped. He swung his aristocratic head back and forth and began to growl. The growling grew louder. Cole looked around anxiously, then dropped to his knees and attempted a replay of their last confrontation. The retriever allowed Cole to pry and pull on his jaw with both hands until finally the medallion dropped free. Cole picked up the medallion and moved to the light of a table lamp. “Sweet Sammy; Super, Super Sammy,” Cole read softly. He whistled. “This is it,” he said. “The last nail.” He patted Tom on the head, and then returned the Batik to its hiding place under the dresser. Its flat, sharp blade grazed the dresser leg and sliced deep into the wood. Cole slipped it back, and then pushed it under the dresser, back against the wall. He hefted the medallion and started to put it in his pocket but thought better of it and looked around the room. He crawled on his knees to the vanity and slipped the medallion behind one of its polished black legs. He would get a warrant, he thought, and come back with witnesses as soon as he tidied up the room.
Everyone had cleared the patio but Bill and April. The pool light was on. Bill started to walk away.  “Stay here with me,” April whispered. The pool light went off suddenly. April looked toward the pool. “Mavis will be mad at you for striking Timmi. Mavis was beat hard as a child. She hates anyone who does it.” April reached around and began unhooking her dress. “I like some violence in a man.  You can beat me if you like. If it gets you hot.” She had undone most of the hooks on her transparent dress. “Let’s go skinny-dipping.” She grabbed Bills hand. Bill pulled away and headed for the house. He looked back at April.  She stepped from her dress as it folded onto the flagstone. “You think I’m bad. Mavis is bad, too. The only difference is that she’s been bad a lot longer. You’re real stupid. You’re going to miss the real party . . . right out here.” She dove, nude, into the pool’s dark water.
Bill turned from her and entered the tri-level. He thought the world was a stupid gauntlet.  He should have been able to be with April and cause no complications with Mavis, but the world was full of traps. One had to watch for the traps at the most ridiculous moments—moments when one should be thinking about total pleasure, moments when a guy like Bill was about to eat a piece of chocolate cake or drink an extra glass of wine or stay out all night or have sex all day with the neighbor’s wife and daughter. Life should have been designed so that one could eat the cake and drink the booze and ball the women without repercussions.  He walked toward Mavis. She looked angry. She was mad because he struck Timmi. He had to learn not to strike his daughter in public.
The Creature watched through the grated drain cover and the dark water into the moonlit sky. April splashed around overhead. A clank came from the bottom of the pool. April looked down directly at the Creature. She swam frantically to the edge and tried to scramble up the side of the pool. There was a flash from the pool and a slash appeared across the backs of her legs. She screamed, and then fell back into the water. The Creature would have food. The food would not be able to escape. The Creature would stimulate the food so it came twisting and thrashing into its jaws.  All time slowed for April. She looked toward the party. Midway across the house, Mavis and Bill walked toward the entrance. People moved in the kitchen and family room. The loud music drowned out her screams for help. A drunk staggered by the patio door, stumbled over the driftwood coffee table, and crashed to the floor. He tipped his still-clutched glass toward a screaming April, then passed out. Charles and Professor Hunter ran to aid the drunk. They laid him on the couch.  The family room cleared. April was going to die for her sins.
April reached for a soda bottle at the edge of the pool and threw it at the patio doors. The bottle hit the center post; it bounced off, and silently shattered on the flagstone. “Help me someone! Help Me!” She turned and faced the center of the pool. A dark shadow circled in the water. She had an urge to open her legs and make sexual gestures to the thing in the pool. Maybe that was what it wanted. That was what everyone else wanted from her. But God might be watching, she thought.  She edged slowly toward the shallow end. There was another flash from the pool and another wide cut appeared across her face from the left cheek up across her right eye. She screamed. The pain was unbearable. Her beautiful face would have to be repaired for her funeral. She would be laid out in her transparent white dress. All the men would ravish her with their eyes. Her father would weep because he never told her he loved her. Her mother and Mavis would stand like identical bookends at the sides of the coffin. The pallbearers would be those things that are half-man, half-stallions.  Dave would kiss her forehead. “If you come back, you can have a hundred lovers. Just come back, please. I love you,” he would say. It was all David’s fault, she thought. If he had not made such a big deal about one of her late nights, she would still be at home instead of in Mavis’s pool with something that wanted to eat her. If David had just understood her and let her be free for a couple nights a week. She was too young to be tied down. Too young too die.  Her naked body was freezing. It shivered uncontrollably, causing ribbons of blood to run from her gashed face and dance downs her breast. She screamed to the silent heavens.
The Creature knew the prey would be easy to kill, but the Creature’s digestive juices were barely churning. The prey was not trying to live, not trying to escape. The prey was like some diseased gazelle praying for death. It would tear small pieces from the prey. Make it scream and twist and try to escape.
In the house, Mavis and Bill argued. They faced toward the entrance, their backs toward the patio doors, and April’s slow death. “We’ve stood here and talked about nothing,” Bill said. “You still haven’t told me why the cold shoulder. If it’s Timmi, I promise I’ll never strike her again.”
“She’s an evil child. She should be beaten once a day like I was.”
“Then why the cold shoulder?”
“I saw you. I saw your hand,” Mavis said.
“What?”
“I saw you with April by the pond. I saw your hand.”
“Then you also saw my hand pull away. I’m not after that child. I left her, naked, in the pool.”
Mavis turned and looked quickly at the patio doors. She screamed. The entire length of the house away, a blood-streaked April staggered from the pool. She stood hunched over, clawing at the patio doors. Suddenly, she was snapped downward, leaving bloody hand marks on the bottom of the glass. Mavis started toward the doors, still screaming. People rushed toward her to help her. She fought her way, in shock, toward the bloodstained patio doors. Mavis’s body was fighting against some invisible force, like pushing through a wall of Saran Wrap. Her body pressed forward, but she seemed to get nowhere. The patio doors were moving away from her.
Detective Cole raced down the stairs from the upper level. He broke through the clutch of party-goers and made it to the patio doors ahead of the screaming, hysterical Mavis. Mavis charged through the doors, knocking Detective Cole, against the house, only feet from the pool light switch.  The white porcelain switch was speckled with blood. Cole flipped the switch. Light flooded the pool.
Mavis dove through the blood-coated surface of the water. She swam toward the drain. She knew April was down there somewhere. April couldn’t be dead. God could not be that hateful.  Mavis splashed around underwater in her waterlogged dress. Through the bloody haze, she saw something being pulled into the drain. Her lungs felt as if they would burst, but she headed toward the drain. Two glowing, yellow eyes looked directly into her brain. They drew her closer. She saw the outline of the Creature’s head in the drain. Next to it was another head. Mavis’ mouth gaped open and gorged with blood-laced water when she screamed. The Creature snapped open its jaws and spewed April’s innards through the drain grates into Mavis’s face. When she surfaced in the shallow end, blood clung to her white dress and hair. She was screaming.
Cole was at the edge of the pool. The pool lights brought an eerie, pink tone to the water.  There was nothing in the pool. The light exposed it like an open melon—a melon that had been scooped out and nothing was left but a ring of blotched pink around the edge. He checked the blood streaks that led from the patio doors to the pool, but there were no tracks leading away. He looked at the startled faces stationed around the pool. Where was O’Roak?



Chapter Thirteen



Late that evening Mavis and two paramedics sat on the stairs. Mavis looked toward Detective Cole, squatting next to Cleo, Kitty, and Timmi. Behind them, party guests were being questioned by officers and investigators. The house was a mess, she thought. She would have to clean before Charles returned. Where was Charles? It was just like Charles to never be around when there was trouble with April. April had done something very bad—Mavis couldn’t remember what—but it was really bad, something Charles would be really Teed about. He was always Teed about something. He would be Teed about the dirty house and he would be Teed about whatever April did. She was such a bad girl. When Charles first took Mavis to meet April after they decided to get married, April said some really bad things. Charles got Teed and hit April. He should not have hit April. Fathers always hit daughters. There should be a law against it. Charles shouldn’t hit April for whatever she did this time. Bill hit Timmi, but that was different; the little brat needed to be hit. Timmi wasn’t hurt, but April had been hurt worse than when she fell from the horse in the Catskills. They should have sued.  The damn stable owner forgot to hitch up April’s saddle correctly. She was galloping. Charles and Mavis were having trouble just staying on their horses, but April was galloping at breakneck speed down the return trail to the stables. Mavis heard April scream and saw her slide sideways, like a heavy beanbag doll, and end up under the belly of the galloping horse. April’s feet were still wedged in the stirrups and her body dropped down and began to be bounced on the hard-packed trail. Mavis was helpless to do anything but scream.  When it was over, while April was in the fifteen-bed hospital, in a room where everyone knew the other’s business, Charles scolded the injured April about her lack of responsibility for not double-checking the straps. He would blame her, now, for getting hurt in the pool. Mavis screamed.  A paramedic turned and pushed the needle of a hypodermic into her upper arm.
Mavis had showered and put on a robe. A towel was wrapped around her head. She looked down at her folded hands as she sat rocking back and forth on the entrance landing, watching the people below. She puffed her lips, sucked them in, and then puffed again. She felt happy. But she felt so sleepy. “It’s in the pool. It’s smarter than you. It’s in the pool,” she said in a singsong voice.  The two paramedics each gently took her arms and led her up the stairs toward the master suite. “It’s in the pool,” she repeated.
The patio was lighted by portable floodlights that washed over the patio walls, helping officers in their night search of the hills around the tri-level. Inspector Davis examined the broken soda bottle. He walked with a piece of the bottle over to the lab man taking samples of April’s blood that was pooled on the flagstone.  “What do you think?” asked Davis.
The lab man looked up. “There’s blood tracked all over the patio, tracked by party-goers and possibly the killer or predator. There’s also some blood on the other side of the wall.”
“Predator?”
“I’m not sure a man could do this. Of course, I’m not sure a man couldn’t”
Two frogmen searched in the pool for evidence. They were at the pool’s drain, blowing air bubbles to the surface, probing in the open drain. The drain cover sat to one side. Some of April’s hair was trapped in the flange of the drain. One of the frogmen pulled the hair; the hair pulled back. Both frogmen pulled. A big glob of the hair came loose and started floating toward the surface. The frogmen swam after it. As the Creature watched, blinding light shown into the pool. The intense light caused blurred images of the finned frogmen swimming away. Its ancestors had chosen well. There appeared to be an endless food source. The Creature could rip and tear each day. It could kill and horde. It slid the drain cover further to one side.
Inspector Davis squatted down and talked with the frogmen in the pool. The frogmen had their mouthpieces hanging loose.  “And the drain cover is off,” said the lead frogman as he handed up the hair and stick. “And theses were stuck in the drain. Oh, and these.” He reached into the rubber pouch strapped to his belt and pulled out two palm-sized objects. “They were suctioned to the wall.” He handed them up to the Inspector. “Can we get out? The water smells like crap.”  Davis nodded yes. He stretched, and then turned the objects over and over in his hands.  He walked around the pool looking at the open drain.  The Creature saw Davis’s upper body as it slid around the far end of the pool. Davis’s eyes looked directly into the Creature’s soul. The Creature had visions of the Mammoth Killer.  Davis didn’t need the lab man to tell him that this atrocity hadn’t been done by a man. In his thirty years on the force, he had never seen this amount of blood casually splashed around the pool–as though a high-pressure hose was nozzled to April’s heart so her blood could be used to nurture the bushes that lined the patio. Evil was on the Hill. The Hill should be closed to humanity or deeded to the State or Feds as a place to keep capital criminals. He would find what had so much blood lust that it used human bodies like so much fodder. But the deaths would not stop. The kind of death that was happening at the O’Roak’s would be stopped, but the Hill would perpetrate another kind of Evil. It would always be Evil. His retirement was posted on Monday, but he would stay on until he solved the O’Roak thing and was sure Cole could take his spot.
Cole stood across the pool from Davis. Cole and the lab man were looking at the blood on the outside of the patio doors. “I think I saw her being jerked by the feet. She dropped straight down while clawing at the glass,” Cole said.
The lab man looked at the glass. “I don’t know if a man could do that.”
“What about a crazed man?”
The lab man laughed. “You think Charles O’Roak did this to his only daughter.” He laughed again. “My vote is for predators from the hills.”
Cole slapped the lab man’s back. “My vote’s for O’Roak.”
Davis walked over to Cole and the lab man. He handed the objects from the pool to the lab man. “What the Hell are these?” he asked.
The lab man glanced quickly at the black plastic encased objects and said, “A miniature camera of some kind and its triggering devise.”
“Cole, find out where they came from,” Davis said. “Some sicko was monitoring the mayhem in the pool.”
“O’Roak,” Cole said.
“Why would O’Roak kill his own daughter?” Davis said.
“Who knows? The guy’s a psycho.”
“Put out an APB on him. Get him back up here.”
An officer pulled himself over the back wall. “There’s something over here,” he shouted.  Davis and Cole crossed over to the officer. “Body parts,” the officer said.
Cole pocketed the camera and triggering device and quickly pulled himself to the top of the wall. Davis tried but faltered. “You need a few less pancakes,” Cole taunted from the top of the wall.
“Get screwed,” Davis said.
The officer formed a step with his hands and boosted Davis to the top of the wall, and then the officer climbed up. They all jumped from the wall to the heavy undergrowth on the other side.  They stood on the hillside looking down into a wash.  “We passed it by the first time,” the officer confessed. He pointed at something, in the small wash, half-buried in the silt.
Davis picked it up with a stick. “It’s an ear. It’s too deteriorated to be April’s. It could be Sammy’s, or maybe this slaughter has gone on before,” Davis said. “The idea of predators is becoming a little more acceptable.”
“BS!” Cole said. “O’Roak’s the predator.” They both looked closer at the ear on the stick; close enough to see the crease on the lobe.
The crease of Nancy Turner’s cleavage was the focus on the young officer at Mavis’s front door. He let Nancy Turner out. She was one of the last of the party guests to be released. The young officer had heard of Turner’s wild reputation in Point Dume. She was on the heavy side, but he could see why some young guy—a young police officer—might get excited and join the ranks. He had never seen a woman show so much flesh out in public. Her hips looked tempting as they swayed down the O’Roak’s walkway. The guy who came up the stairs damn near knocked her sideways.  Charles tried to push past the officer to enter the house. “What happened?” Charles said. “I live here. Let me pass!” The young officer looked up at a portrait on the wall and then let Charles pass. Charles ran down the stairs toward the patio doors. The house was empty, but the patio still swarmed with personnel. He moved through the open patio doors. Grabbing the closest policeman, Charles shouted, “What the Hell happened?”
Cole spotted O’Roak. Cole jumped down from the wall and ran toward Charles. “Where you been, O’Roak?” He grabbed Charles by the lapels.
Charles struggled to pull free and was able to fling Cole against the wall. “I was with the Hunters at a quiet restaurant,” Charles said. “What’s going on here? Where’s Mavis?”
Cole grabbed Charles again. He swung Charles around and smashed him flat against the exterior wall of the house. He jammed him against the wall with his shoulder and cupped Charles’ jaw in his trembling hand “You slimy bastard. I’m . . . .”
Davis pulled Cole away and led Charles to a wooden bench. “Mr. O’Roak, please sit down.” While Davis spoke to Charles, all the personnel stopped their activities and looked in his direction. Cole paced. At each turn of his parade, he turned and glowered toward the two men. Charles hung his head into his hands and sobbed.



Chapter Fourteen



The next morning, most of the personnel were gone. The photographers and lab man were almost finished. Their identical square, black cases were filled with their individual specialties. A cleanup crew stood by. Yellow tape marked off and seemed to celebrate the scene of April’s death. Cole and Davis sat with Charles on the couch in the family room. A sleepless night was painted on all three faces. Davis watched Doan Park move her tight, little body around the patio. She stopped and interviewed the lab man. And then as if she could feel him watching, she turned and gave him a broad, beautiful smile.  “O’Roak, there’s so much hard evidence against you,” Cole said, “the D.A. would drag you right off to prison. I found Sammy Aldredge’s gold medallion upstairs. You’re the crazy bastard who did Sammy and then did your own daughter. You did Sammy with a Batik. You did your daughter with some other exotic weapon. I have more than probable cause to take the stuff in as evidence. But Inspector Davis has some insane idea that predators did it. It was a predator. It was you.” Cole attempted to reach across Davis to grab Charles, but Davis grabbed Cole’s hand. Cole shook off Davis’s restraining hand and sat back but stared into Charles’s faltering eyes. “So we go with that, but when it proves wrong, I’m coming after you.” He ran his hands over the back of his head as he tried to press the headache up through the top. “If it was predators, you put them in the pool. You’re one sick bastard,” Cole said as he pulled the camera and its triggering device out of his pocket. “You used these to monitor the slaughter. You’re a psycho. I’m going to prove it.”
Davis tapped his thumbnail on his lower teeth. “I think its puma or coyote, from the hills, drawn by the water and lights.”
“There’ll be no more water and lights . . . ever again.” Charles laid his head against a flowery pillow. He looked toward the pool.
“There’ll be water and lights . . . one more time,” Davis said. “We’ll trap the predators.”
The two investigators walked toward the entrance. Cole turned to Charles. “Don’t go near the pool, you sick bastard.”
Charles O’Roak stayed on the living room couch for the rest of the day. “Don’t go near the pool,” he said to himself. “The smart-mouthed idiot had to get the last word in.”  Charles was many things, but he was not a daughter-killer. He had killed Mavis’ lover in Boston—and never got caught–but he couldn’t—wouldn’t kill his own daughter. Tony Scartossi had a lot of explaining to do.  Charles rubbed his eyes, rolled off the couch, and moved toward the phone. What the Hell was the pool guy’s medal doing in the master suite? He thought. Mavis must have been screwing the poor, dumb jerk.  Damn, things did point toward him—his Batik, the medal, the camera or whatever it was.  That jerk Scartossi must have used the camera to watch the Serpent do its job. But its job wasn’t to start until Fall, and not until after the Vodu ritual had been performed by the Claymore Coven. And the damn Serpent was never supposed to swallow his April.  Charles dialed a familiar number. “Jessi? April was killed last night. I need to be with you.”
The next morning, Davis and Cole watched a crew of carpenters construct a frame above the pool. “Who’s working with you?” Davis asked Cole.
“Macabe. He’s a good swimmer,” Cole said.
“Let’s hope he doesn’t have to. What’d you dig up on the camera?”
Cole pulled out his tattered notebook and flipped to the center. “It’s not a camera; it’s a sonar-radar hybrid. The experts I spoke with said it couldn’t be built by just anyone. The parts are restricted. A radio and sound wave genius had to build it. A real wiz.
The Wiz was watching from the fourth floor dormer in the oldest house on the Hill. But the houses age hadn’t given any immunity to the evil on the Hill, Drummer thought. Drummer’s wife had committed suicide thirty-five years before Old Lady Scartossi had been nailed to a slab. Drummer’s telescope was trained on Davis, but every few minutes it would pan the patio to assess the progress of Davis’s trap. “Davis is a pretty smart fellow,” Drummer said to his cat. Just like his father and his father’s father. But he’s missing a heavy, steel drain plug. The thing causing the ruckus is in the box drain.” He bent forward and stroked the black Angora lounging at the base of his wheelchair. Lady, the Angora, stretched and moved from his touch, searching for a more private place to snooze.  Drummer laughed. “Testy, damn cat.” He looked through his telescope. He needed to warn young Davis about the need for a suitable drain plug. The sound wave readings he had taken from the pool were conclusive. There was movement under the pool just before and after the ruckus. The radio waves were conclusive. There was movement in the pool during the ruckus: a large form and a smaller form. A predator—the morning news called it—and April Neusom the daughter of the illustrious Charles O’Roak—again from the morning news. The predator came up from the old box-drain, secured the girl, and pulled her back into the drain. He closed his notes and looked back through the telescope. He would have to call Davis and instruct him. P. J. Drummer was "The Wiz."
He had heard the wiz part through the high-powered receiver dish trained on O’Roak’s pool. He was a wiz when it came to Radar and Sonar. He had worked under Landahl, head of the C.I.A’s photographic interpretation center, long before Landahl had become famous in ‘62 for identifying black spots on an aerial photograph of Cuba as Soviet offensive nuclear missiles. Davis would have a good instructor. Davis would learn to understand the readings, but would he believe them? Drummer pushed the power button on the portable phone built into the armrest on the wheelchair and dialed a local police number. “Patch me into Inspector Martin Davis. He’s at a crime scene at the Scartossi place . . . the O’Roak place.” He looked back through the telescope. It was like some kind of communications experiment. How long would it take for the dispatcher to take a call from the Hill, switch it through her board, and bring it back to the Hill not more than a block away?  The block was a big empty area devoid of houses or trees or anything but parched ground. Ten years earlier a speculator had subdivided the land into half-acre lots and advertised the view lots in the Times. Luckily, no one wanted to pay the outlandish price the speculator was asking. After the bank foreclosed, they sold out cheap to Mr. P .J. Drummer so now he had a clear view of Davis being motioned inside the house by a phone signal—fist to the ear—from a young officer.
“Martin, my name is P. J. Drummer . . . The Wiz. We talked last year after the Scartossi thing. I would like to help you with your current problem. If you step back out onto the Scartossi patio, you can see my position.
Davis stepped out onto the patio and looked directly at the dormered house. He shifted the phone and stretched the twisted, phone cord. “My lab man and I saw you watching, earlier. We hoped you were watching when predators used the pool as a feeding ground.”
“Predator,” Drummer said. “I have proof it was a single predator. I can see the pool clearly from here, as clearly as these old eyes will let me, but an old reprobate’s account of the happenings wouldn’t hold much value. But I‘m the Wiz who planted the scanner receivers in the pool. I have some data you should read.”
“I have about another hour here, and then I’ll come by.” Davis looked up toward the roof of Drummer’s house. “The Wiz must have an audio dish.”
“Look high and to the right. See you about eleven.”
Davis was due for retirement. His brain was turning to mush. He looked back up toward the top floor of Drummer’s ancient house. Of course Drummer could build the devices. He had filed over a hundred patents before he went into seclusion. If Davis’ father were alive, he would tap his knuckles against Davis’ head and whisper “Dumbo.”
The carpenters had erected a box frame, of four-by-fours, the length and width of the pool.  The huge frame enclosed the pool like a large room without walls. The frame had been designed by Davis’ son, Martin, Jr., an engineer at Rocketdyne. Davis had driven all the way out to Pasadena—actually La Canada—to get the drawings for the trap. His son had told him he would not need such a sturdy frame unless it was going to be permanent. But instinct dictated it should be strong. “What kind of predators, Pops?” “Maybe a pride of Bobcats,” Davis said. “Bobcats don’t weigh more than fifty pounds. They trap them in the Arroyo with nothing more than a cardboard box and a lot of balls,” his son said. “Forget the cardboard box and balls. I want a frame of four-by-fours with steel corner braces,” Davis said. “I’ll draw it up, but you’ll be able to lift Dino the Dinosaur with it.”
Two workers sat on one corner of the frame, high above the pool, attaching net hooks. The net lay next to the house in a giant heap. It was three-quarter inch hemp, section tied with cord. It was a brand-new circus net, guaranteed to hold a raging bull-elephant. Davis didn’t know what the trap might catch. Whatever it caught he intended to keep. Whistles and catcalls filled the pool area.  An attractive middle-aged nurse, Thelma Johnson, walked through the open patio doors.
“Hold it down,” Nurse Johnson warned. “You’ll disturb Mrs. O’Roak.”
“Disturb this!” The youngest worker up on the frame said. “Is it true what they say about nurses?”
“That we don’t do it with boys?” Nurse Johnson said.
Whistles and catcalls came from the other workers. His partner on the frame cooed at him and tickled him under the chin.  The young worker stood up on the frame and pretended to unzip his pants for Nurse Johnson’s examination. “Wanta check this boy’s equipment.”  His partner pushed him from the frame into the pool below. He fell like a cannon ball into the cool, clear water, and then sank, fully clothed, toward the drain. Near the drain, the worker’s shoes pushed off toward the surface.  Eyes watched all the activity through the drain cover. The Creature’s ancient cells assumed the workers were erecting an alter overhead to sacrifice to the Creature and its ancient ancestors. The altar was much smaller than those erected at the edge of the stagnant lakes in the upper hills of Togo.  Drums pounded deep in the Creature’s brain, triggering recorded memories of its homeland. The pitch-black chief of the Fon led one of his most beautiful wives to the front of the altar. She would be the first of twenty-one tribal wives to be sacrificed to the Creature’s ancestors. The sacrifices happened every quarter-moon when the Serpent Star was the brightest in the Overworld. Many tribes made sacrifices, but the Fon made the most. The ones erecting the new altar must be Fon, the Creature thought.  The worker pulled himself up and out of the pool and stood at the edge. He searched his wet pockets, and then looked up at his partner on the frame. “Putz idiot. You made me lose my favorite lighter!” He shouted.
His partner looked down, clucked his tongue, and shook his head. “What’s the matter . . . can’t swim?” Go get it!”
The worker striped to his heart-patterned shorts. This time the catcalls and whistles were deafening. He dove into the water and searched at the pool’s bottom. The lighter was wedged in the pool’s drain grate. He reached for the lighter but jerked back his hand with the lighter. His finger had been cut. He scrambled to the surface. The Creature watched the worker swim away. The blood on the Creature’s claw tasted good, an appetizer, and a harbinger of things to come. The sacrificial feast would be worth waiting for. The light-skinned ones must be for sacrifice. But they would have to be tortured first to spark the Creature’s digestive juices. Two carpenters reached down to help the worker out of the pool. He grabbed their hands and jerked them both into the water. A clank came from the bottom of the pool, but no one noticed. Another worker at the pool’s edge, working in shorts, emptied his pockets and took off his shoes, then dove in. In his shorts, the partner up on the frame did a cannonball from the frame. Nurse Johnson and Davis stood to one side watching.
“Nurse Johnson, do you always cause such antics?” Davis asked.
“Only with men,” she replied with a million-dollar smile.
The worker climbed out of the water. His heart-patterned shorts slipped down and exposed his untanned buttocks. “Hey, sweet cheeks,” someone said from the pool.
The worker pulled up his shorts and clambered over the pool’s edge. He looked back at the water, and then wrinkled his nose. “The water stinks,” he said.
“Oh, no! Stinky did something in the water,” someone shouted from the pool. All the workers scrambled from the water.  The Creature watched all the twisting, splashing shadows overhead, and then slid the drain cover to the side.
Later, the carpenters, workers, and inspector Davis stood away from the pool and looked up at the frame with the net stretched across it high above the pool. Detective Cold stood at the far end of the pool holding a rope that hung from a net release.
“Try it!” Davis called out.
Cole pulled the rope. The net dropped and covered the pool. The workers cheered.  The Creature watched through the net floating on the water overhead. It saw the upper half of Davis’s body moving along the side of the pool toward Cole.  Davis stood next to Cole and watched the workers struggle to reattach the heavy wet net.  The creature knew what they were doing was not part of the ancient ritual. Laced ropes were only used to trap the Creature’s ancient ancestors. The laced ropes were hung off the sides of rafts and dragged across the bottoms of the stagnant lakes. The enemies of the Fon wanted to cage the Creature’s ancestors and use them to carry out their commands. But nothing controlled the Creature or its ancestors. Chants, rituals, laced ropes—nothing controlled the Creature. The Creature slipped deeper into the box drain of Mavis’ pool.
Inspector Davis looked impatiently at his watch. “Is that fat bastard bringing the pumps?”
Cole checked his watch. “Before noon.”
A fat fire Captain, with a cigar stub in his mouth, stumbled through the open side gate. He instructed his men how to hook up the pumps they where rolling behind them. “Texas, take it easy on the clamps. These fruitcake cops won’t be able to undo them later.” His men hooked up the hoses and dropped them into the pool water. They plugged both electrical cords into one switch. The Captain turned to Davis and Cole. “These pumps are the best we got. If you fruitcakes catch anything with this rig,” he looked up at the netted frame, “I’ll eat my hat.”
“You might as well. You’ve eaten everything else,” Cole shouted.
“Hit the switch, fruitcake. See what it does,” the Captain said to Cole.
Cole walked with a swish to the far end of the patio. He bent down between the pumps and looked back over his buttocks and smiled at the fat captain, then hit a large red button sticking out of a silver box connected by electrical cords to both pumps. The pumps hammered and echoed. They sucked down a foot of water like a giant, flushing toilet.
“Cut it!” Davis said. “Fill her up. We’re ready.”
“Ready to waste the taxpayer’s money,” the Captain said, then waddled out through the side gate with his men in tow.
Cole gave him a loud Bronx Cheer. He was offended by the Captain’s appearance and manners and that damn, smelly cigar. But the Captain was one tough cookie. He had proven his mettle on so many occasions that they stopped giving him decorations and just named the fire station after him—Rubedoux station. It was named for a fat slob of a Captain with more balls than any six men. Years before, Cole was at a gas fire in Point Dume just when the captain was racing his fat body toward the blazing interior of the dilapidated garage. The Captain went into the flames and dragged out one of the area’s most despicable characters. He later said it did not matter who the guy was—no human should burn alive. The fire victim was that jerk Tony Scartossi. Arrested more than twenty times usually for petty crimes, but the last time on suspicion of murder: seven young, white males were found, with their hearts cut out, at the bottom of Claymore Canyon. The young men were from a radical Christian cult called the Sword of Expulsion. It should have been the Sword of Expiration.  Tony Scartossi and the Claymore Coven did the deed, but the Division still had an open case.   The Captain knew all about Tony Scartossi, but he still saved him from certain death in the fire. Cole would have let Tony burn. “He’s a special human being,” Cole said.
“I know,” Davis said.
They walked around the huge trap, kicked the pumps and twisted the net. “You ready?” Davis asked Cole.
“Macabe and I are going to get paid to float around in a swimming pool all day, and you ask me if I’m ready?”
“Stay alert. It’s not an ordinary pool.”
“How many days is this cushy assignment?”
“Till the end of the week.”
“I thank you, Macabe thanks you, my war-torn nerves thank you,” Cole said. “I take back all the bad things I’ve thought about you. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Lieutenant Cole, listen carefully. This is not a day at the beach. Something likes to kill things in the pool. You are going to be in the pool. You are bate. Bate gets ate. The predators will want to tear your silly heart out and jam it where my foot should be.”
“Okay . . . okay, I’ll be alert.”
Macabe came up wearing wet-suite bottoms and holding a pair for Cole in his outstretched hands. He saw the stern look on Davis’s face. He swallowed the smile bubbling to the surface.



Chapter Fifteen



Later, in the master bedroom, Mavis, highly sedated, lounged in bed. Her beauty had started to fade.  Light gray pockets of flesh began to form under her eyes and jowl line. She still asked for April and referred to her as a bad girl for not being around when Mavis was sick. She had not been questioned by Cole or Davis or any of the others on the investigative team. Nothing she could say would be of any value. She was in some other world, a world where April was still alive and Mavis was still radiantly beautiful. In her world, no one grew old; no one got fat, and there was no Charles O’ Roak. Nurse Johnson sat silently in an overstuffed chair that had been transferred upstairs from the lower level guest room to a spot close to Mavis’ bedside. “What are they doing?” Mavis slurred.
Nurse Johnson looked up from a Harlequin romance. “What?”
“What’re they doing?” Mavis said.
“Setting a trap for the predators,” Nurse Johnson said.
“Did they drain the pool?”
“No.”



Chapter Sixteen



Mavis stumbled from her bed to the balcony door. She looked down at the pool through the net ceiling strung from corner to corner. Detective Cole was sitting on the diving board. Another man floated casually in the water. Both had on wet-suit bottoms. The thing in the pool would leave long strips of rubber after it finished with the Bobsy Twins. Maybe they would not bob. Maybe they would just be yanked straight down like April. Never to be seen again. No April is okay. She would visit soon. If the two men with rubber legs got up to run from the thing in the pool, their legs would bow and wobble and tumble them to the ground like two rubbery Ray Bolgers. Mavis could picture the thing in the pool picking straw and rubber from its giant-sized teeth. She began to laugh hysterically, and then she screamed.  Nurse Johnson ran and put her arms around Mavis and led her back to the bed. “I’ll take care of you,” she said as she tucked Mavis back under a light sheet.
“It’s in the pool. It’ll eat them,” Mavis said.
“What will eat them?”
Mavis turned her head and looked at the balcony door. “It will eat them, but it wants to eat beautiful Mavis.”
An hour later, Mavis finally curled up into a restless sleep. Blood-toned scenes splashed her dreams. She was back in Togo at Charles’s campsite, the massacre site. A thick-skinned creature raised up through the early morning mist that hung over the stagnant lake it inhabited. Its huge head darted through the mist and into the first of four workers’ tents. It pulled its twisting head back out through the ruptured tent flaps with a big, black foreman struggling uselessly in its jaws. Inside the tent, the workers were silent. They should have been screaming. Mavis poked her head into the tent.  Charles was methodically hacking the sleeping workers into small, uniform pieces, and then casually piling the pieces into nice neat stacks by the tent entrance so the creature would not have to bother with the tearing and ripping part. Charles went from tent to tent. The body count ended up at twenty-one: seventeen diggers and four village girls of which Charles had neglected to tell her. When he finished the last tent, Charles walked over to the storage tent and pulled a beautiful, naked, black nymph from behind the flaps. He led her toward Mavis. He handed the blood-smeared mountain ax to the nymph. The nymph had Jessica Hunter’s face. Charles commanded “Kill her! Then feed her to the Serpent.”  The Jessica-nymph chased her toward the mountain’s edge. Claymore Canyon. As Mavis was about to get decapitated, Rundi Smith—Charles’s partner—broke the nymph’s neck and reached in and tore Charles’s heart from his chest while Bill Norris slew the Creature. Rundi and Bill took Mavis’s hands and led her to a soft grassy mound at the edge of a glowing, blue waterfall.
Nurse Johnson went downstairs after Mavis went to sleep. Young Detective Sergeant Cole straddled the diving board. He looked like one of those guys from Playgirl: chest forty-one, waist thirty-one, and biceps fifteen. The other officer, a new guy, was still floating in the pool.  “Did she finally stop screaming?” Cole said.
“She says it’s going to eat you,” Nurse Johnson said. “She says the Creature is in the pool.”
Cole pointed in the pool. “The only creature in the pool is Macabe. He won’t eat me but you’d better watch out.”
Macabe moaned, and then blew a stream of water toward Cole. “Please forgive him; he’s a crude, chauvinist bastard.”
“Rank, remember rank,” Cole said.
“Rank is the correct word,” Macabe said.
“I’ll get you guys a cold drink,” Nurse Johnson said. “Anything else you want?” She walked back into the house and headed to the kitchen. Why did she make that last statement? She thought. Was she trying to live up to a nurse’s reputation? All guys believed nurses were always cranking down the beds and hopping into them with their patients. They seemed not to understand that the patients were mostly very sick and no nurse in her right mind wanted to bed down with some sick guy. But she shouldn’t mind the reputation. It would bring a lot of nasty conversation into the long, hot afternoon. Both were handsome. Either would do. She looked around, then unbuttoned the top of her uniform, and reached in and rearranged the double C cup of her bra. With her tiny hands she rearranged her heavy breasts in the tight uniform top.  It had been a long time since she had any action. But she had promised herself before she came to the Hill, for the new job, that she would start having more fun. Rick, Jr. was out of the house. He was probably in jail somewhere, but at least he was out of the house. No more loud music, pot smell, and knock-down-drag-out fights. She was going to have some fun. Some excitement. She should be able to spot a fellow or two who didn’t carry some debilitating disease.  No action was worth a lifetime of suffering. She had suffered enough, mentally, for the mistake with Rick, Jr.’s father eighteen years before. She was fifteen trying to play house with a thirty-year-old. Now, she was free. She could work private or at the hospital. She needed to fall in love or in lust or both. Maybe with someone who looked like one of the hard bodies waiting for her by the pool. Both had piled their clothes in the doorway. They both needed a mother. Most men needed a mother more than they needed a lover or a wife. She had struck out as both. Maybe it was time to try again. She had one more strike. She wanted to get devoured by love.
A clank came from the bottom of the pool. Cole turned abruptly from watching Nurse Johnson’s return. “What’s that?” Cole said. He shinnied, up the diving board, still straddling it and looked down directly over the end. Macabe took a spear gun from the side of the pool, cocked it, and dove toward the drain. Macabe stayed underwater and looked at the drain. He kicked back up to the surface. His foot passed the drain. A claw darted from the drain but missed Macabe’s foot by inches.  Macabe surfaced under the diving board and held on to one of Cole’s dangling feet.  “The cover’s off.” Macabe made a face. “The water’s putrid.”
“We’re just jumpy,” Cole said. “Our minds are playing tricks,”
Nurse Johnson walked to the edge of the pool carrying three bottles of pop. She had unbuttoned the first two top buttons of her tight-fitting uniform releasing cleavage from the stark white material. She walked toward Cole and handed him a fizzing bottle of pop.  Cole watched her hips sway as she walked over to Macabe. Her hips looked like some smooth-running pendulum had started its rhythmical swing under the thin material of the uniform.  “You from Point Dume?” he asked.
She turned and balanced the last bottle on the tray but her free hand moved to her tilted hip. She looked Cole straight in the eye. “Is it a good place to be from?”
“Maybe. If you were from Point Dume, I could check the night patrols in your area,” Cole said.
“Then I’ll have to move to Point Dume,” she said.
“Whoa,” Macabe said from the pool. “My partner there is a happily married man, as they say, while I, on the other hand . . .”
“He on the other hand is a miserable loner,” Cole said.
Nurse Johnson turned to Macabe. “Are you on night patrol?’
“No, but I’m best friends with my senior officer,” he looked toward Cole. “If it would persuade you to go out with me next Friday.”
“Where would we go . . . next Friday?”
“He would take you to his regular,” Cole said. “Scartossi’s . . . the sleaziest joint on the Coast. . . .” He heard a sound and peered over the edge of the diving board.
The Creature watched the upper part of Nurse Johnson’s body at the edge of the pool. Macabe treaded water just under Cole who was peeking over the edge of the diving board. Nurse Johnson bent down and looked toward the drain. She hesitated, and then her face twisted. She dropped the tray and bottle.  “Something’s in the pool!” She pointed toward the drain.
Macabe, in the water, looked down. There was a flash from the pool, and the spear gun and Macabe’s hand were ripped away and flipped toward the shallow end. Nurse Johnson turned from the pool. In another flash, she was jerked screaming into the water. Her tattered uniform floated on the top of the water. Cole tried to scramble from the diving board, but his legs were asleep and he fell back into the same straddling position on the board.  Another flash and one of his legs was plucked straight out of his wet-suite bottoms. The popping sound was drowned out by Cole’s screams. Another flash and the other leg was popped out–pop. Cole screamed. The wet-suit legs were still in place, hanging on each side of the diving board like two monster hoses, funneling blood into the churning pool water. Cole toppled forward into the water and floated facedown in his own blood. Two trails of blood followed his bobbing half-body.  Nurse Johnson edged along the pool with one hand; the other clutched her side, trying to keep her ripped insides from spilling out into the pool. They could replace her insides. It could happen. She had assisted Doctor Sada Istar when he replaced the insides of that thrashing machine operator from that homestead in Topanga Canyon. His guts were brought to the clinic in a basket. She was certain they would find a basket somewhere in Mavis O’Roak’s big house.
The pool had a crimson circle painted at death’s end like a blood red moon painted for a Japanese tragedy. Nurse Johnson reached through it for the rope connected to the net release. She pulled, trying to escape from the water. The net released and swept past her head. Clinging to the rope with both hands, she slipped slowly, being pulled down the rope, into the water. Her mind raced, trying to remember her Hail Marys, trying to remember if she had told Rick, Jr. where to find the will, trying to remember when her last confession was, trying to remember if she still believed in God, trying to remember if it really mattered, trying to remember . . . . Her screams were drowned by the swirling water. Her small hands disappeared into the water, still sliding down the rope. They clasp together in a constant prayer. “Please God, let me start having fun.”
Cole floated facedown against the side of the pool. The legs of his wet suit hung straight down in the water. His half-body bumped against the pool side—ka thud—then floated out. But it floated back—ka thud—and back into the blood-ringed center of the pool. The net hung up on two corners of the frame nearest the balcony.  Macabe climbed from the water onto the hanging net. With one hand he pulled himself up the net: his bare feet searched for toeholds. Washing his legs with blood, his damaged right arm hung loosely by his side. The net was twisted and tugged by something in the pool. He clutched the net, making it part of him. He would have to hold his damaged arm up higher than his heart or his shivering body would be pumped dry. The net, hooked to the frame corner farthest from the balcony, slowly came loose. It stretched and screeched and warned Macabe. The net hook snapped, and the net swung free. His body swung against the frame—a demolition ball to fragile for the sturdy post nearest the balcony. Two of his ribs cracked telegraphing pain deep into his bowels; he was going to crap himself. They would open his wet-suit bottoms and find crap. If he was going to die, he prayed to let it be with dignity.  He continued to climb holding on by one hand. The net still was being twisted and shaken by something in the pool. They would have to rehabilitate him, get him a new hand. He would ware a black leather glove over the manipulated hand, black leather with his initials cut into the wristband, and a black leather vest to match—initials on the right lapel. He had promised himself if he ever had a body part missing, even a little finger or a little toe, he would kill himself. He would take his police special on a swim in the Pacific and blow his brains out where it would not make a mess. He would be shark supper.
Mavis came, to the balcony, bleary-eyed. Macabe dragged himself one-handed up over the top of the frame. His feet were tangled in the net. Something in the pool kept yanking the net, twisting the thick, rough rope of the net around one ankle and cutting the circulation to his toes.  Macabe reached out toward Mavis. “Help me!” he cried.
Mavis opened the balcony door and staggered toward Macabe in her negligee. She dropped down to her knees, put her hands through the balcony banisters, and clutched Macabe’s reaching hand with both of hers. She began to tug, but Macabe was being pulled away. With great effort, Mavis pulled Macabe’s hand through the banister toward her.
“Banister. Hook my hand to the banister,” Macabe mouthed through extreme pain.  Mavis pulled his hand toward the banister. Macabe attempted to help her by elbowing his way over the frame with his injured arm. The mutilated end came into Mavis’s view. She screamed and let go of his hand. His hand grabbed the banister, but its grip loosened and slipped onto the metal gutter. Macabe’s hand clutched the sharp edge of the metal gutter. Blood oozed through his fingers. The gutter broke loose from the balcony. He screamed as his blood-soaked body plunged into the pool.  Mavis watched Macabe’s body float face-up in the pool. A claw reached through the net and dug into Macabe’s upturned throat. It held his head in place while teeth chewed the net in a circle around his head, then pulled him through into the deep water.  Through the hole in the net the Creature watched Mavis on the balcony, a priestess of ancient times, a priestess bringing sacrifices to the Creature; somehow akin to the Creature; somehow essential to the Creature’s survival. She was too light-skinned to be a Fon; she must be from some foreign tribe, a tribe that needed to use the Creature’s blood lust to control the sacrifices. The Fon walked their sacrifices to the edge of the altar and the sacrifice stepped off willingly to be tortured. The foreign tribe had to force the sacrifices off the altar. But a sacrifice was a sacrifice.
Mavis slowly came out of her drugged haze and looked down at the patio. At the edge of the pool, a legless Detective Cole rolled up over the flagstone.
Cole knew he was dying. He felt like a circus seal whose tail had been amputated. He dragged his seal’s body along the patio surface. Maybe he was more like a slug: he was leaving a gooey trail on the light gray cement. Life was a bitch. He had worked ten hard years to make his life better.  As a reward, Life turned him into a circus slug. He reached for the pump switch, hit it then he died. A loud drumming echoed across the pool as background to the watery sucking sounds. Mavis staggered past the bed and headed for the stairs. Tom followed



Chapter Seventeen




Inspector Davis hit the buzzer on the twelve-foot gate to the rundown mansion. He had been there on the dot at eleven, but there had been no signs of life. He drove down to the station house to pick up some equipment for Cole. It was damn near one o’clock. He pushed the buzzer again. A gravely voice tumbled from the intercom. “Martin, come in.” The gate buzzed open. The door to the mansion opened. Inside, Drummer was sitting in a motorized wheelchair that looked like the pilot’s seat on the Challenger. Drummer stuck out his hand to Davis. “I’m a prisoner of electronics,” Drummer said. “When you were at the gate, earlier, I couldn’t get the gate or intercom to work.  Come out back with me while I finish repairs on the circuitry.”  Davis followed behind the slow-moving wheelchair. They went down a ramp that disappeared into foot-high weeds. They followed a path through the weeds to the side of the mansion. “Funny thing,” Drummer said. “Just after I spoke to you there was a freak accident.” He pointed up toward a telephone post on the edge of the yard that bordered Claymore Canyon. “A heavy spike loosened from the dried-out wood on the phone post and fell on this case. It holds the main circuits to the house.  So I missed you the first time”
“No problem,” Davis said. “I had to come back up the Hill and bring my men some more equipment.”
Drummer pressed a button on the wheelchair that slowly raised his seat up to the level of the circuit case. “I’ll finish this, and then tell you what equipment your men should have.”
Davis stood quietly while the old genius finished the board in less than three minutes.  “What took you so long?”
“Forgot my good tools.”
They went back into the house. “Mr. Drummer . . . .” Davis began.
“Call me P. J. All you Davis folks do.”
“P.J., you were a witness, a year ago, to the last murder at the house.”
“I witnessed the supposed escape of the alleged murders.”
“You don’t think the Sword of Expulsion cult murdered Guadelupe Scartossi?”
“I know they didn’t”
“You’re the one who gave an eye-witness account.”
“I described white capes with red symbols.”
“The exact description of the cult’s wardrobe.”
“But I’ve seen a picture since of the Perp driving the van.”
“The case is still open even though Tony Scartossi avenged the crucifixion of his grandmother. He mutilated the leader of the cult. But the community wouldn’t convict Tony. Fact Tony became a local hero. An American vigilante.”
“Tony Scartossi was driving the van.” Drummer said.
“What?”
“Tony Scartossi was the one driving the van. I recognized his picture on TV during his trial.”
“Why didn’t you come forward? Withholding evidence is a felony.”
“First, I didn’t want to appear at the trial. And second, he was a hero twice. He got rid of those idiot Christian radicals, and he rid the Hill of a most evil human: Guadelupe Scartossi.”
“You and your kind are the reason this country is in such terrible shape. The crime rate is off the charts because people like you don’t want to get involved or you think justice was served by some psychopathic felon. A felon has never done justice to anything. A felon is just a creep who can’t live within the law.”
“Then G. Washington was a felon?”
“Don’t give me that BS argument. I’m going to re-arrest Tony Scartossi and subpoena you as a material witness.”
“What ever happened to double jeopardy?”
“Aiding and Abetting. He drove the get away vehicle. New case. New indictment.”
“I’m an invalid. I can’t leave the Hill.”
“The only thing invalid about you is your sense of community. We’ll use closed circuit testimony.”
“Screw you,” Drummer said.
“Screw you,” Davis said.
They settled down in the electronics laboratory just off the ornate living room. The room was a combination laboratory and library. Books lined the walls to the ceiling. An electronic box with a sprocketed chain hoist hung from a rail that traveled along each shelf. Davis realized it was a mechanism for retrieving books.
“Clever,” Davis said, pointing at the contraption.
“Clever! Some people might say it showed genius.”
Davis smiled and continued to look around, like a very intelligent boy in a magic shop. “I see you’re into Mythology,” he said.
“Little bit.”
“Do you believe there is pure, unadulterated Evil in the world, Evil that permeates the earth, the ground in some areas, Evil that causes things to happen to good people, Evil Power?”
“Yes, I believe the Hill is permeated with Evil. I believe the Hill is the home of Evil. I believe it was introduced here to spread across the world.”
Davis tilted back on the stool and let out a sigh. He had a soul mate, he thought.
Drummer wheeled across the wood floor and drew two glasses of beer from the keg at the far end of the room. He pulled the wheelchair up to a Formica-topped counter that ran the length of the room. He turned to Davis. “Do you know about Sonar and Radar?”
Davis squirmed on his adjustable stool, like some uncomfortable student being grilled by the professor he disliked most on a subject he liked least. “Little bit,” he said.
“Sonar uses sound waves; Radar uses radio waves.”
“You saw shapes in the pool?”
“The equipment is not sophisticated enough to give conclusive identification, but I can tell what it is not. It is not a four-legged or two legged predator, as the morning news would have us believe. Or as you and your investigators appear to believe.” He took out copies of the screen prints that printed every thirty seconds from the cathode ray tube screen of the Sonar display unit and the Radar display unit. He spread them on the table: ten of the Radar prints across the top and ten of the Sonar prints across the bottom. “As you can see, the dark mass is slowly moving toward a smaller mass, that being April Neusom. The large mass is an unknown, as yet.” Like a visiting professor, he moved the pointer to the Sonar prints. “The mass moved from under the pool, then became a larger mass when it returned.”
“Returned under the pool?” Davis said. “Something took the Neusom girl under the pool?’  Davis let out a big sigh and stood up. “I came here because of your reputation as a genius. You waste my time with this disappearing-predator crap.”
“The predator doesn’t disappear. It goes down the drain to the vault.”
“You’re on that vault trip.” He started toward the entrance.
“The old pool has a cement-encased earthen vault about as big as a garden shed.  Diatomaceous earth or diatomite or gravel or salt or all four were used to filter the waste from the pool’s water. With the new system, the bottom of the pool was resurfaced but the vault under the drain was never filled or else the Sonar would just send back a weak signal. But it sends back a strong signal because the vault is space, and in that space is the predator and evidence of its deeds.”
“Davis sat down. “I wanted to take a jackhammer to the pool, but the cost would be out of line.”
“Out of line?” He looked closer at the Sonar prints, and then swung a large, lighted magnifying glass on its swivel so it focused directly over the first print. “The resurfacing was not done well. A good crane and cable hooked to the drain flange could pull the vault’s covering slab off.  You believe in unadulterated Evil, but you won’t allow yourself to believe in its physical manifestation. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that you’re going to continue to scramble around looking for evidence of an acceptable protagonist while the thing in the pool continues to rip arms and legs off of citizens whose money you’re trying to save. Spend the money. Save their lives.”
“Can you see the pool from here?’ Davis said.
Drummer moved over to a Sperry computer terminal, turned the key, and then switched on the monitor. The screen cleared. He punched in a four letter code, and the screen started calibrating.  “It’s connected to an electronic scope set just above the dormer. It won’t be real clear, but it should be good enough.”  The Sperry monitor kicked up the picture. Davis and Drummer saw the net was down and there was no activity in the shallow end of the pool. A board fence blocked any view of the deep end.
“They must have triggered the net,” Davis said. “They must have tried a capture.”
They both squinted into the screen. “Let’s see if we can hear anything,” Drummer said. “The electronic dish is hypersensitive.” He knelt down next to the elaborate stack of receivers. He twisted and turned the numerous switches and buttons until a small, wispy sound came crackling over the giant, overhead speakers. It sounded like a woman weeping.
Davis ran toward the mansion’s entrance while Drummer pressed buttons on the arm of his wheelchair to swing open the entrance door and gate. If he were a gambling man, he thought, he would have wagered his T Bonds that all of the carpenters and helpers were the predator’s victims. Victims sounded too neat to him. The predator was not turned on by neatness. They could have all lived if some Evil force had not caused a rusty spike to drop from an ancient telephone-post. If Martin Davis could have viewed his data earlier, if he could have released the gate to let Martin in. 
Evil or a bad mechanic stepped in again. Davis’s old Dodge would not crank over. He unloaded the equipment from the trunk and carried it toward the O’Roak’s house.
Mavis did not know about the vault but she knew about Evil on the Hill and the Creature in the pool.  She stumbled and fell to her knees at the landing. “Nurse Johnson!” She shouted. She looked around drunkenly. “I never liked the bitch, anyhow.” She staggered through the lower level to the patio doors. Tom trotted after her. She broke a long, elegant nail with a diamond in the center trying to slide past a pile of Cole’s and Macabe’s clothes in the center of the open patio doors. She tripped sideways. She tore her nail when she tried to catch herself. It tore to the quick. “Oh! Damn!” As though she was not enough of a mess, she thought, now her beautiful nails were getting trashed.  Nothing went right in Charles’s house. Nothing!  She stepped outside. The pumps pounded. She looked over at Cole’s body and threw up her lunch into a waist-high planter. She scrambled down the steps using both hands and feet. She moved gingerly to the shallow end. The water was knee deep, but the pumps rapidly sucked it lower.  The pumps pounded. She slid on the slick net and fell in ankle-deep water, giggling, then crawled onto the water laden net bunched up over the drain. She laid face down directly over the drain. She screamed at the Creature over the pounding pumps. “Murderous bastard!”



Chapter Eighteen



A single claw came out and snatched the corner of Mavis’s wet negligee and pulled it in through the net. Mavis did not see or feel it. She was still on the net. She dug around and pulled the steel spear, from the spear-gun, out of the tangled net, clutched it in both hands, raised it up, and prepared to stab it down through the net. “Now!” she screamed hysterically.  A claw pushed through the net and caught the corner of Mavis’s mouth. She jerked away, gashing her face from lip to chin. Mavis jumped up but was pulled back down by the snagged hem.  She struggled to her feet, screaming over the dry sucking of the pumps. She pulled with both hands at the bottom of the negligee. The Creature pulled back and the negligee tore. Mavis fell backward against the high wall of the deep end of the pool. She put both hands over her bleeding chin and stared at the net. She was still clutching the steel spear. It tasted cold and sweet against her torn lip.  Tom ran around the edge of the pool above Mavis. He barked hysterically. Mavis stared at the pulsating net in front of her. Nurse Johnson’s hand and forearm stuck from the net. Gold rings on four fingers reflected the bright afternoon sun. The hand slowly disappeared, crunch by crunch.  Mavis continued to weep.
Timmi watched from the balcony. Why didn’t the Creature try to eat her? Timmi thought. If that idiot dog runs anymore circles around the pool’s edge, I’ll find a gun blow its head off.  Timmi had chanted for the Creature to get Mavis. It was sad that Cole was dead. The other guy and the big-boobed nurse were strangers. They didn’t matter. But Mavis was still alive. The Creature was just waiting. Waiting for what? To get hungry? That could take forever what with all the dead bodies. No it just had two: Miss Big-boobs and Mister One-hand. Cole was still on the patio. So maybe the Creature was still hungry. Maybe the Creature would rid the Hill of Charles’s unfaithful wife. Then Charles would look at Claymore Canyon’s most beautiful red-head. The Creature would probably get hungry before the day was out. It had her trapped. It would be bloody.  The Creature had waited many months for Charles’ late wife. Timmi giggled. The death dance would be slow. Timmi would have to wait and watch just to make sure. Timmi backed slowly from the balcony into the house, but she sat on the edge of the overstuffed chair so she could keep an eye on Charles’ soon to be dead wife.
Charles stood next to a small compact car. Jessica Hunter leaned from the driver’s side window.  “You look tired,” she said.
“It should be over soon,” Charles said. He kissed her, and then walked to the entrance. He looked down the block toward the dormered mansion. Inspector Davis’ junk car was parked at the gate. Davis or some other short guy was walking this direction, he thought, with something on his back.  The Inspector must have borrowed something from Drummer. Something for the trap. He should go help, but screw it. It was Davis’s stupid idea to build a trap. A trap for something from the hills. A trap for something jumping in, not for something already in the pool. Mavis was supposed to be the only victim. Damn! A shiny black Z-28 sat in the driveway next to smart-ass Cole’s car. If the Serpent was going to eat everybody, why couldn’t it eat Cole? Life was screwed.  Charles went through the front door. No one was in the house. Quietly he moved up the stairs to Mavis’ bedroom. He was home early. Maybe Mavis was doing it with Smart-ass.  The bedroom was empty. “Mavis!” Charles called out. He moved rapidly to the open balcony door. The pumps had become hot and turned off to silence. The four-by-four frame around the pool caught his attention. Jesus! They destroyed the patio, he thought. Cole’s body was lying between the pumps. Don’t go near the pool, Smart-ass. Tom lay at the pool, his chin hung over the edge. Tom was watching Mavis huddled against the deep-end wall. “Mavis!" She looked up at him with terrified eyes. She’s still alive, he thought. Hell! At least it got Cole. But Cole’s death will bring heat. Charles ran toward the stairs.
Mavis clutched the steel spear. She stood up and backed against the wall. She placed the spear behind her back. She watched Charles come through the open patio doors. He walked gingerly down the floor of the pool. Tom followed him to the edge of the pool, but stopped and growled.
“Mavis, come out of there!”
She raised her head way back, and then with insane eyes, she looked down her nose at him.
“Love, it’s me,” he whispered. He stepped across the net to her.
She raised the steel spear with both hands and plunged it toward him. She was screaming hysterically. “Now!”
Charles sidestepped the thrust, but it dug into his shoulder and knocked him flat on his back over the piled net. Mavis stood over him in her torn, water-stained negligee, like some enraged Amazon. She started to plunge the spear toward his stomach. A rifle shot rang through the air. Mavis collapsed. against the pool's deep-end wall.
Charles rolled over to her. He looked toward the pool’s edge. Inspector Davis stood with a smoking rifle in his hand. “You killed her! You bastard!” Charles turned back toward Mavis’s body. He smiled.



Chapter Nineteen



Davis raised the rifle. “It’s a tranquilizer. I brought it for Cole.” He saw Cole’s body and ran to it. He knelt, lifted Cole’s head, and then looked up with tears in his eyes.
The next morning, Davis instructed four husky demolition workers how he wanted the drain ripped out of the pool’s bottom. He didn’t care how much it cost the taxpayers. It had cost too many lives already. One too many: Cole. P. J. was right; he had to stop the blood feast. He waved toward the dormered mansion, assuming P. J. Drummer was sitting at his telescope, cheering.
Drummer wasn’t cheering. He had just finished reading a ten-pound reference book on African Mythology. West Africa was of special interest, but he needed to know all that he could about Dan, Lord of the Vodu. And though Dan was the primary deity of West Africa, he was also worshiped in many other parts of Africa. In most of the rituals, sacrifices were made to the Serpent. The Serpent was in the Scartossi/O’Roak pool, he thought. Or a damn good clone. There were no ceremonies going on at the tri-level. There was no purpose to the slaughter. The Serpent was under its own control not the Lord of the Vodu. The Claymore Coven had no control. Tony Scartossi had even less. The Hill had become more evil.  Drummer focused and refocused the Bushnell trying to see if the crew at the pool was doing the job. If they put the hook and cable in the correct place, they would be able to pull the vault cover off in one quick pull. Raise the piece over the fence without tearing out the expensive wood and brick fence that guarded the side boundary of the Palace of Blood as the beautiful Doan Park had reported on TV. The same Doan Park who had just ran her hand across Martin Davis’s slumped shoulders. He turned the telescope and aimed it toward the front of the tri-level.  News vans were parked on both sides of Claymore Canyon Road. He focused the telescope on the pool area. Cameramen and photographers hung over the tri-level’s fence. Two photographers had shimmied up an electrical post that hung dangerously out over Claymore Canyon.  Anything for a scoop, Drummer thought. The vault cover would be about four feet by four feet and weigh about half a ton. In the vault, they would find all the things the Serpent could not devour.
With its voracious appetite, there would not be much. Drummer was sure there would be no skeletons. Bones were edible to most mammals. Logically anything that could tear a human from limb to limb would also be able to chew up the bones. The vault would contain jewelry and clothes—clothes that had not floated back up through the drain.
An industrial demolition crane sat on the empty land next to the patio area. Its iron-laced neck stuck over the wooden fence like some mutant giraffe looking for greener grass. Three of the workers stood down near the drain on the pool’s dry bottom. Another worker stood on a ladder, against the fence, giving hand signals to the crane operator. A fifty-pound iron hook was strapped by cable to an umbrella hook that would expand and open its five sturdy tongs. The umbrella hook was slowly fed through the cast-iron drain flange. It went down less than a foot and then sprang open.  Davis knew P. J. was correct about the space under the drain and was probably correct about the weakness of the resurfacing. They would find the predator’s lair. Was he ready for what they might find? How could it be possible that some prehistoric serpent was in a Southern California swimming pool? It wasn’t possible. There was some other explanation.  The giant crane tilted forward when it started to tighten the cable. The cable strained and twanged, and then the pool’s resurfaced bottom started cracking in straight lines. One darted toward the shallow end, then stopped abruptly and cut back almost in the direction from which it came. Two more lines of chipped plaster appeared and formed a triangle over the first lines. When the crane was finished, the vault cover had torn loose in the shape of a five-pointed star. But no one looked at the unusual design of the vault’s cover; they were all staring at the vault’s contents. Stacked neatly in a corner of the star-shaped vault were leg, hip, and thigh bones. Stacked in another corner were rib bones, and in a third corner were four skulls. The skulls were planted on top of a pile of clothes that appeared to include one of Sammy’s shoes, Macabe’s wet-suit bottoms, and Nurse Johnson’s tattered uniform, slip, shoes, and underwear. In another corner of the star was a small pile of rings, watches, and gold fillings.
The workman on the ladder leaned too far forward. He fell from his perch, distracting Davis from his thoughts. P. J. had been wrong about one thing: the predator wasn’t there, Davis thought. It must have escaped into the mountains while they were screwing around getting permission to bring a crane onto private land: it was all Drummer’s land, and he was more than co-operative, but his Trustee couldn’t understand why the crane was needed. He warned Drummer that the crane would damage ground cover. Drummer told the young Trustee he was an idiot and that no one from the bank had been up the Hill for ten years or they would know that there was no ground cover. The permit was issued. The crane was there. At last there was some reality to the case. The murders had not been committed by something superhuman. It was a predator that could stay under water long enough to kill its victims, strip them of their jewelry, clothes, and flesh, stack all the inedible items in neat piles, and eat the rest. Yeah, reality had really rushed into the case. Davis didn’t need the lab to tell him to whom the inedible items belonged, nor to verify that two of the thigh bones belonged to Cole.
Drummer watched Davis walk through the side gate of the tri-level. He would have bet a ton of dead presidents that Martin Davis would get trapped by the Press. But Davis twisted through the flashing bulbs and walked rapidly in Drummer’s direction. Davis mumbled as he walked. Drummer tried to pickup some of the words with his high-powered, directional receiver-dish. But the Wiz was not always a wiz.
Davis sat in silence inside the mansion. Drummer waited. Davis spoke. “You didn’t tell it all. You thought I wouldn’t believe your ravings. It’s not from the hills. What is it?”
“I’ll tell you theory after you tell me reality. What was in the vault?”
“First, the vault was not shaped like a shed. It was shaped . . . .”
“Like a Witches Foot.”
“A what?”
“A Witches Foot. A five-pointed star. I saw it when they lifted it over the fence.”
“Like the one Old lady Scartossi was crucified on? Apparently you not surprised,” Davis said.
“It validates my theory. What was in the vault?”
“Bones.”
“Bones?”
“Bones, jewelry, and clothing. All stacked neatly. Clothing held down by skulls. Whatever it is, it’s more intelligent than the average bear.” Davis smiled wryly. “Sorry, too many cartoons with my grandson.”
“Keep your sense of humor. You’ll need it.” Drummer pulled out a heavy eleven- by-fourteen book with strips of old parallel computer cable being used as bookmarks. He pulled the heavy book out just far enough for it to slide onto a side tray on the wheelchair. He flipped a switch.  The tray rose to the level of the worktable. He slid the tattered book off onto the table and opened it to the exact middle. On the right hand center page was a drawing of a five pointed star with printing under it: Witches Foot
Davis bent over and looked at the sketch. He nodded. “It’s the same shape as the vault cover. A Witches Foot.”
“If I had told you my theory before you opened the vault, you would have had your men bring the net. ‘Wrap him up boys, and truck him over to Patton. Don’t use Patton’s front gate, you’ll disturb the other nut cases.’” Drummer pulled the book back toward him. “You were ready to walk when I said the predator was under the pool. But I showed you logic so you stayed and listened. Old Wiz was pretty brilliant. But now I’m going to give you a theory that your rational mind will not buy.  But as courtesy to your fallen friend, Cole, try to remember I’m the Wiz.” He turned two pages forward in the book, then wet his gnarled thumb and tried to reglue a corner of the news clipping positioned at the top of the page. Scribbles filled the remainder of the page. “When Old Lady Scartossi was crucified to that marble slab, do you remember what shape the spikes formed?”
“A cross,” Davis said.
“Smarter than the average bear.
They both laughed. The book slammed shut. Davis jumped.  Drummer reopened the book. “Relax. They don’t like laughter.”
“Who?” Davis looked around trying to peer into the late afternoon shadows of the laboratory. “Who doesn’t like laughter?” The Wiz was beginning to be spooky, he thought. The old codger probably had some kind of device that popped the book shut. One of those damned bookmarks was probably wired to something.
“Who? You ask. Why the Evil things that Guadelupe Scartossi brought to the Hill,”  Drummer said. “They don’t like laughter because they think we are laughing at them.” Drummer laughed. The book slammed shut again. “Back to the spikes. They formed a cross. That’s why she died. The form killed her. Every week she had those same spikes driven through her body and into the slab. She survived. But that night she died. She died because the spikes formed a cross instead of 666. Tony Scartossi disguised himself and his biker friends as some born-again Christian radicals from the Sword of Expulsion cult. He must have interrupted the ceremony and had his cohorts do some cutting on coven members.  None of the coven members were killed because Tony murdered his grandmother so he could take over the coven, so he needed as many coven members as possible to remain alive and loyal to the coven. He then drove spikes into his grandmother’s naked body. Or he had them driven. The spikes were driven in to form a cross instead of 666. The pattern killed her. She had always lived when the pattern was 666. To form a cross, Tony drove a spike through her skull. Then while she squirmed in excruciating pain, Tony drove in the rest of the spikes. She died because of the design not because of the spikes. Evil no longer protected her from death because the sign of the cross kept Evil away.
“BS!” Davis got up and walked around the cluttered laboratory. “I don’t believe any of that crap. What’s it got to do with the predator?”
“Humor an old man, a friend of your father, and your father’s father. Humor the Wiz,”  Drummer said. “The hybrid religion of Guadelupe Scartossi was a mixture of Old Testament reference to Satan as the Serpent and West African Vodu folklore reference to the Serpent of Dan Lord of the Vodu. Guadelupe Scartossi couldn’t bypass the coincidence, so she created her own brew of Witchcraft, Vodu, Voodoo, and Old Testament theology and came up with a potent mixture. So potent that, if done correctly, she could control Evil, chant to it, command it, and use it. She used it to help her family and the Claymore Coven. There is no record of mayhem, other than to  the Mafia family that supposedly eliminated her son Manny. The trouble appears to have started when a powerless little runt, Tony Scartossi, tried to gain the power from his grandmother by crucifying her.  Then he tried to get control of the Serpent in the pool. Tony was never able to control the Serpent.  So the Serpent is under no ones control. Blood lust and survival are its only motivations.
A week later, Charles and Mavis sat at the breakfast table. Mavis looked older. A strip of tape concealed the cut on her chin. “They still don’t believe,” she said.
“Some think you’re a strong, crazy lady who hacks people up. They can’t figure how you did it but they still think you did it. Some think it was a predator that goes back into the hills. Davis and that old fart Drummer have some theory they’re not revealing.
Mavis stood up and walked to the patio doors and looked through the glass at the drained pool. “What did the real estate people say?”
“They all said we can’t give it away,” Charles said.
He moved up behind her. She twisted away from his probing hands. “Give it away!” she said.
Later, Charles stood at the entrance door. He was wearing a suit and carrying two travel bags. Tom waited patiently at his side. “Come with me, Love,” Charles said. “We’ll have fun.”
“Next time.” Holding one end of her dowdy night gown, Mavis opened the door for Charles.
He hefted his bags, and then kissed her. He rubbed the toe of his shoe against Tom’s belly.  “I see Billy Boy’s selling,” he said as he walked toward the driveway.



Chapter Twenty


Mavis looked in the direction of Bill Norris’ house. A “For Sale” sign was staked into the ground at the front of the house. The image was staked into her heart. She looked away fearing Charles would see devastation in her eyes. Charles started the station wagon and let it slowly glide backwards down the short driveway. He made a U-turn almost at the lip of Claymore Canyon. He waved to Mavis then sped away. Mavis ran up stairs to the master suite. She quickly put on shorts and a halter—her belly hung slightly over the waistband of the shorts. The halter pinched her breasts. She ripped the halter off in disgust and slipped into a blouse. She ran lipstick over her damaged lips then dropped the tube into the sink and dashed down to the entrance.
Light reflected off the side panel on the entrance door of Bill’s house. She could see very little through the panel but she knew the house was vacant. She stumbled over a bush and ran frantically to the side of the house. A large window revealed a huge, vacant living room. Mavis ran back to her house sobbing. She received a busy signal on her first attempt at dialing the phone. She slammed the phone down, lit a cigarette, and paced. She dialed again. Busy! She threw the lit cigarette at the patio doors. It sparked and fell to the parquet. She dialed again “The number has been changed and the new number is not listed,” the electronic operator said. Mavis slammed the phone into its cradle. She scrambled up the stairs and through the entrance door slamming it against the wall. When her bare feet hit a stone in the road, she fell and cut her knee. She was a foot from the “For Sale” sign. At the bottom of the sign was the local phone number. She repeated the number to herself as she ran back toward the house.
“But you have his house listed,” she said into the phone.
“We cannot give out customer information.”
“My name is Mavis O’Roak, he will want to know I called.”
There was a short pause. “Mrs. O’Roak, I will indicate that you called.”
Mavis pictured the receptionist looking at the morning newspaper and pictures of the “Death Palace and Mrs. O’Roak.” That afternoon, Mavis sat curled up on the couch. The phone finally rang. “Hello?” she said.
“Beautiful, how are you?” Bill said through intermittent static.
“You deserted me.”
“Not true. I will never desert you. There were problems. I’ll explain latter. How do you feel?”
Mavis looked at her reflection in a glass-fronted picture on the shelf. “I’d feel better if you were here. Charles went to Baltimore. I don’t want to be alone in this house. I can’t go out in public.” She touched the tape on her chin. “I need a friend.”
“I’ll see you this evening,” he said.
It took a lifetime for the evening to arrive but it was there and Mavis was dressed in slacks and a blouse. She stood at her bedroom door and peeked down toward the entrance. The doorbell kept ringing. It continued to ring but still Mavis did not move. She had tried all day to put makeup on her injured lip and chin, but the more she fiddled with it, the worse it looked. Bill was coming to see the beautiful Mavis O’Roak, she thought, but she no longer existed. She had been destroyed by something evil in the pool; something that was put there to destroy her beauty. Probably put there by Charles and Jessica. Bill would see her ugliness. He would desert her. She would be isolated on the Hill. The Evil Hill.  The sound of the bell ringing vibrated to the tip of each of Mavis’ fingers: little finger, ring finger, middle finger, index finger, and the thumb with the torn nail. And over again. When Bill stopped ringing the bell and left, she would kill herself. She would go to the edge of the canyon and step off. What if she didn’t die? What if she became a vegetable? When he stopped ringing the bell and left, she would pack up and drive to somewhere where she was not expected to be beautiful.  Maybe San Diego; sailors thought anything breathing was beautiful. The doorbell kept ringing. It was beginning to infuriate her.
Bill came through the door. “Mavis?’ He walked down the stairs to the semidarkness of the lower level and immediately looked up toward Mavis half hidden in the shadows of the upper level. “Mavis? You okay?”
She stayed in the shadows while he walked up the stairs toward her. He always looked so handsome, she thought. His lashes were almost feminine and showed up even in the dim light. His jaw was square and strong. He was so handsome and she was so ugly. “I made a mistake. I don’t want you to see me.” She ducked deeper into the shadows.
Bill moved closer. “I saw your face when you were unconscious in the hospital. You’re beautiful . . . as always.
Mavis turned away. They stood at the doorway of the master suite. She had her back to him; her hand cupped the tape on her lip and chin. Bill turned her around and pulled her hand away from her face. “You’re beautiful, Mavis,” he whispered. They moved into the master suite and sat on the settee. Tom curled his large body into an impossible corner of the settee.  “April’s husband kept coming by the house accusing me of April’s death. He said I was the reason she left him. I put Timmi with the Graffees, stored the furniture, and moved to a hotel.”
“It’s all so horrible,” Mavis said.
“It’s the Hill. I felt it as soon as I crossed the bridge. And I felt it stronger as I came closer to this house. You need to escape from the Hill.”
“I can’t,” Mavis said.
“No one will see the tape as anything but a bandage.”
“That’s only part of it. I can’t leave the Hill . . . not right now.”
Bill put his arm around her and pulled her toward him. “When can you leave? How can I make you feel better?”
“You will be the first to know when I’m ready to leave. And you can make me feel better by telling me I’m beautiful.”
“You are beautiful.” He lifted her gently from the settee to the oversized bed at its back.
She pressed her head against his chest. “Stay tonight,” she said.
Later, out on the patio, Bill barbecued a large steak on the portable grill. He wore a full-length apron, from neck to mid-thigh, and a chef’s hat. He whistled while he marinated the steak, then forked the heavy steak onto a platter and watched Tom pace between the barbecue and the house. Bill turned toward the house with the platter in hand. He had nothing on under the apron. He walked away playfully dodging Tom. They both moved rapidly up the stairs, rushed across the upper-level landing and through the master bedroom doorway. “Here comes the famous naked chef,” Bill shouted. Tom barked. “And his barking assistant.” Mavis still lounged under the sheets on her bed. Bill stood, beside the bed, balancing the platter on his fingertips waiter-style. “Old Tom likes me,” he bragged.
“Lucky for you. I guess he won’t be biting your butt,” Mavis said.
He placed the platter in the center of the bed, and then hopped under the sheet. They sat devouring the large steak from the platter between them: some for Tom, some for them; some for Tom some for them.  “Beautiful, you have to do something about that pool,” Bill said.
Mavis turned abruptly. “What about the pool?” Fear clouded her eyes and dilated her pupils.
“It needs to be covered. I damn near tripped at the edge. It’s damn near a twenty foot drop to the bottom of the open, box drain.”
“Oh that. Charles is worried that it will decrease the value of the house if we have it filled in.”
“You tell Charles that if someone falls and breaks their neck it will decrease the value of his wallet.” They both giggled and stuffed steak into each others choking mouths. The phone rang. Mavis juggled the phone while she ate a piece of steak.
“Hello Love,” Charles said on the other end.
“Charles!” Mavis made a face at Bill.
“How do you feel?” Charles said.
“I feel fine.” She took Bill’s hand and slipped it under the sheet. “How’s your wallet?”  Mavis said.
“What?” Charles said.
“Oh, nothing.”
“Love, are you alone?”
“Charles, who would be here?”
“You just sound like you’re entertaining someone or you’re drunk. Have you been drinking? Never mind, I called to tell you I have to stay till Monday. Okay?”
Mavis’s face lit up. She stuck out her tongue and wiggled it at Bill, then said into the phone, “Okay. See you then. Be good.” she hung up the phone and giggled, then pushed the platter to her side of the bed and pulled Bill onto her. She pulled off his chef’s hat and dropped it onto Tom’s face buried in the steak platter. “Charles won’t be home till Monday,” she said. “Stay with me.”
“I have to work.”
“Evenings?”
“Okay,” he said.
She shifted under him, and then pulled him tighter. The closet door opened—just a crack. A shadow moved inside.
The next morning, Bill was ready to leave for work; Mavis wore a stunning, new negligee. “You don’t work tomorrow,” she said.
“No.”
“Spend every minute with me.”
“If the Graffees will keep Timmi.” he kissed her good-bye.
Bill slipped into his De Tomaso Mongusta sitting in Mavis’s driveway. He plugged the cord of his portable phone into the cigar lighter, flipped the on switch at the base of the phone, and then listened for the familiar tone. The world could now reach him; if the circuits were not busy, if the cell towers were in the right location, and if he was in the right receiving area at the right time. He lifted the receiver and dialed information. Any call he made would have to be quick before he started the serpentine trip down through the mountains. In the mountains his no-service light would glow red, like a troubled warning light in his hospitalized Jag. “Scartossi Foreign Auto Repairs in Point Dume, please.” He held the receiver in one hand and steered the De Tomaso with the other. He used the phone to wave at Inspector Davis, standing at the entrance gate of the Drummer estate. He almost slammed the low-slung car into a towering pine at the side of the road, but he straightened out of a fishtail. Damn, he thought, that must have been Drummer at the gate strapped in a wheelchair that looked like he was due for capital punishment. In all the years he had been on the Hill, he had never seen Drummer. Most of the time he had doubted that Drummer existed. But there he was, sitting and talking to Inspector Davis as though it were the thing he did each and every morning of each and every day. Bill had saved a copy of the old Life magazine that had an article about Drummer. The article told about when Drummer was involved in the CIA and it had something to do with discovering the Russian Missiles in Cuba.
But the main story was about the mysterious death of his wife, Susan Morgan. She was the most important movie star of her day. She was found hanging from the chandelier of their elaborate mansion, the very same rundown house that Bill drove past every day of the week. Her friends said it was suicide because Drummer was bedding down with a young, beautiful Guadelupe Scartossi. But the writer thought that she had been assassinated by the Russians as revenge against Drummer. But Bill thought it was strange how high Susan Morgan had been hung. The rope was impossibly short.  There had been no explanation on how she could have stepped off the banister and dropped one floor when the rope was too short to even let her reach out with a hand to touch it. Bill and many others were certain that Evil powers had put the noose around her neck then floated out from the banister and dropped her straight down. Bill always wanted to go up to the rundown mansion and knock on the door. “Drummer,” he would say, “I read the story about you in Life. I need to know . . . was it suicide or was it Gestapo . . . not Gestapo, the Russian guys, the KGB.” Drummer would have probably come out in the front yard of the mansion and talked just like he was doing with Inspector Davis. All Bill had to do was ask.
Jesus! It all sounded like a bad fifties movie photographed in seventeen days at RKO. Not like one of Mary Jean Graffee’s movies that took almost three years to get to the screen. Jesus! The Hill was weird. Every day something weird happened. Weird things happened to him down on the coast, but not every day. It was weird that someone should snipe at his Jag last Tuesday just as he came off Pacific Coast onto Claymore Canyon Road. But people were shooting at each other every day on the freeways and main thoroughfares. One had to be careful not to cut off some hothead. The hothead might reach under his van seat and pull out a fifty-seven magnum. The world was becoming weird, especially on weekends. But the Hill was weird every day. He re-dialed his phone.  His no-service light was winking its ugly, red light at him.  The loaner he was driving was all engine plus two seats. He accelerated across the land bridge and prepared to gear down for the first curve that started the winding twists down through the mountains. The De Tomaso geared down beautifully, its Ford engine giving a deep guttural laugh, but the two-seater was still moving too fast. Bill knew the next curve ended in a hairpin to end all hairpins. He hit the brakes. There were none. He had no damn brakes! His brain screamed. No brakes! None! Zilch! Zero! He pumped the pedal, but nothing happened. He jerked the T-shaped shift handle straight back into low gear. The powerful engine backfired and backed off, but not enough. He was hitting eighty in the turns. A scarred metal guardrail shot past and ate a hole in the fiberglass body the length of the car.
It was all downhill. He could think of no turnouts that were long enough to slow the runaway car. The truck escape ramp was just before Pacific Coast and that was ten miles and two hairpins away. If a car was in either lane, everybody was history. A “Deer Crossing” sign flashed past on his right side. The next curve would be where the school bus had skidded, then rolled over the edge, killing twenty-one children headed for city hall to protest the renaming of their mountain school from Big Mountain Elementary to Guadelupe Scartossi Elementary. The school was located on Scartossi land and had been built as a place to teach children scattered throughout the mountains. Now their blood and flesh was scattered throughout the mountains. Death Curve was coming. Bill made his decision. He had one chance, and only half a chance to live through it. When he flew around the next curve, he turned the wheel slightly into the tapered face of the mountain and laid the speeding car almost on its side. He could easily have touched the passing blacktop with his trembling elbow. The exotic car screamed and shuddered and rode the side of the mountain until it came to an abrupt stop against a “Dangerous Curve” sign. Bill climbed gingerly over the transmission housing, across the passenger’s seat, up through the passenger’s window. The De Tomaso lay neatly on its driver’s side. After sucking big gulps of air, and walking to look down at the “Dangerous Curve” below, Bill took a long look at the amazing position of the sports car. He gave out a flat toned whistle and sat down on the side of the mountain.
He would take a short breather then start the long walk. There was no service, of course, on his cell phone still tucked neatly in his breast pocket. There would be no one driving Claymore Canyon at this time of day, he thought. Good thing earlier, but a bad thing now. He began the five-mile hike.  The morning was beautiful. He was alive. There had been a lot of death in the last year. But today he was alive and looking at stark beauty. It had always seemed impossible to him that such beautiful, unspoiled, isolated mountains could be so close to stores and shops and garages and fifty thousand people. The road was framed by some of California’s most beautiful scenery. Bill was not so sure he still needed to pass through it each day. Maybe he needed to be away from the Hill. Life on the Hill had been major problem after major problem. And somehow the Hill had made Timmi Evil. Yeah, that was it, he thought, she had become Evil. When he was in Nam, he had captured children about the same age as Timmi, and they looked at him with the same evil hate. They had bombs strapped to their hollowed bellies: bombs meant to destroy him. Why? Timmi wanted to destroy him even if it destroyed her. He had to get off the Hill for good. For his good and Timmi’s good. He would send Timmi to a private school and move Mavis in with him in a house in Brentwood or Westwood. She would love it: the social life and the shopping. There was too much death connected with the Hill. His mind searched for some hidden fact and pulled additional information into his thoughts. There was too much death connected with the Scartossis.
He stood looking down at the ocean almost four miles away. Damn if his phone didn’t show he was in a service area! He thanked the Gods of Communications and punched in a six to recall a number. The girl answering at the other end yelled for Tony.  “Scartossi! You bastard! You gave me a death trap to drive.” Static chopped his words.  “Scartossi can you hear me?”
“That you Norris?” Scartossi said. “You still alive?”
“Come and get me and your  piece of crap car.”
“On my way,” Tony said.
The phone went dead. How the Hell did he know where to come, Bill thought. The ocean view eased his wait but not his mind. The thing with Mavis was moving fast. Getting serious. She was high maintenance. They were both thinking of moving together. He liked the idea when they were together, but the idea wore off after a short time out of her presents. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. The wound on her face could be fixed. But he did not need another neurotic wife; one was more than enough to last a lifetime. But he wanted Mavis. Deep in his heart. Deep in his belly. But to move her in with him—no matter where that might be—might be more than he could handle. Timmi and Mavis would be at each other’s throats every minute of ever day.  He would get no rest and none of the good life. Just that deepest of all hate: female hate. The most deadly kind. Timmi or Mavis would have to go. Mavis would be the easiest to get out of his life. He could just walk away. Timmi would be much harder to remove. Major surgery. If he put her back with his mother, his dear, old mother would probably end up having an accident just like Grandma Osborn had after he sent Timmi from the Hill to live with her. Timmi brought Evil to any house. Even the Graffees were having domestic problems for what appeared to be the first time. Was it just a coincidence? Timmi should take some of her Evil to her mother. They deserved each other. If he sent her to a private school, she would just run away. He had to house her for two more years. He would be crazy or dead by then. Neurotic women and bad cars appeared to be his destiny.
The Scartossi tow truck came chugging up the road and pulled over next to Bill. Bill hopped into the truck that looked as though it needed a tow. He put the back of his hand under his chin and flipped his hand toward Tony Scartossi. “How’d you know where I was?’
“A little birdie told me,” Scartossi said. “He also told me to get my car before it started to rain.”
“It’s not going to rain.”
Tony turned his squat, balding head toward Bill and let his vacant eyes look deep into Bill’s “It’ll be the worst rain of your life.”



Chapter Twenty One



Inspector Davis had planned to leave P. J.’s hours earlier, but in P. J. he had found a soul mate. The old man was nearly twice his age, but it was give and take in their conversations. But the last three hours it was all P. J. because Drummer had recently become an expert on West African Mythology, and that is where P. J. claimed the problem originated. They had finished talking in the laboratory.  Drummer followed Davis to the front gate. When Bill Norris went tearing by in some silly-looking foreign car, P. J. commented at to how the car was parked all night in the O’Roak’s driveway and Charles O’Roak’s station wagon was nowhere in sight.  P. J. Drummer’s theory involved O’Roak in a contract killing. He believed O’Roak had met the agent in Togo.
The trail of Evil began in 1852 at Togo. Guadelupe Scartossi was a thirty-year-old beauty.  She was also a palm reader and other things for the slave traders. Her Portuguese father ran a trading post on the coast of Togo. Drummer said, yes, it was the very same Guadelupe Scartossi who was crucified right here on the Hill at the rip old age of one hundred and eighty-nine. Her name then was Guadelupe Alfonso. She immigrated to America. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, she learned to merge the evil deities of West Africa with the demons of which craft. She joined Voodoo rituals in the area, but began her own cult about the time of the abolition of slavery. She gave sacrifices to the West African gods, Manu and Lisa, twin children of the God Nana Bakula. And she worshiped Dan, son of the twins and Lord of the Vodu. Dan was depicted as the agent for Good and Evil. The sign, over the door of Antonia Scartossi’s restaurant at The Point , showed a serpent eating its own tail. It was a symbol of Dan’s power unifying the world: total balance between Good and Evil with as much Evil as Good and as much Good as Evil. Guadelupe Alfonso became infamous for her power and beauty. At the age of one hundred and twelve, she married a Mafia under lord, Anthony Scartossi. He was a Sicilian bookkeeper. During the Great Depression, he was torched at the Festival of the Saints in New Orleans.  Guadelupe Scartossi packed up her Witches Foot, Vodu symbols, and Voodoo herbs, loaded up her twin children, Antonia and Manny Scartossi, and walked to California. She searched the country looking for the entrance to the Underworld; not the underworld of her crispy Mafia husband, but the Underworld of the Vodu of Evil, the house of the Great Satan. California turned out to be a great spot. Her restaurants became famous and she helped the Mafia get a foothold at the same time. But in her mind all Gods were procreated, like the West African, Greek, Roman and Christian Gods, through incest. So she married her son Manny and had twins: a boy and a girl. They were killed when Manny was abducted.
After Manny’s abduction and slow, torturous death, Guadelupe Alfonso Scartossi swore vengeance on the Mafia. With her powers, she helped the Mafia locate in California then one by one slaughtered each and every Mafioso and eliminated their hold on California. Their hold was never regained.  P. J.’s theory was that the power stopped with Guadelupe crucifixion, but the Hill was the site of the entrance to the Underworld. The Hill was Evil, maybe before Guadelupe. But Drummer was positive that Tony and Antonia had none of the power or they would be showing more of the trappings of success. The power stopped with Guadelupe Scartossi.
Davis listened with interest, but he didn’t start taking notes until O’Roak’s name came into the mix. O’Roak had incriminated himself with notes on West African Mythology he was using to prepare a report for one of his client’s museums. P. J. had come by the notes legitimately enough: he paid the burly trash man to drop off any written material trashed by the occupants of the tri-level. P.J. was soliciting Davis’ help to close the door to Evil. But the damn lovers, Mavis O’Roak and Bill Norris, had been frolicking directly over Evil’s door.
“It’s still my house,” Bill said. He dangled the keys in her smiling face. At the tennis court, they hammered the ball violently back and forth. They ran to the net and kissed each other. “I thought you were trying to kill me,” Bill said.
“I hate you. You’ll leave me,” she said.
“No, this time I’m not going to run. I’ll stay with you always.”
“I’ll go anywhere with you,” she said.
They held each other in a long embrace. Then walked back across to Mavis’ He got in his jag. She kissed him, and he sped away.
That night, Bill, in his repaired Jag, was a few blocks from the Claymore Canyon Road turnoff, but he zipped on past. He wasn’t ready to go up to the Hill. Timmi was there with the Graffees. He would have to drop in sometime, he thought. He would have to lie about having to go back down the Hill to do something or another. Timmi would cause a scene—not because she wanted to be with him, but because she liked to cause a scene. How would he get from the Graffees’ place to Mavis’? That would be a major problem. He wasn’t fooling anyone. They all knew he was sleeping with Mavis.  He was not fooling Mavis either. She knew he was the kind to run. He had been driving around all afternoon just to avoid going up the Hill. It was too early to find any action at the Santa Monica clubs. So he headed to where there was always action.  It sat against the cliffs that guarded the Pacific Coast Highway. The sign said, "Scartossi’s". The building had been built in the late twenties. Every inch of the dilapidated, wooden building needed paint except the emblem on the door: it was freshly painted: every detail was clear: it was a serpent eating its own tail. Whatever the Hell that meant? Bill thought. Probably pornographic–everything else in the joint was. The bikes that lined the rutted parking lot where chromed to the hilt. Bill parked the Jag away from the bikes and walked across the dust-topped lot to the entrance. Inside, his eyes were attacked by a heavy layer of smoke; little of it was from regular cigarettes—the new law had not stopped anyone from lighting up.
Tony Scartossi spotted him and darted over. “Slumming?” he said.
“Just need some action,” Bill said.
“Not enough with Mrs. Charles O’Roak?”
Bill grabbed the squat, little man by his dirty, 76 uniform. He pulled Tony toward the light at the front entrance. “That’s none of your affair,” Bill said.
The restaurant’s patrons, mostly bikers, left their chairs and circled around Bill and Tony.  “Your affair is my affair when it involves my friends,” Tony said.
“Friends? Hell! The O’Roaks wouldn’t pee on you.”
“Charles O’Roak’s my buddy,” Tony said.
“Yea, so is J. Paul Getty,” Bill said.
Tony signaled to two burly bikers. They grabbed Bill’s arms. Tony moved in close, as though he was going to kiss Bill’s parted lips. Maybe the kiss of death, Bill thought. But Tony quickly bit Bill’s lip and chin. “Now you and Mrs.Charles O’Roak is twins,” Tony said.  At Tony’s signal, the bikers tumbled Bill out onto the dusty parking lot. A giant leather-clad biker with long red hair strapped back into a ponytail kicked Bill in the ribs as Bill scrambled on his gravel-scarred knees to the side of the Jag. The biker stepped forward and placed his chain-draped engineer’s boot on the side of Bill’s dust-buried head. Red.  I bet his damn name is Red, Bill thought. Pain shot up his back and lodged in his brain. The biker kept his boot on Bill’s face while he used his Bowie knife to etch a five-pointed star with a circled serpent on the side of the emerald green car.
“Leave Mr. Charles O’Roak’s wife alone or next time I’ll carve the Witches Foot on your face,” Red whispered two inches from Bill’s bleeding face.
Bill dragged himself into the Jag and drove to the Motel 6. He soaked in a hot tub and stemmed the bleeding from his lip and chin with a wet towel. He really needed a strong drink, but he couldn’t drag himself from the tub. He reached from the tub and pulled his trashed, two-hundred-dollar slacks toward the tub. He unlaced the sealskin belt from the loops. He whipped the belt toward the small, spindly phone-table. The first pass just hammered the steel buckle into the corner of the table, chipping a quarter sized chunk from the Formica. The second pass brought the table tumbling sideways and the phone sprawling within inches of the tub. Bill cradled the receiver and sat the phone on his chest.
“Are you okay?” Mavis asked. “You sound distant. Cold. Have you changed your mind about us?”
“No. Your husband hired some thugs to screw with the brakes on the car and when I didn’t accidentally die they decided to beat me to death. I’m at that crummy motel at Claymore Canyon and Pacific Coast . . . room 140. Bring anything from the bar. Bring everything from the bar. I need to get drunk. I’m soaking in the smallest tub in the US of A. I need booze and you.”
“I can’t come.”
“Mavis! I need you!”
“Did you call the doctor?’
“I need you and booze, not the doctor.”
“I need you also, but I can’t go down the Hill.”
“Don’t let Charles frighten you. I’ll call Inspector Davis,” Bill said.
“It’s not Charles. I can’t go down the Hill. When you’re rested, come up. Before Charles comes back from Baltimore, we’ll go down the Hill together. I love you. Please come up and protect me.”
“Oh, Hell! Run me a big tub full of hot, steamy water. Line up six glasses of booze. Get ready to give me some tender, loving care. I’ll be right up. I love you.”
Mavis was humming “Unbreak My Heart” while she painted on a large canvas. Bill peeked through the entrance door. “Have I got a surprise for you!” He shouted.
Mavis wiped her fingers on her smock and ran to the stairs. From the base, she looked up at Bill. She stopped dead. “That’s not funny!” she said.
Bill reached up and touched the tape stuck to his lip and chin. “Mavis, this is real. Tony Scartossi damn near bit my lip and chin off.”
“Tony Scartossi? What’s that little creep got to do with anything”
“He’s Charles’ buddy,” Bill said.
“Is he the one Charles hired?”
“Yes, but screw them. We’ll get out of here. But first I brought you this.” He held up a brand-new Monopoly game.
She loved him, she thought. They were twins. Twins for life. He was all she wanted. And to get off the Hill. They would move to Boston. Back to civilization. Back to sanity. Each night he would come home to their Brownstone. He would bear gifts. She would never look at another man. Thank you God. I won’t blow it. Mavis hesitated then giggled to herself.
“What are you giggling about. Don’t like my funny face?’ he said.
“I love your funny face. I love everything about you. Let’s put you into a steaming tub.”
She went back to the breakfast counter and lifted a large juice glass of Jim Beam and came back to him. “Oh God! What happened to your clothes?’ The entrance shadows no longer hid the bloodstained cloth on Bill’s knees.
He took the glass from her hand and swallowed half its contents. “Charles is serious.” He put his arm around Mavis’ shoulders and they walked up to the master suite and the steamy tub.
Late that evening, Bill and Mavis lay on the rug playing Monopoly and sipping champagne. Bill’s legs looked as though they had been clawed by some long-nailed creature, and his lip and chin mimicked Mavis’s. The tape was cut exactly the same size. Mavis had drawn a small red heart in the center of each of their patches. They were twins, lovers, and friends. But they were archenemies on the board.  “You can’t do that. You were in jail. You have to roll doubles or pull a ‘Get Out Of Jail’ card before you can move.” Bill said.
“Oh be nice. Let me move. I can’t throw doubles,” Mavis said.
Tom kept knocking over Bill’s houses and hotels. “How can I win against both of you?” Bill said.
“You win! You get the prize.” Mavis tipped the board over and rolled on top of him.
They wrestled around the room with Bill moaning each time his knees touched the carpet.  Tom danced, wagged, and barked. Mavis got up and put Tom out on the patio, then closed the curtains to the yelping dog. Lying on his back with his arms behind his head, Bill watched Mavis kneel down and kiss his exposed chest.
At the upper-level banister, Timmi watched from the shadows. If she had Old Lady Scartossi’s power, she would cause her father to ignite and burn. The fire would charge down his body and shoot into that Mavis’ mouth. They would both turn to toast: breakfast toast that she would keep and eat every morning for the rest of her life. Timmi turned her hand over and traced a Witches Foot in the palm of her hand. “Oh Dan, Lord of the Vodu.” If her brain would just spit up the words she had heard so many times at those Tuesday afternoon meetings of the Claymore Coven. Dan seemed like an odd name for a God, but that was the name. They wrote it in blood on the mirrors. It faded when they ended that day’s meeting of the coven. Dan was the name. Maybe that was Satan’s first name, Timmi thought. Maybe his name was Dan Satan short for Danny or Daniel—probably not Daniel that was the name of another angel not the Fallen Angel.  She had searched the tri-level for anything that belonged to Old Lady Scartossi, but she only found a leather-bound report about the Gods. But it was authored by Charles O’Roak—her Charles.  Gross out! She thought. Charles must have known about Old Lady Scartossi. And he must have known about the Creature in the pool. Charles was part of the Evil. That somehow excited her. She wanted Charles to spike her to the marble. She would bet her virginity that the Witches Foot was still on the marble floor under the new carpet. But she didn’t have the guts to tear back the carpet.  “Oh , Dan, Lord of the Vodu . . . .” Someday she would remember the plea.
The next morning, Bill and Mavis shot hoops in the front driveway. Mavis was happy and laughing. She wore Bill’s oversized T-shirt. “I love you, Bill Norris,” she shouted. He dribbled the ball toward her, crashing into her. He shot and made the lay-up, but stopped her from falling. He kissed her long and hard. “I hope old man Drumond didn’t see,” Mavis said breathlessly.
“His name is Drummer,” Bill said.
“Drummer, Schrummer,” she said. “I hope he didn’t see.
“Screw them all. We’ll be leaving tomorrow. Soon as I find a place for a quick move.” He kissed her again.
Timmi stood watching at the upper window of Bill’s vacant house.



Chapter Twenty Two



Down the block a telescope slowly panned to the right and stopped at the upper window of Bill Norris’ house. It was the young girl, Timmi Norris, Drummer had watched her run back and forth to the tri-level. Most of the time it was when no one was home. She had turned and was looking directly into the telescope as though some Evil power had informed her of Drummer’s intrusion.  She was looking directly at Drummer and he could see pure, unadulterated Evil. Maybe she had found the door to the Underworld on one of her many trips to the O’Roak house, or maybe she had found it when the house was still occupied by Guadelupe Scartossi. Maybe she found it during one of the Claymore Coven meetings. The high-powered receiver dish had picked up some of the chants and incantations, and on one occasion, he was able to spot the naked ancients circling the scummy pool, blessing it for the arrival of the Serpent. If Timmi Norris was an agent of Evil, then the world was in for a lot of trouble. She was young, not more than fifteen or sixteen. She would live a long time: a long, long time, if Guadelupe Scartossi was the criteria. Timmi Norris was probably just the person the Claymore Coven needed to regain their power. Drummer was certain the coven had lost the power to control the Evil they had opened the door to admit. Twins had nothing to do with it. Twins were involved in the Mythology of the Vodu. But Guadelupe Scartossi had miscalculated when she thought incest and chanting to the Vodu for twins would make the Scartossi clan Gods of an equal power with the Vodu. Evil was what was needed to have the power—pure, immutable Evil. Tony and his mother, Antonia Scartossi, were not Evil enough to have the power or to close the door on Evil when they were not using it . They had no control over the Serpent in the pool because they were not Evil enough to close the door, the door to the Underworld and its Vodu Lord, Dan, the deity that controlled the Serpent. But Timmi Norris was Evil, evil enough to inherit the power.
Latter that same day, Bill and Mavis, in tennis outfits, unlocked the front door of Bill’s house. “I feel like a burglar,” she said.
That night, they crept back into Bill’s house. They had a loaf of freshly baked bread—Bill baked it—and a bottle of wine. They sat in the dark, except for a small flame in the fireplace of Bill’s vacant bedroom. They lay head to head naked. Their bodies were stretched out in opposite directions. Their lips touched in a puckered, exaggerated kiss. “I do love you,” Mavis said.
“And Charles . . . and half of Boston and all of L.A.”
Mavis dipped her finger into the wine and painted an ‘I’ on his forehead. “Idiot,” she whispered then licked the wine of his forehead. He kissed her. They kept kissing while slowly moving together. Bill pulled her on top. She put her full weight on him.
Timmi had waited quietly for them to leave Mavis’ house. She tiptoed down the stairs. Pushed the snarling Tom out of the way and preceded to pull the living room carpet away from the tack strip.  Some installer had pushed the carpet tightly into the baseboard, Timmi thought. She tried not to ruin the carpet, but she had to see under it. One fingernail broke, then another. But she continued to dig into the carpet padding and lift it from its tacks. Once she released the side and end, the carpet pulled smoothly. She held the corner bunched up in both hands and tugged toward the center. The top point of the red Witches Foot appeared. She pulled harder, and the triangle that formed the center of the five-pointed star appeared. In script, across the top bar of the triangle, was what she was looking for. “Oh, Dan, Lord of the Vodu, appear, heed our command. Bring all things to your Disciples, all desires, Good and Evil, Light or Dark.” In the center of the exaggerated period was a serpent biting his own tail.  Timmi quickly rolled the carpet back over the Witches Foot and pressed the carpet edge onto its tacks. She moved rapidly, with superhuman strength. The floor under the carpet was burning hot. Timmi’s sandals were smoking. She ran up to the master suite and left the tri-level by her secret panel in the closet. “Oh, Dan, Lord of the Vodu, heed my command. Damn. Heed our command. Mud for brains. Damn! Damn! Damn!”
Mavis lay in Bill’s arms in front of the gas flame fireplace. “We should have brought some wood,” Mavis said.
“Next time,” he said.
“We shouldn’t take a chance on a next time. We should leave before Charles gets back.”
Bill took both of her hands in his and kissed them. “We’ll be gone before the psycho gets back. I won’t let him hurt you.”
“He won’t hurt me, but he may try to kill you.”
“Jesus, Mavis, thanks for the news.”
“Its old news. Charles wants to hurt anyone who looks at me. So I’m positive he would want to murder anyone who screws me.” They both giggled.
He grabbed her face and pulled it against his lips. “Then please don’t tell him the other things we did.” They kissed slowly then pressed their lips into a long kiss.
Next morning, Mavis’ house was filled with the smell of freshly scrambled eggs. Mavis dozed at the breakfast table while Bill cooked. “Mavis, wake up. Eat. I have to go. Do a quick shower and come with me down the coast.”
“No . . . just promise me you’ll come back.”
“Come on. I’ll check the brakes to make sure no one is trying the same trick. I’ll drive slowly, I promise.” he crossed his heart.
“Just cross your heart you’ll be back.” She walked up behind him and laced her arms around him. He turned in her arms and kissed her.
“If you get lonely, call me on my cell phone. I’ll be back early.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart; hope to die.” He crossed his heart.
They kissed and then both pressed the tape back over their chins and lips.  Mavis watched Bill check his Jag’s brakes. The car is him, she thought. They were both sleek and beautiful. That’s why Charles wanted the car and him scarred up. She went back in the house and back to bed. Her mind was clear: she had to leave. Charles had hired some thugs through Tony Scartossi and Charles had brought the thing from Togo to kill her. April and the others were just appetizers, she was the main course. Where was the Creature now? She thought. Up in the hills, just waiting for them to refill the pool? Out of luck, schmuk. There would never be water in that pool again. Not as long as she was in the house. And that wouldn’t be beyond the weekend.
While Bill was doing errands down the Hill, Mavis stood at the easel in shorts and a blouse. She was standing straighter, her hair was fixed, and she looked healthier. She painted quickly, stood back and examined the painting, then smiled. Each time she smiled she had to press the tape back across her chin and lip. Bill didn’t mind the scar, she thought. He liked her to leave it off. He thought it was sexy. They both agreed she would get it fixed, later. Mon-Har would be glad to see her and fix her up. His income had probably dropped by half since she left Boston. She giggled to herself.
It was midday when she decided to wash Tom. She didn’t want to take him down the Hill for a scrub, but he smelled like crap. It would be her first time ever. She soaped him up next to the pool. She liked the open, star-shaped vault. She could see right down to the pipe opening in the bottom. From her angle, she could see every corner of the star. Nothing could hide from her view.  The pipe opening in the bottom was wide and probably deep, but nothing could hide down there, she thought. The Creature was gone—gone to bother some other lonely lady. Mavis had her man. No more Creature, no more loneliness, no more isolation.  She laughed and ducked when Tom shook the water off. She was soaked through and through. She turned the hose off. Shook her body in imitation of Tom. She stretched. “Tom, what a beautiful day. The weatherman says rain, but he’s wrong as usual.” She stretched again at the pool’s edge, then removed her wet blouse and shorts and walked to the wooden bench by the stair end of the pool in her bra and panties. She lay down lengthwise on the wooden bench and began doing leg-ups. The old body’s beginning to creek, she thought. She would have to start a regimen of exercise and watch her diet. He had not asked, but for Bill she would stop smoking.
She placed a large, beach towel on the flagstone close to the pool’s edge. Reaching around behind her back, she unhooked her bra and slipped out of it. She laid face down turned away from the pool. A deep bellowing sound came from the open pipe at the bottom of the vault. Mavis jumped up and looked down into the pool. It was twelve feet to the top of the vault’s star-shaped opening and another eight feet to the pipe at the base of the vault, but Mavis was positive she could see two yellow eyes staring from the open pipe. She threw the suntan lotion bottle at the pipe’s opening. It bounced off a sharp corner of the vault, then rolled around the bottom and teetered on the flange of the pipe’s opening, then dropped in. It made no sound when it dropped. Something had caught it.



Chapter Twenty Three



Timmi watched at the balcony door. “Oh, Dan, Lord of the Vodu, appear. Heed our command.  Damn! Heed my command.” She slammed her fist into her stomach. “Damn crap for brains.” She smacked the side of her head.
Mavis ran into the house and went directly to the darkened guest room. She pulled open the closet and lifted two of her largest suitcases from the top shelf. Dragging one and holding the other up under her arm, she trudged up the stairs to the master suite. She opened the storage closet and reached in. Her ring-leaden hand that pulled her mink coat from the closet grazed Timmi’s retracted nose. Mavis filled both suitcase to pregnant shapes, sat on them, zipped them shut, and dragged them one at a time down the stairs to the entrance landing. She went back down to the family room and leafed through a book. She turned and looked at the patio. A single drop of water hit the glass on the patio door. The pool looked distorted and ominous through the rain drop. Then the rain started hammering at the patio doors. The rain-splattered glass quickly blurred Mavis’ screaming face.
Timmi smiled though the balcony door glass. There was a Satan. He worked much faster than that God guy. Damn! It hadn’t been two minutes, and bam, water for the pool Creature. Dan Satan would be her boy from now on, she thought. Just say, Oh, Dan, appear and bam, you’ve got all the things you want: a first car—Corvette, first boobs, first action. Charles.
Mavis paced and smoked. She walked to the pantry next to the kitchen and put on her painter’s smock, then walked back to the family room. She walked pass the phone, but turned back and picked it up. She dialed.  Bill’s soft voice came on the other end.   Mavis stammered as she pressed the tape back over her scar. “It’s raining. I’m frightened,” she said.
“Timmi ran away. I filled out a report. I’ve got to stop at the Graffees, and then I’ll be right there.”
Mavis hung up the phone and watched the rain pound at the patio doors. She screamed at the rain,  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” She turned back, stumbled against her paint easel, and knocked the canvas and paints to the carpet. She staggered to the pantry, and then returned with a can of paint remover and a rag. Down on her knees, she frantically rubbed the carpet. Her hair fell over her face. A heavy swishing sound, as though two faucets had been turned on full force, came from the open mouth of the pool. “Noooo!” she screamed. She turned and looked wildly at the patio. She jumped up and ran to the doors and jerked one door open. Water poured from the broken, balcony, gutter pipe into the pool. She looked toward the second sound. The rolled pool cover had formed a dam. Water from the patio poured directly into the quarter-filled vault.  Mavis ran toward the pool cover. The rain pounded heavily against her painter’s smock. She started tugging at the heavy plastic roll. Tom stood enjoying the rain. Mavis pulled again on the roll but it did not budge. She scrambled around to the back of the roll and pushed. Still nothing.
The Creature watched through the open pipe and the blinding rain. It saw Mavis, the high priestess, trying to dam the water flow with bricks from the planter. It didn’t understand why the priestess would want to stop the water. Her hair hung straight down over her face and plastered her skin. Her garment stuck to her body. The Creature had gone a long time without food. But would its ancestors allow it to eat a priestess?
Bill made the treacherous drive up the rain-slick road through the mountains. He skidded out a couple of times, but the Jag was an excellent car, he thought. Maybe the very best. He felt in control even when his wheels bogged down for a short time on the mucky land bridge. He rolled the Jag onto the Graffees’s brick driveway, pulled his jacket over his head and ran toward the entrance door. Rain peppered his legs and soaked through his pants before Victor Graffee opened the door.
He dried his hair with a towel while sitting at the dining table trying to care what Mary Jean Graffee was saying about Timmi and him. “She said you beat her and that we don’t believe her so she was leaving,” Mary Jean said. "We didn’t believe she would leave. But she’s gone. She took her clothes. Poor child is out in this deluge.”
“I’ll call her mother,” Bill said.
“I called. Timmi’s not there.”
“I went to the police. They added her to the hundreds of missing persons,” Bill said. “I’ve got to go. I’ll keep calling her mother.” He tossed the towel on the table and headed toward the entrance door.
“You’re going to that O’Roak woman. She’s more important than your own daughter. If you don’t want Timmi, we’ll take her,” Mary Jean said.
Bill slammed through the door and out into the “deluge”. He rolled the Jag back down the Graffee’s driveway and plowed through the thick mud of the road. At Mavis', he could only get half way up the driveway. Water was washing around the side of the house and down the driveway. He fished a rain coat and rain hat from the back floor of the Jag. Shuffled around in the front seat until the coat was mostly on. He dashed through the entrance door and tripped over the suitcases leaning against the wall. He was trapped, he thought. She was packed to go. He was trapped for life. Damn, maybe he was trapped on the Hill. The jag had been barely able to get across the land bridge. If the rain continued, the bridge would be out. Tony Scartossi had been a day late in his predictions but he was right-on about it being the worst rain of Bill’s life. “Mavis, you out there?” he shouted as he ran across the house to the open patio doors. The rain whipped the curtains. Water pooled on the carpet. He saw Mavis tugging at the plastic pool cover. She was drenched and shivering. Her hair was plastered to her face. “Mavis get in here. You’ll catch you death.”
Mavis kept pulling on the pool cover. She slipped and fell, one leg slammed down over the pool’s edge. The edge knifed into her crotch, skinning the inside of her leg and tearing the smock. Bill ran out and picked her up. He carried her into the house. He dried her hair with a dish towel.  She shivered uncontrollably and slammed his hand away when he tried to inspect her gashed, inner thigh. Me and Bill went up the Hill to fetch a pail of water. Bill fell down and broke his crown. And Mavis came tumbling after . . . after. Mavis tumbled through water. She was following Bill. Spying. She was trying to see if he was unfaithful. He had left the house naked, so she naturally thought he might have a nooner going. But he could have just forgot to put on any clothes. He had so much on his mind what with them planning to move to Boston, and Charles wanting to Hill him . . . Kill him and all. He could be going to a business meeting. He was carrying a briefcase and he wore a necktie. She could tell it was Bill she was following because of his big feet. You know what they say about men with big feet. She needed to identify Bill by his feet because his head had been torn off.
“Let’s go run you a hot shower and put something on that leg,” he said.
“No, I’ll go. You stop the pool from filling,” she said.
“What?"
“Strop the pool from filling. Promise!”
Bill nodded his head then walked with his arms around her toward the stairs to the upper level. “Go on now. I’ll stop the rain.”
Timmi watched at the upper-level banister. She drew a Witches Foot in her hand with her index finger, then whispered, “Oh, Dan, Lord of the Vodu, appear.” But Timmi knew she didn’t need to invoke the deity; the Evil was already there. It just took a little water to make it grow.
Bill darted into the full blast of the rain and began pulling on the slick pool cover. What the Hell was he doing, he thought. He was out in the worst rain of the century trying to move a roll of plastic three or four times his size. It wouldn’t make a difference anyway. The pool would fill. At this rate, he thought, the whole damn canyon would fill. The Hill would be The Island. Love made guys do stupid things. Things like catching pneumonia in the freezing rain or coming back up the Hill in the first place. The rain was snapping the rims of his ears. He was getting drenched just to prove to Mavis that he loved her. He should just say it with flowers. But all the flowers were drowned by now. The downpour grew stronger.  His feet were dangerously close to the pool’s edge. He reached inside the roll to get a grip on the dry inner material. He pulled, and the roll move too easily. Still holding the corner of the plastic pool cover, he slipped over the edge of the pool. He tried to clamber up the slick pool wall.  Tom stood frozen at the pool’s edge staring at something in the shallow water.
The Creature saw Bill hanging over the pool’s edge at the deep end. Bill’s hands slowly slipped from the edge and his grip slid down the plastic. He dropped into the pool. At the balcony door, the blurred image of Timmi stood at the glass looking without emotion at her father. She was chanting to Dan Satan. Bill emerged from the swirling water and wadded toward safety. He misjudged the size of the vault and dropped straight down, scraping his side on the sharp corners. Pulling himself up, he came out of the water coughing and spitting. A flash came from the pool. Bill screamed and reached between his legs. There was another flash, and Bill was jerked facedown into the water off to the side of the vault. Tom barked. Bill raised his head and gasped for air, then slipped back under. He came back up for air. His arm was clamped by something. He pulled away too easily. He started crawling up toward the shallow end, but his right arm was jerked out from under him. He was dragged by his arm back to the center of the pool. His head lay sideways on the surface of the water that was rising rapidly. He screamed and looked toward Timmi. His arm was pulled toward the vault. Bill, bent at the waist, his head and shoulders under water, slowly disappeared. His lower legs and feet stuck straight up from the water over the vault. Inch by inch they disappeared into the vault, like two carrot sticks being fed into a blender. Timmi stood quietly at the balcony door. When his feet were gone, she tried to catch her breath.  Short gasps vibrated in her drooling mouth. Urine washed down her ridged legs and pooled on the bedroom carpet.
Mavis finished a steamy shower. She saw the shadow of someone through the shower door. She jerked it open. “Bill, you up here?’ She reached for a towel then stepped from the shower, wrapping the towel around her head. “Please don’t hide from me!” She took another towel and twisted it across her breasts and moved to the banisters. The lower level showed no movement, only silence. Tom, his wet fur plastered to his skinny body, scratched at the outside of the patio doors. Mavis ran down and let the whimpering dog into the house. She ran back across the house and up the entrance stairs. “Bill, please answer.” She opened the entrance door. The rain blew in. Bill’s Jag stood a quarter of the way up the driveway. An orange ball from Scartossi’s garage decorated the tip of the waving antenna: for the first time. Mavis ran back up to the master bedroom, looked around the room, then whispered, “Bill, my love, don’t be gone.” She looked at the half-closed door of the bathroom and heard a gurgling sound from behind the door. “Bill?” She asked the darkness, and then pushed the door open. The gurgling sound came from the open toilet. The toilet gurgled and churned. The lid slammed shut. Mavis screamed. Staggering against the bathroom door frame, clutching her towel with both hands and breathing heavily, she guessed the truth.



Chapter Twenty Four




She stumbled to the balcony door and screamed. A shadow the length of the pool moved in the water. Bill’s rain hat bobbed against the edge of the overflowing pool. Mavis continued to scream, and then she turned and looked at her image in the mirrored closet door. Pulling at her hair and screaming, she fainted.
Inspector Davis was inside Drummer’s rain-washed mansion. He bent over a book on the occult of Western Africa. “I’d best go before the rain traps me,” he said, his eyes never left the book. He tapped his teeth with his thumb. “I know you never leave this place, but come home with me. We’ll have a good meal.” Drummer laughed.  Davis looked up. “What’s the matter? Did I say something funny?”
“You assume that just because I haven’t left the Hill in twenty years I eat poorly. Close that damn book and follow me.” Davis followed the motorized wheelchair up a long ramp, then left, down a sparsely furnished hall. The end of the hall opened onto a three-story atrium filled with plants and flowers and colored lights. The rest of the atrium looked like a child’s carnival. Six oblong Ferris Wheels sat in the center of the atrium. Six-inch-by-six inch boxes replaced what should have been the gondolas like the ones Davis had ridden so many times at the L.A. County Fair. In the boxes were vegetables: tomatoes, carrots, celery, onions, radishes, and snow peas. All the things his wife slaved over in the spring and summer, when she was alive, Davis thought. And on the last gondola, the one farthest from Davis, were some of the largest of their species Davis had ever seen: Wild Strawberries.
Drummer smiled and tapped Davis on the arm. Davis looked down as if he had forgotten that there was another human being in the room. “It’s a very simple arrangement,” Drummer said. “The plants on the Carrot Wheel, for instance, start out small, but as time and light and nutrients go into them, they grow. Though you can’t detect it, the wheel is constantly moving. The more mature plants on the far side of the wheel are heavy enough to slowly pull the lighter plants toward the top of the wheel. The ripest carrots, the heaviest, come to the bottom of the wheel. Because the carrots are planted in volcanic rock instead of soil, the roots don’t have to search for nutrients, so as a result, the carrots are larger than normal and the roots are much smaller. The smaller root system allows the carrots to be vacuumed from the volcanic rocks instead of pulled. The vacuum only works on the last gondola, the heaviest one, the most ripe. The vacuumed gondola then becomes the lightest and the others move around. A seeder blows more seeds into the vacuumed gondola and the cycle starts again.”
“How many seasons do you have?” Davis asked.
“Three hundred and sixty-five. The colored lights fake the carrots into thinking that every day is the start of a new season.”
“You crazy, old bastard. Why don’t you share some of your genius with the outside world?”
“I have. There are versions of this in France and Brazil and here in the States. But the farm-belt folks don’t like it. So it will take a while before it’s used widely.”  The other rooms contained fruit trees with automatic shakers attached to the trunks. The fruit was plucked from the nets and automatically boxed or cooked and canned. In the largest room were tanks the size of Olympic swimming pools. They contained shrimp and catfish.
“If I wasn’t so old,” Davis said. “I’d have you adopt me. You’re a damn genius.”
Drummer smiled and stroked his knuckles across his chest. “I raise mushrooms in the cellar.”
“Okay, so you don’t have to come to my house to eat. I won’t get anything to eat if I don’t leave now.”
“If the bridge is out, come on back. We’ll have some catfish.”
Davis jumped into his old dodge. The rain was unusually heavy, Davis thought, even for this time of year. The heavy rain let through a hazy image of Bill Norris’ Jaguar parked in the O’Roak’s driveway. O’Roak was going to catch Norris with his pants down. Davis made a slow, gentle U-turn in the mud-topped road. He nodded his head at the Jaguar. Those two were either going to die from screwing or drowning. When he came to the land bridge, it had become a mud bridge and was rapidly becoming a raging river. He had made one of the most dangerous decisions of his life, more dangerous than facing a raving maniac with a gun . . . or a witch with a Vodu Serpent.  With both those dangers, he could stand on firm ground and decide to fight or run.  But this time, he thought, he would have no control. It would be in the hands of Good or Evil. Light or Dark. God or Satan. He pulled the old Dodge out onto the flowing mud. The car swept sideways with the current. Davis said his first prayers in ten years. The bald tires on the back wheels washed up against a cement culvert at the edge of Claymore Canyon and found enough purchase to throw the old Dodge up onto the blacktop. The Dodge grunted a thank you and tooled down Claymore Canyon Road toward Pacific Coast Highway and home. The bridge washed out behind it. Davis should have asked P. J. if he could borrow the African Mythology book, but P. J. looked like the kind of fellow who would lend one the shirt off his back but keep your hands off his reference books.
The book spoke of the Fon tribe of West Africa. The tribe worshiped Nana Bukula but were dedicated to the Masters of Nature known as the Vodu. The Lord of the Vodu was the twin son of Mahu, the female, and Lisa, the male twin of Nana Bukula. The Lord’s name was Dan Ayido Hwedo, the Rainbow, and the Serpent. He was both Good and Evil. His symbol was the Serpent biting its own tail, like on the door of Antonia Scartossi’s restaurant. The symbol appeared on all Vodu altars. The Vodu acted only at Dan’s instigation. Dan used the Vodu Sagbata to inflict smallpox on mankind in punishment for their sins, and the Vodu Xevioso, the Thunder God, to flood the land and bring moisture to the Serpent. Xevioso was one busy boy this night, Davis thought.  It was crazy, but somehow Guadelupe Scartossi combined the Vodu cult and its offshoot, Voodoo, with American witchcraft and its worship of the Great Satan and came up with a combination that gave her unlimited Evil powers. It appeared that she did not have the same use of power to do Good, or maybe she was only an agent for Evil or had no inclination toward Good. It appeared from what P. J. had revealed to him that all mythologies: Greek, Roman, Christian, Judaic, Islamic, African, or the current cult rage Moroni Mythology, brought the Gods of humanity into existence through incest. It could be the reason the man-made criminal penalties are so severe, Davis thought. Society wanted incest limited to the Gods. Guadelupe Scartossi tried to use incest to bring her family members up to the level of Gods. But her grandson from the incestuous union of Guadelupe’s daughter, Antonia, and Guadelupe’s son, Manny, murdered her; crucified her on a slab of marble, much like Prometheus was crucified on a rock in the Caucasus or Christ was crucified on a cross at Calvary.  Dumb, old Tony Scartossi, with no more than an eighth grade education and almost a certainty to have never read Greek or Roman mythology or the Bible or any books on even the witchcraft his family practiced. The idiot had imitated the Immortals. He had committed matricide a generation removed.
If P. J. was correct, and he usually was, Davis thought, then it meant the door to the Underworld was located on the Hill and in the general area of the O’Roak’s house, and in the specific area of their living room. Davis was afraid to ask P. J. what he thought the door opened into. Maybe P. J. was speaking metaphorically when he said “Door to the Underworld.” He didn’t claim it was “The Door”. Maybe there was a bunch of them. In Las Vegas and San Francisco for sure. New Orleans and Atlantic City. None of the information P. J. had given could be sold to Davis’s superiors or the D.A.. He would have to stop the slaughter, and maybe with the Wiz’s help, stop the Evil. If he went to the D.A. and attempted to reopen the Tony Scartossi case, he would be bagged and transported to Patton along with Drummer—an old man who hadn’t been off the Hill in more than twenty years. The Tony victim was a woman who could control Evil. And more recently the murderer was a Serpent who lived in a swimming pool. He would be bagged before the end of the six o’clock news. He would have to wait and get Tony Scartossi on some simple rape or murder. Something that wouldn’t stretch the jury’s imagination. Maybe O’Roak would confess he hired Tony Scartossi to murder his wife. Then he would bag both of the idiots. Maybe Tony Scartossi was the agent P. J. spoke of.
In Baltimore, at the Mt. Royal, Charles O’Roak waited for the agent. Through the night he looked at Penn Station and at the fluttering flag on the corner of the Mayfair Hotel down the block. He pounded his fist angrily on the windowsill. The Scartossi house was purchased to contain and then devour Mavis for destroying his reputation in Boston. And then there was that immortality thing, he thought. The damn Serpent had devoured everything in sight. There was no controlled sacrifice that he had been told would happen. The egg was put in the pool by someone before the pool was consecrated by a Vodu with the help of the Claymore Coven. The whole thing was screwed up. April should still be alive, he thought.
The door swung open and the agent stepped in. He wore a West African tribal robe with a large medallion swinging from a heavy gold chain to the front. The medallion was of the Serpent devouring its own tail.
“I didn’t contract you to slaughter my daughter,” Charles screamed.
“You contracted me to slaughter your wife, and make you immortal; your daughter got in the way,” the agent said.
Charles lunged forward and put his strong hands around the mulatto’s neck. Rundi Smith struggled, but nothing could save him. The Serpent medallion swung impotently from his twisted neck. He crumpled to the floor.  Charles thought about when he first met Rundi Smith. They first met in an abandoned house. The house was behind an old Portuguese trading post on the coast of Togo. Rundi had been recommended as an agent, the name given to the most Evil of the Disciples of Dan, Lord of the Vodu. Charles wanted revenge against Mavis for destroying his career in Boston with her philandering. He had studied the lore of West Africa. Even though his Christian upbringing made him skeptical, his eyes made him a believer. He had seen healings and mutations and death caused by nothing more than some tribal elder’s chants to some Vodu or another. Charles needed to know if it only worked in Africa or if it could be transplanted to the States.  Rundi Smith told him of Guadelupe Scartossi and her death in California at the hands of her own grandson. Before her death, she had used the power for over a hundred and eighty years. She had used her power in the most sophisticated area in the United States: sunny California. Charles should have ended it then: if Rundi Smith thought California was sophisticated, he had to be a total idiot. But California was as good a spot to start over as any. 
The deal was struck, and then the damn massacre happened at the Diggers’ camp. The massacre happened because the diggers were covering a door to the Underworld. Charles never believed the story. He was now positive, he thought, that one of the rival cults had killed the diggers in an attempt to get the very noduled egg he had transported to California and who’s freed occupant was now at home in the water in his pool and eating everything in sight. It was raining in California, maybe the Serpent would finally get Mavis.  Charles turned back to address the problem of Rundi Smith’s body. There was no sign of Rundi Smith. His West African robe, swarming with cockroaches, sat in the middle of the floor.  Charles grabbed the robe; he swatted the roaches off.  He grabbed the medallion and his bags and scurried out of the room and down the hall.  When he arrived at the airport, he phoned Tony Scartossi. “Get the Serpent out of the pool!” Charles said.
“Mr. O’Roak, that’s its home. It will stay there forever,” Tony Scartossi said.
“Then you sure as Hell better learn to control it or I’ll make sure you’re its next sacrifice.”
“Don’t threaten me,” Scartossi was wheezing. “I’ll have Rundi Smith come and turn you into a frog then I’ll stomp your head.”
“Smith couldn’t turn dog crap into a frog. I strangled the bastard. I’ll do the same to you if you don’t find some way to control the Serpent.” Charles slammed down the telephone.”
Tony walked to the back of the garage. He sat on a stack of recapped tires and put his head in his hands. Mr. O’Roak would find out he had no power, Tony thought. He had been trying to gain power from his mother and his grandmother, but nothing happened. His mother had helped him open the old mausoleum and take his grandmother’s withered body. They took the corpse down into Claymore Canyon. He convinced his aging mother to help him gain the little power she had and the awesome power of his grandmother. She said she would do anything. So while he heated the spikes in an open bonfire, his mother drew a Witches Foot in the clay of Claymore Canyon. They laid out his grandmother’s corpse, spread-eagled fashion, and his beloved mother laid face up in the same fashion as the corpse—two old ladies sandwiched together by earth and sky. The sky was gray and cloudless that night, Tony remembered. The full moon stared at Tony. He wasn’t going to do it at first, but his mother swore it would work and she would be unharmed. He wanted her unharmed.  She was the only sex he could get, lately. With his mother’s help he might just be able to tap into the Evil that his grandmother controlled when she was alive.  He went over the ritual in his head again and again. Everything was right: it was Tuesday, the moon was full, and he knew the chant by heart. It was the only thing he had ever memorized.  Except maybe some dirty limericks. Damn, everything was right, he thought. He drove the smoldering spikes through his screaming mother and into his grandmother’s corpse and into the Witches Foot drawn in the clay. He drove the spikes into the twisting bodies. His grandmother had come alive.  He drove the spikes in the exact design. The chant was correct: his mother/wife, though in excruciating pain, chanted the correct lines to the Vodu. She should have lived, he thought. She should have brought power back to the Scartossi family. She should have lived. But both the old ladies died on the floor of Claymore Canyon. And he had to burn the bodies because the damn clay was to hard to dig,
Now the damn Claymore Coven was asking where Antonia was. He told them she was on a trek across the wilderness of Togo to bring back the power of Dan, Lord of the Vodu. But the coven had no respect for him, so they didn’t believe him. He would head down to the restaurant, he thought; see if the new manager was worth a crap. It was raining like Hell. There would be no business. His whole life was screwed up. Antonia was gone. The restaurant would fold. He had no power.  Or maybe he did have power. He had chanted for rain. The Serpent needed it. And it was raining like Hell. Hell, yeah, he had power. He could control the elements. He could control the Serpent. He would go find Bill Norris and feed him to the Serpent.



Chapter Twenty Five



Mavis pulled herself up from the carpeted floor. It was damp and smelled like urine. It had all been a bad dream. It was dark out. It must be late, she thought. It was still raining. Bill would be coming back in from the pool. She would put on her sexiest negligee. Rain was so romantic. She shivered to herself. They would stay in bed all evening and all night, and if the rain continued during the day, they would stay under the covers all day tomorrow. They would hold each other until the rain stopped. She should put the new quilt on the bed, and dig out the large, yellow candles. He would be up soon. She better get on the ball. She had little time to turn the master suite into a womb from the world for her lover and herself. He was her lover—the best. But she would show him a couple little things that would make him an even better lover. They would be together forever.  She went to the closet and reached up for the quilt. It fell and covered her, and while she was shrouded by the quilt, she heard sounds. She fought the quilt away from her head and shoulders and dumped it on the floor. She ran to the banisters, twisting the towel tightly across the breasts.
Down in the family room, Tom stood barking and clawing at the patio door. Tom pressed his snout against the base of the door. He snarled. The wet fur on his back bristled. His growl turned into a whine as he tried to scoot back from the door. The door blasted apart, shattering glass across the room. Tom disappeared in a flash of flesh-tearing teeth.  The patio doors were shattered. The rain poured through the jagged opening. A slimy streak of water and glass left by the Creature ran across the floor to the reflecting pond under the stairs. The round pictures hanging across from Mavis on the high ceiling swayed back and forth and made the damaged house look like the Titanic on its last legs. Mavis’s brain went into shock: it decided being crazy was the only defense against reality.
Mavis turned and looked at herself in the upper-level hall mirror. She walked back to the makeup table in the center of the master suite. She took the reddest lipstick from the tray and drew in large lips with upturned corners high on her cheeks. With black eyeliner, she painted in big, bushy eyebrows. She roughed her cheeks with great circles of bright red rouge and finished with a dime-sized purple beauty mark. She twisted the towel back around her head and started toward the stairs.  “Can’t get me,” she sang. “You can get cats and birds and children, but you can’t get me.”  She started down the stairs. Splashing came from the reflecting pond directly under her. “You can get my wonderful Tom and my beautiful Bill,” she continued to sing,” but you can’t get me.” She stepped from the stairs and moved toward the pantry. Suddenly her towel was snatched from her body. She screamed and pivoted around the corner of the pantry. A decorative handle, on an antique chest, had the towel hooked, on its ornate spikes. A loud trumpeting, like the sound of a wounded bull elephant, came from under the stairs.  Mavis searched in the semidarkness of the pantry. She was humming her little tune. She took the towel from her head and wrapped it around her shivering body. She rummaged around in the pantry and found a weapon. She dragged the weapon through the living room. The hot, smoldering carpet blistered her feet. Blood seeped through the wet, white carpet in the shape of a five-pointed star. Mavis stumbled, over the broken glass, through the family room, out through the broken patio doors, and into the full blast of the rain. Her bloody footprints dissipated on the rain washed patio surface. She hummed her little tune as the rain beat at her face. The weapon had become heavier, but she managed to drag it to the edge of the pool. She fumbled with a metal cover attached to the outside of the house, and then she leaned forward toward the patio doors. She sang, “Can’t get me!”
Trumpeting came from inside the house. Mavis dove into the pool. Bobbing in the center of the freezing water, she laughed hysterically. She heard the Creature slither across the broken glass in the family room and on the patio, then plunge into the swimming pool.  Through mucous-covered eyes, the Creature saw a dark image floating in the center of the pool. It came closer and closer. A flash, and the Creature’s teeth sank into the black towel that had floated free from Mavis.  Mavis splashed frantically toward the edge of the pool. She choked on water and gasped for air. She reached for the pool’s ladder. Her feet escaped up the ladder just as the Creature’s teeth clamped on the steel ladder and ripped it from the pool’s coping. Mavis flipped a switch and rolled her weapon, an upright vacuum cleaner, into the churning water. The current caused the outline of the Creature to flash in the semidarkness. Electricity sparked through the Creature’s body.  Timmi ran through the broken patio doors. Rain pounded her face and clothes. She grabbed the electrical cord and yanked the plug from the silver, electrical outlet on the house’s exterior. The flashing in the pool stopped. Timmi clambered over the fence. She had seen the Creature’s eyes; the recognition was magic: Evil giving a helping hand to Evil. “Oh, Dan, Lord of the Vodu, help the Serpent. Please help the Serpent.” Mavis will die, Timmi thought, and I will have Charles, the Evil house, and the world.
Teeth flashed from the pool, and Mavis was dragged, back toward the pool, by her hair. She grabbed onto the thin pole of a patio light. The lower half of her body was in the water. She gripped the pole tightly and pulled herself up over the edge of the pool. The pole snapped in half and dropped into the water. The pole’s bare wires fell to the edge of the pool and slipped into the water. The Creature pulled Mavis’ hair from its roots. The electricity ignited the Creature. It was electrocuted. It sizzled and crackled. The smell of burning flesh smothered the patio. The Creature let loose an anguished trumpeting sound. It spewed grease across the surface of the water. The sizzling electricity danced across the surface and ignited the grease and glazed the entire pool with flames.  Through the flames, the tortured, dying Creature watched Mavis sit naked in the pounding rain; blood streamed from her hairless head; her arms wrapped her knees tightly. She was sitting in the center of the patio staring directly into the Creature’s eyes. “Can’t get me.” Flames reflected in her insane eyes.
In a darkened dormer a block away, Drummer watched the light show a block away. It appeared, he thought, that the Vodu’s most Evil Serpent had met its match: a chillingly beautiful woman who had lost her lover. He had seen the demise of Bill Norris, but his attempts to contact Davis or any flatlander had been met with a dead sound on the phone. Davis had agreed to come back up after the rain. Together they would close the door to the Underworld—as soon as Mrs. O’Roak was trucked off to the nuthouse. He would not tell his partner, Davis, about Timmi Norris’s attempt to help the Serpent. He would also not inform Davis of his plan to eliminate the Evil child.
Mavis stood and stretched for the sky. She let the rainwater pour into her open mouth. Timmi was back up at the balcony door. Timmi’s eyes met Mavis’. Mavis charged through the side gate and up the slippery walk at the side of the house. Blood poured from her torn skull and painted her naked shoulders and breasts. She slid at the top of the walkway, struck her hip against the corner of the house, and then tore her knee when she fell to the pavement. Timmi came through the hidden panel and was almost to the garage when Mavis caught her. Timmi clawed Mavis’face with her butchered fingernails. Mavis ripped the wet shirt and bra from the teen’s shivering body. She bent the skinny teen forward and slammed her bloody knee into the teen’s twisting face. Laughing hysterically, Mavis grunted when she heard Timmi’s thin nose snap. Timmi tried to struggle to her feet but Mavis grabbed her from the back by the top of the designer jeans. She ripped them off the screaming teen. Timmi’s bikini panties lassoed her ankles.
Mavis grabbed Timmi’s long, stringy, red hair and pulled her toward the house. Timmi scrambled to her knees, trying to keep up with Mavis, but her panties were roped around her ankles. Timmi began mumbling, “Dan, Lord of the Vodu, appear. Heed my command.” The landing under their feet tore away and collapsed to the lower level. The iron banister scattered to the living room floor. Mavis kept dragging Timmi. She moved up the stairs to the master bed room. The stairs began to tear away. Timmi slipped off the side, but Mavis held her by her long, red hair. Timmi’s foot caught, and her shoe and bunched-up underwear pulled loose. She was naked, except for one shoe and a sock.  Mavis pulled her to the top level banister. Light reflected from the master suite and glimmered from the ink-drawn tattoos on each of Timmi’s small breasts. The tattoos showed the Serpent devouring its own tail inside a Witches Foot. Mavis gouged the symbols with her fingernails, then lifted Timmi and threw her over the collapsing banister rail.  Timmi’s naked body spun around and around like a damaged kite and slammed down in the center of the blood-red Witches Foot. Twenty-one broken vertical rails from the tattered banister crucified her in the exact design of the Claymore Coven 666. Timmi screamed and twisted but continued to mumble, “Oh, Dan, Lord of the Vodu, appear. Heed our command. Bring all things to your Disciple, all desires, Good or Evil, Light or Dark.”
The upper-level landing began to crumble under Mavis’ bleeding feet. She stumbled into the master suite and began to frantically pound on the walls facing Claymore Canyon. She pounded and pounded as the house continued to crumble. She looked toward the closet. She darted into the closet and found the hidden panel finger slot.
When Mavis emerged on the outside of the tri-level, the house abruptly stopped crumbling. She twisted to look toward the house and almost tumbled into Claymore Canyon. She duck walked on the sharp stones at the side of the house and was thankful when she reached the smooth, wet bricks of the driveway. She walked back around the garage and stood on the canyon’s lip. Sharp darts of rain flew against her naked body, but she didn’t respond. She was numb. Why should she go on living, she thought. Why not just let the Creature in the pool devour her? Or she could have just tumbled into Claymore Canyon when she came through Timmi’s secret panel. Timmi must have watched Charles and her; Bill and her; her by herself. But what difference did it make now: the kid was dead. Everyone was dead. Except Charles.  Charles always came out on top. Somehow he was responsible for all this, she thought. Charles won again. Bill was gone. Her beauty was gone. There was nothing to live for. All she had to do was tip a little forward and she would fall a thousand feet smack into the bottom of Claymore Canyon. If they ever found her, she would be split open, her breasts and butt spewing silicone. Just two small steps and she would be dead. Two small steps for mankind.
“Mrs’ O’Roak!”



Chapter Twenty Six



Mavis turned quickly, lost her balance, and teetered at the edge of the canyon. Her cartwheeling arms brought balance, and she moved away from the edge and covered her breasts with one forearm and a hand and covered her privates with the free hand. The voice had come from an old man sitting in some kind of canopied electric wheelchair. Mavis giggled, unconsciously bringing her hand from her breasts to her mouth then moving it quickly back. The old man was wearing a rain hat, but most of the heavy rain was deflected by the canopy. Attached behind the wheelchair was a passenger cart that was the same color as the canopy. Mavis giggled again. It looked like Disneyland, right here on the Hill—Disneyland without driving all that way—come on, kiddies, watch the electric monster eat the naked lady. Mavis began to giggle, but she dropped to her knees and put her face in her hands and the giggles turned into screams.
Drummer pulled the wheelchair up next to Mavis and placed a rain slicker over her trembling shoulders. “Mrs. O’Roak, please get into the cart. I can’t lift you. Please get into the cart.  I’ll take you to a warm, dry place.”
Mavis looked up. “I don’t want to go. I want to die.”
“Then come and die in a warm place.”
Mavis stood and wrapped the yellow slicker around herself to protect against the hammering spikes of the rain. She stepped into the cart and passed out. Drummer drove the rain-whipped train through the mud at the main gate and into the mansion, and then guided it expertly up the ramp and down the long hall, toward the atrium, leaving thick, muddy tracks, and then he turned right and went down a ramp into a bathroom large enough to be an employee’s rest room. He passed his freezing hand over a sensor and hot water poured into the double-sized tub in the center of the room. He leaned forward and held his hands under the comforting water. They were so cold that steam rose from them. He pressed a blower button next to the tub. Hot air blew against his hands. The warmth washed up his arms and lodged in his shivering chest. The worst thing about being old was that he could never get warm enough. He tilted his face up to the blower and let the soothing air dry it.  “Mrs. O’Roak. Mrs. O’Roak, you will be okay here until the bridge is restored and they can get an ambulance up.”
Mavis looked up and stirred in the little cart. Steam began to fill the room. It was warm and toasty. “I murdered her,” she said.
“Who?”
“Timmi Norris. I threw her from the landing and a broken banister went through her. I murdered her.”
“Mrs. O’Roak, I’ll go back and look,” Drummer said.
“I murdered her. I don’t deserve to live.”
“Mrs. O’Roak, you have more than earned the right to live. I don’t much like women, but you went up against an Evil so strong that many tribes of men in West Africa have been wiped out trying to destroy its ancestors. They have succeeded many times, but at very dear costs. You defeated it on your own terms. If you did kill that Evil child, Timmi Norris, you did it out of necessity. You have earned the right to live.”
Mavis stepped from the cart, dropped the slicker, and stepped daintily into the steaming tub.  The bottom of the oversized tub was shaped to fit the human body, and her body settled into its soft spongy surface.
“I’m going to pass my hand over this sensor,” Drummer said. He pointed to a square button on the wall near the doorway. “The bioelectrical waves will help you relax. If you fall asleep, the tub’s shape will keep you from slipping down into the water and drowning. You are safe here.”  Drummer passed his hand over the sensor and drove the wheelchair and its cart up the ramp just ahead of the closing door.
The Wiz did not want to go back out in the rainstorm, but it was an excellent opportunity to inspect the floor. Only a crazy old man who did not have the sense to get in out of the rain would be going out into the rain to inspect a floor. Maybe he was as crazy as people through. He reached around and flipped the release on the passenger cart. There would be no return passengers. If Timmi Norris was at the house and injured, he would let her suffer and die, let her chant to the Vodu. There would be no return passengers.  His rain hat was pulled down over his ears when he accelerated the wheelchair up the ramp and out into the torrent. He held the accelerator wide open, but the faithful old chair was fighting mud and a head wind and could not go much more than two miles an hour. The O’Roak house looked so far away, he thought. It will take all night just to get to the driveway. He would miss  “Friends”. The chair hit a rut and almost toppled over, but the Wiz tilted the chair and rode it back down onto its wheels like a professional wind surfer.  He drove the chair up the driveway and stopped at the entrance stairs. There was no way he could maneuver the stairs, so he headed around the side of the tri-level. The heavy chair slid most of the way. It will be a bitch to get back up, he thought. The heavy wooden gate was wide open. Good thing or the Wiz would have been in deep crap, he thought. He piloted the chair through the open gate and steered toward the twisted frame of the patio doors. The acrid sulfuric smell steaming from the overflowing pool stopped him dead. The Serpent did not want anyone to forget its death. He pinched his nostrils together with thumb and index finger, and with his free hand, steered the wheelchair over the glass and steel debris then into the house.
The house was pitch dark except for a small infantile light flickering from high up in the master suite. When he rode onto the living room carpet, it began to smoke and pull from under the rubber wheels of the motorized chair. It ripped itself from the tack strips on each of its edges and slowly sucked through the surface of the slate-hard marble floor and disappeared, like a magician’s handkerchief being stuffed into a fisted hand. A glowing, red-hot Witches Foot ignited across the marble floor and swamped the room with blood. The rising blood engulfed the chair’s wheels. He started to laugh, and the blood started to slowly recede. “Whoever you are, you can’t be the Great Satan. He would have just drowned me out there in the storm. You must be one of the lesser Vodu.”  The five-pointed star flared up with heat so intense he could feel it scorching his mottled skin. “You have no power to destroy me. You need a being, an Evil being, to carry out your deeds.  You have none left. The Serpent is gone, defeated by a mere woman. Guadelupe Scartossi is gone: you couldn’t even protect her from her own son. Go ahead and burn and bleed. Siegfried and his friend do better illusions than you. You have no power without a being.”
He reached under the wheelchair and slid a red toolbox onto the side tray. He flipped a switch, and the side tray rose to the level of his hip. From the toolbox he took out a short, thick crowbar. He unstraped himself from the wheelchair and dropped down to his knees in the inch-deep blood. With the tip of the crowbar, he pried up the corner of one of the glowing, red-hot tiles. A heavy heartbeat reverberated though the house. A piercing animal scream replaced it when he pulled the tile free. A stream of blood pounded into his face from the severed artery wriggling from the square opening where the tile had been. “A lab test should prove to the world that Evil is physical, not just metaphysical,” he said to the screaming floor.
“There won’t be any lab tests.”
Drummer twisted his upper body around. Standing in the opening of the twisted patio door frame was Timmi Norris. She was naked except for one blood-soaked shoe, and shimmering in the darkness were festering wounds. The wounds were swollen and puffy as though tentacles had been yanked from them. He threw the tile he held in his trembling hand straight at Timmi’s naked belly. It knifed deep into her snow-white flesh then metabolized into her system. “Damn!” he said.  The tiny, evil child glided over to him, grabbed him by the neck with one hand, and lifted him back into the wheelchair. She strapped him in, then shot straight up three stories and grabbed onto the chandelier. For a short time, she swung, naked, overhead. Drummer tried some laughter again, but it was not there. He had all he could handle just trying not to pee in the wheelchair. Timmi dropped straight down with the chandelier and crashed on top of Drummer’s open lap. The wind exploded from his lungs and shards of glass drove into his stomach and thighs, shooting pain to his waiting brain. The chair handles saved him from being turned into a soprano by the tip of the chandelier. Timmi retightened the restraining straps on the wheelchair, than pushed the heavy chair through the glass and water in the family room. The wheels did not turn; they just slid across the room. Timmi had the strength of five men. She slid the motorized wheelchair with its valuable cargo into the putrid water of the pool. The chair sparked and ignited the grease-caked surface of the water, then sank.
It was going to be a long night, he thought. He could release himself from the chair and surface through the flame-topped water without too much damage to the old body, but then he was in deep crap; the Evil child would want his head and would probably torture same. He pulled a toggle on the side of the chair and released the belts. He floated slowly to the surface, using the hollow tank method from yoga to conserve the oxygen in his aching lungs. The water was about two or three degrees hotter than a good spa, but it was getting hotter quickly.  A lobster he did not want to be—the Wiz Lobster Specialty of Antonia Scartossi’s restaurant. He flinched. He could see why Evil didn’t like humor. His own humor was starting to T him off. He pulled himself straight up on the coping. The legs of his favorite trousers ignited, but the heavy rainfall made the flames impotent. He crawled on his belly onto the slippery surface. Timmi was in the house on her knees. She was prying loose the tiles and stacking them in a neat pile at her side.
Drummer used his elbows to crawl through the open gate and up the side walkway. The walk and ground beneath him began to tear loose and push up into his dodging face. If Timmi could not get him, the Evil would. He rolled sideways off the O’Roak’s property and onto the sloping hill of the lot next door. “This is my property” he shouted at the Evil. Pieces of the O’Roak’s walkway rolled after him but were sent over the edge of Claymore Canyon. Evil had to get one’s mind before it could get one’s body. All deities had to get the mind first. The Red Sea could part if the mind believed it. The mud-topped lots between O’Roak’s and Drummer’s house could slide into Claymore Canyon and carry his old bones with them, if his mind believed it. It was daybreak by the time he finished his uphill crawl through the mud.



Chapter Twenty Seven



Two months later, the pool was sodded over. Green grass had specks of yellow. Plants and bushes were speckled with gold leaves. A golden retriever puppy swatted at a ball in the center of the grass.  His high-pitched barking mixed with the rustling of the bushes by the autumn wind. The puppy shook his head, growling at the ball in his mouth. The patio door slid open. A plastic bowl clattered on the cement walk; it drew the puppy’s limited attention. He raced to the food dish, sniffed, and darted to the open patio door. He sniffed the slippered foot sticking through the opening; his body wagged all over. The door slid shut.
Inside Mavis’ newly refurbished family room, a robed figure moved slowly to a bright yellow rocker, sat down and began rocking slowly to the soft music of ‘Love Songs On The Coast’.  Charles looked over from the base of the entrance stairs. “Got to go for a sec, Love. Will you be okay?” He didn’t wait for her response but instead dashed up the stairs past a table of doughnuts, apples, and a small jack-o-lantern filled with wrapped, miniature candy bars. He ran out the entrance door but returned and snagged two small Snickers Bars and an apple. There is never anything in the damn house to eat, he thought. Hell, he was never home anyway.  Mavis was no longer a problem. There were no lovers lined up at the door. But she would eventually come out of shock and see the Babies. She would destroy them. She had to be eliminated. Today was the day, he thought. Timmi would finish the job. The pool would be unearthed. The Babies would be put in the water. Sacrifices would be made. Drummer first. The old fart knew the power had passed to Timmi. No one believed his story. They all thought he was just a crazy, old bastard. But some day some one like Doan Park might take up the story. Drummer would have to be the first sacrifice. Then maybe Doan Park.
He walked toward a compact car in the driveway. Two children in Halloween costumes came up the walk toward him. Charles bent down to them. “There’s an ugly, old witch in that house,” he warned. He reached into his pocket and pulled out two quarters and handed them to the children. The children took the quarters, looked at the quarters with disgust, then headed back toward their mother’s car waiting up the road. Charles opened the door to the compact car.
“How long do we have?” Jessica asked.
“Forever, she doesn’t know whether I’m there or not.”
“What’d you tell those crumb crushers?”
“The truth.”
The children were nearly back to their mother’s car when they stopped. “Bet he’s lying,” said the older child.
“I don’t want to see no ugly witch,” said his brother.
“You never want to see nothing.”
“You go first?”
In Mavis’s house, Timmi watched from the new banisters at the upper level. She could not see Mavis’ face because of the darkened family room. The house was silent. Today was the day to finish the destruction of Mavis, she thought. Should she let Mavis live after she destroyed her mind, or should Mavis die immediately? Very difficult choices, she thought. And as she had found in Life: there could be many interesting variations.
The two children stood at the entrance. The older child reached up and rang the bell a second time.  The door slowly opened and a hand reached out with an apple. The children screamed and ran away.  The apple dropped. The hand pulled back inside the door; it had no fingernails.
Through the dim light of the dining area, Timmi could see a reflection, in the mirrored wall, of an old woman in a loose robe. Mavis heaved an ash tray at the image. The mirrored panel next to her reflection shattered. Mavis looked closer at the shattered panel. The distorted reflection of the pond under the stairs looked like an image of Bill and April caressing, like they caressed at the party. Mavis moved closer to the shattered panel to show Bill what a beauty she was now. She pulled off her wig and tried to tear it in half. The tape unraveled from her lip and the corner of her mouth. The reflection was that of an old, bald hag with her lip pulled grotesquely to her chin.  Mavis looked closer at the shattered panel. The images of Bill and April faded, but movement continued. The movement was the reflection of the eight noduled eggs in the reflection pond under the stairs, twitching and wriggling, with a single claws reaching from each egg. The blurred image of Timmi standing behind and above at the upper level banister, naked, with festering scars set in the design of the Claymore Coven and a large medallion, Rundi Smith’s medallion, around her neck, tore into Mavis’s ravished brain. The old hag reached out to push the images away. Both her arms turned into tentacles with Creature’s claws at each end. They wrapped around her.  The tentacles turned into the arms of a straightjacket. Her twisted hag’s mouth opened in a never-ending scream, “CHARLES!”
Eight months later, J. P. Drummer sat, in his new motorized wheelchair, across from Mavis O’Roak , at a small table in the corner of the visiting room. Her face had been reconstructed. Her hair was combed to cover the new hair growth at the front of her head. She looked fantastic, again, Drummer thought. Except her eyes: they’re old, almost ancient. “When you get out, you can stay at my place for as long as you like,” Drummer said.
“I’ll stay at my house,” she said.
“The pool has been dug out and filled with water that has already become scummy. The Evil is still at the house. Charles and Timmi Norris are holding coven meetings. Including Tony Scartossi, the Hunters, and the Graffees. They have sent notes to me to join. But Inspector Davis says I’m insane to pretend to join just to try to stop them. He says he warned Charles that if I disappear, Charles will be the number one suspect. Come to my house. We will defeat them together.”
“It’s my house. I’ll go back to it.”
The sun was dim; the faint outline of a new-moon showed pale in the sky. Mavis filled a copper bowl with earth. She sat the bowl in the center of a square of red silk. She reached into a boiling pot and extracted Manny Scartossi’s ring. Steam rose upward in a jagged M. She buried the ring in the copper bowl’s earth. She placed nine, white candles around the copper bowl. She lit the candles counter-clockwise. She sprinkled three drops of olive oil over the copper bowl.  “My energies are a gift of the cosmos,” she canted. “My soul belongs to the wind; I am the cosmos; I am the wind.” She sprinkled three more drops of olive oil over the copper bowl. “My energies are a gift of the cosmos. My soul belongs to the wind; I am the cosmos; I am the wind.”  She blew out the candles counter-clockwise. She turned the copper bowl quickly over onto the square of red silk. The earth fell away from Manny Scartossi’s ring. The M was no longer jagged.  The ring’s band was smaller. Mavis slipped the ring on her index finger as she walked from the institution’s garden area and into the building. Later, in her room, she stood naked in front of a mirror. A red candle sat on the dresser; its flame’s glow was the only light. Mavis raised her arms high over her head; she swayed, rhythmically, from left to right while she repeated: “Mavis O’Roak! I am the Power! Mavis O’Roak! I am the Power! Mavis O’Roak! I am the Power!”



Chapter Twenty Eight



Four weeks later, A Yellow Cab crossed the land bridge. Past the Graffees’ house and Drummer's run-down mansion. The cab stopped at the tri-level. Across the road, Bill’s house had been burnt to the ground. Tall stands of charred wood still stood like monoliths. Mavis stepped from the cab. She paid the cabby, and then walked to the entrance. She smiled when her key unlocked the entrance door. She moved through the debris on the entrance stairs. Garbage and half-eaten food sat on every available surface. In the kitchen, a golden retriever rooted through the garbage strewed across the floor. The retriever darted through the doggy-door when it saw Mavis.  “Here, Tommy! We’ll find you something to eat.”  Tommy came wagging back through the doggy-door. Mavis went in the pantry and found an unopened bag of dog food. She pulled the thick paper bag open and then poured some bits on the kitchen’s dirty tile floor.  The picture on the bag looked like Tom.  “Sorry fellow, no clean bowls. No clean anything.”
Mavis examined the Polaroid shots, of Timmi and Charles in sexual positions. They lined the dresser in the master suite. The bedroom was destroyed. Black candles and candle wax were on the night stand, the dressers, and the makeup table. Half-eaten food overflowed three giant-sized trash baskets.  Mirrors had been installed over the bed. Three chicken carcasses, with dried blood where their heads once had been, were spiked to the wall at the head of the bed.
The front entrance door was suddenly slammed open down stairs. Voices came from the lower level. Mavis slipped into the closet. Through the partially opened closet door, Mavis saw Charles and Timmi enter the bedroom. Charles, with his hair in a pony-tail and an earring hanging from his ear, was trying to grope Timmi’s over-sized breasts. Timmi side-stepped the attempts. “Not now. They’ll all be here soon. We have to clean the damn house before they come. At least the down stairs.” Timmi said.
That night, a giant, oval pool filled the tri-level’s back yard. Timmi stood, with Charles, in semidarkness; they both looked down into the scummy pool; eight small— five foot long—Creatures circled slowly in the water. Timmi and Charles stood at the end of the pool farthest from the balcony door. Timmi wore a white robe with an upside down cross emblazoned on its front and back. The white material clung at the front and back to numerous blotches of fresh blood seeping through the material; Timmi had been recently crucified. Charles wore a gold robe with Rundi Smith’s medallion swinging from his neck. Next to Timmi, a black robed Tony Scartossi stood holding hands with a stunningly beautiful black robed woman. Antonia Scartossi?  Next to Charles, the black robed Hunters stood holding hands. On each side of the pool, member of the Claymore Coven milled around gossiping excitedly. At the end of the pool just under the balcony, the black robed Graffees flanked J. P Drummer; he was strapped to his motorized wheelchair; its front wheels sat dangerously close to the edge of the pool and the circling Creatures below. Doan Park, tied hand and foot and waist and neck, was tied horizontally across the arms of Drummer’s wheelchair. Drummer and the tiny reporter kept making eye contact: they both knew Death was waiting.
Mavis moved from the balcony door to the only uncracked mirror on the closet doors. She stripped off her clothing, found a red candle, brought it over and sat it on the floor by the mirror. She lit the candle, then stood and raised her arms high over her head and swayed left and right rhythmically. “Mavis O’Roak! I am the Power! Mavis O’Roak! I am the Power! Mavis O’Roak! I am the Power!" She stepped back from the mirror and beckoned to the Image. Mavis’ Image stepped from the mirror and moved toward the balcony door. Mavis walked across the bedroom and toward the master suite doorway.
Timmi raised Charles’s hand high in the air. “Silence!” she shouted. “Tonight, Charles and I have three special treats for our Claymore Coven. First, our own Tony Scartossi–she gestures to the right of her—married the winner of the Antonia Scartossi look alike contest,” she waited for the cheering to quiet down. “Second, Jessica Hunter married her very own father,” she gestured toward the Hunters,” the Claymore Coven cheered louder for the Hunters than for Tony Scartossi. “And last, but not least, my Mary Jean Graffee, who along with yours truly, brought us such pleasure, and new recruits, with our film ‘Pool’, has brought two wonderful sacrifices for our Babies.” She pointed toward the Graffees. “But first let’s let Tony and ‘Antonia’ and the Hunters seal their marriages with long, long, kisses.”  All the member of the Claymore Coven cheered as the newly-weds kissed. Two jagged, steel banister rails came sailing through the night air. The first slammed through the back of Tony Scartossi’s head as he was in a deep kiss with ‘Antonia’. A bloody end of the rail emerged from the back of her stunningly beautiful head. They tumbled into the pool as the second rail slammed into Professor Hunters head and emerged bloody through Jessica Hunter’s head; they staggered toward the edge of the pool then tripped and slipped in. The Creatures in the pool swarmed and quickly devoured both of the thrashing, shish kebabed couples.
The members of the Claymore Coven scrambled toward the side gate. Drummer took advantage of the confusion: against the pressure of the straps, his hand flicked a switch; the motorized chair moved back from the pool, then shot forward and knocked a screaming Mary Jean Graffee into the pool; her husband, Victor, attempted to catch her, but missed; he hesitated only a second and dove in after her. He disappeared into the swarm of Creatures along with his wife.
Mavis’s Image jumped from the balcony straight into the churning water of the pool. The Creatures saw Mavis’ Image and all darted toward it. The Image disappeared each time the Creatures attacked. With the exception of one, the Creatures devoured each other as their little pea brains assumed they were devouring Mavis. The remaining Creature circled the pool. Black liquid filled the pool and seeped from the circling Creature. Mavis’ Image pulled itself from the bloody water of the pool. It stood, naked, before Timmi. Timmi pulled off her bloody robe. Unhealed wounds scarred her naked body.  “You! Have no! Power!” Timmi said. Timmi’s eyes glowed yellow. She gestured toward Mavis’ Image; Timmi’s fingernails flew from the tips of her grubby fingers and rocketed toward the Image. The Image shattered in hundreds of pieces. The pieces blasted back at Timmi and sliced her from top to bottom. The bloody Timmi-pieces tumbled into the pool. The Creature devoured each piece as the bloody piece sank in the water.
Doan Park was screaming, but she maneuvered from her ropes and released Drummer from his straps. Drummer reached up with his knurled hand and placed it over Doan Park’s screaming mouth. “Shhh, silent. You are about to see Good versus Evil,” he said.
Mavis walked, naked, to the side of the pool, she bent down and let her cosmos-grown hair dangle in the water. The Creature came charging through the water. Mavis reached up her hand; a flat bladed Batik slipped from the tri-level’s exterior wall and came sailing through the air and into Mavis’ outstretched hand. Just as the Creature’s flashing teeth gripped Mavis’s hair, the Batik cleaved its head off. The Creature’s body thrashed in the bloody pool water, and then floated to the surface.
Charles was in shock. He backed slowly through the patio doors and into the tri-level.  Mavis and Drummer followed. Doan Park moved cautiously behind Drummer’s wheelchair. Charles backed around the breakfast counter. He watched Mavis enter. Drummer wheeled his chair up to the patio door entrance but stayed outside. “Mavis, Love,” Charles said. “You’re feeling better, I see.”
Mavis still had the Batik in her hand. Black liquid covered its wide, flat blade. “Charles, darling. I understand. All you wanted was Immortality.” She moved toward him “I have the power to give it. Come here. Trust me.” She laid the Batik on the counter in front of Charles. Charles picked up the flat bladed knife. He smiled.
“I’m already immortal. I don’t think I need you, Love.”
“We shall see, Darling,” she said.
The handle of the Batik slowly twisted in Charles’ resisting hands. The thick, flat blade turned upward. Charles tried to press the Batik away. He pressed it back against the counter. Rundi Smith’s medallion chain began to twist around Charles’s resisting neck. The chain tightened one more turn then jerked Charles’ head straight down. The flat blade of the Batik cleaved straight into his wide forehead; thud, like a hollow melon. Charles’ body slid behind the counter. 
Mavis turned to P. J. Drummer and Doan Park. “Please excuse me,” she said. She walked into the pantry and returned with her old painter’s smock covering her naked body. She took the keys from the breakfast counter, pocketed them, and stepped through the patio doors. Drummer followed Mavis past the blood-ringed pool, through the side gate, and up the walk at the side of the tri-level; Tommy pranced behind the motorized wheelchair. Doan Park reached across the breakfast counter and retrieved a tattered book: its cover showed a blazing, red, five-pointed star. In the star’s center, a serpent devoured its own tail.
Inspector Davis met them all at the front of the tri-level. “P. J., I’ve been trying to get you all day. Your phone keeps buzzing busy. Your Fax is busy. Your hand-held is busy”. He ran and put his arms around Doan Park. The tiny reporter folded into his arms and put her head on his chest. “Mrs. O’Roak when did you get out?” Davis said. “Are you well?”
“She more than well,” Drummer said. “She just kept me and your girl friend from being the last supper.”
Mavis went to Timmi’s red Corvette convertible; she opened the door and slipped gracefully into the custom leather seat. She reached across the passenger seat and let Tommy hope in among the trash next to her.
“Will you use your power for good?” Drummer said.
Mavis stared intently at the tri-level. The skies roared. The oval swimming pool, with its plumbing hanging loose, shot straight up over the back of the house. It crashed down on the center of the roof. The tri-level creaked and crumbled. Gas pipes hissed. Water pipes bursted. Blood-laced water flooded the remaining structure. Torn electrical wires sparked and ignited small fires throughout the timbering structure. Mavis smiled. She started the red Corvette. She backed down the driveway. As she sped away, she waved back. She slowed and stopped in front of the Graffee's house. Drummer and Davis and Park watched as the Graffee’s rambling house slowly slid into Claymore Canyon. Mavis pulled out, but stopped in front of the Drummer mansion. Nothing happened. Mavis pulled away and waved back at them.
Drummer looked at Davis. Drummer wiped the back of his knurled hand across his forehead. “Let’s go have a beer.”


The end.


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