Ash Wednesday

The plots of God are perfect.

The Universe is a Plot of God.

--Edgar Allan Poe
, Eureka

For the whole town, I suddenly realized, was something other than I so far saw it. The real activities and interests of the people were elsewhere and otherwise than appeared. Their true lives lay somewhere out of sight behind the scenes. Their busyness was but the outward semblance that masked their actual purposes. They bought and sold, and ate and drank, and walked about the streets, yet all the while the main stream of their existence lay somewhere beyond my ken, underground, in secret places.

—Algernon Blackwood, "Ancient Sorceries"

The dogs saw it first.

It was very early on a Friday morning, a few hours before sunrise, when they noticed the glow. The first to start barking were Sim Peters's two foxhounds, lying together on top of their doghouse in Sim's backyard. Mitzi's nostrils flared at the glow, even though she could sense no strange scent. Her low growl woke Mike beside her, who, at the sight of the lights, immediately sent up a shrill baying. A few backyards away the Smiths' Great Dane took up the cry, and soon all three were yelping. As the animals looked from the hill down into the shallow depression that had given Merridale its name, they saw more and more dim pools of light take form below, man-shaped nebulae that gleamed darkly, in muted contrast to the bright streetlamps that poured specks of diffused whiteness across the town in the early-morning mist.

That the images were those of naked and unmoving human beings meant nothing to the dogs. All that Mike and Mitzi and Jocko knew, as Rex and Spike and Butch and King and every other dog in Merridale just as quickly learned, was that they were alien, something that did not belong, and that barking at them might frighten them away, or draw the masters out to chase them off or ask what they wanted in the dogs' dominions.

So the dogs barked, and one by one they woke one another, from street to street, house to house, until all of Merridale resounded with their ragged voices.

And slowly the people of Merridale woke, and rose, and discovered.

Marty Sanders sat bolt upright in his bed, a sheen of terror-sweat covering his body, making his cotton pajamas stick to his hairless back like flour paste. He'd had the dream again. Over six months now and still that damned dream of that damned night. Dotty stirred in the bed beside him and cleared her throat in the darkness. He could make out the large lumpish shape of her in the cool blue glow of the clock-radio numerals.

"Marty?" she slurred sleepily. "Y'okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure," he told his wife, who grunted noncommittally.

But he wasn't okay, and wondered if he ever would be again. He flopped back onto his pillow and looked up at the black ceiling, his tired mouth open in a grimace of self-loathing. He ran his fingers through his damp thinning hair and finally dried his forehead with a tissue. He felt sick.

When he remembered what he had done, how he had done it, he always felt sick. Even though no one would ever know, would ever grasp him by the arm and drag him away to pay for what he'd done, he still felt sick.

One time. One time in thirty years of marriage he had cheated and look how it had ended. It had seemed so safe—Dotty out of town visiting her mother in Lauderdale for two weeks, his running into Sheila Sommers outside the 7-Eleven, her teasing him, talking about last summer at the pool and asking him if he had liked her bathing suit, and then asking where his wife was, and when he told her, her saying how lonely he must be in that big house all by himself and wouldn't a little company be nice and no one would know.

Something had happened then that had totally surprised him. Thirty years of husbandly fidelity, fifty years of moral training had slipped off of him like a robe off a whore's shoulders, and he said yes. A little company would be nice.

Even now, he could scarcely believe he had done it, but he had. They went back to his house. The outside lights were off, and they were out too far for streetlights, so the chance of being spotted by his neighbors was unlikely. Once inside, they had a drink and talked—he about his business, she about her two failed marriages—and finally she just said, "Well, it's about time, isn't it?" and started to undress right there in the living room. By the time everything was off, they were in the bedroom and he was half undressed too. Then they did it, right there on the bed in which he and Dotty had slept for years, and goddamn if it hadn't been good. If he hadn't been good. But then she started teasing him. And right away he knew how stupid he'd been. He hadn't remembered, with her pressing up against him in the car on the way over, how she'd busted up Larry Drebbins's marriage with her big mouth, but now it came back to him all too clearly.

"Did ya like that?"

"Bet you haven't had it that good for a long time.”

“Does your wife do it like that?"

"Wouldn't she die if she knew about us?"

"Maybe we oughta call her in Florida . . ."

And with each remark from the strange naked woman stretching and moving like a cat in heat beside him, his stomach tightened more and more and the memory of what had just occurred grew tasteless, then bitter. He realized that he had no idea what Sheila
would
do, but it might be something crazy. After all, wasn't she crazy enough to pick up married men outside the 7-Eleven?

"C'mon, let's call her."

He laughed, trying to reassure himself that she was joking. She laughed too, but then looked at him half seriously. "What's the number?"

He laughed again, less jovially. "You're crazy."

"Maybe. What's the number?" He didn't say anything.

"I'll find it," she said, rising from the bed. He followed her through the house until she found the personal directory by the kitchen phone. He could only stand and watch her, his own nakedness forgotten, as she flipped through it. "Here we go. Mom." She moved back into the bedroom then. "More comfy in here, huh, Marty?" When she picked up the phone was when he stopped her, grabbing her hand.

"Are you crazy?" he said, and then she said something horrible and laughed at him, and he got mad, so mad that he pushed her.

To stop her. Just to stop her.

The next thing he knew she was lying there and her eyes were open but she wasn't moving, and when he looked, there was this
thing
on her head like a lump, a knot. There wasn't even any blood. Just this
knot
on her head, and he couldn't remember if she'd hit the sharp corner of the headboard or the bedside table or
what
, and there was just this lump and her not moving or even
blinking
, and he knew, he knew even as upset as he was, that
live
people
blink
.

He was so scared he cried. Just cried and cried until he couldn't anymore. So he blew his nose into a wad of Kleenex from the bedside table and thought about what to do next. He considered calling the police, but talked himself out of it. All that would mean would be that they'd take him away. And even if they freed him, everybody would know. Dotty would know, Pastor Craven would know, Tom Markley—hell, the whole damn
town
. And it wouldn't bring her back, would it? It wasn't like he was a
criminal
, was it? What had he done? Self-preservation, that was it—she would have destroyed him. And his punishment wouldn't bring her back. Nothing would bring her back.

Back to tell the truth.

Once he made his choice, the emotion seemed to fade, at least for the moment, and analysis took over. She lived in an apartment house two blocks away from the town square, had probably walked to the 7-Eleven, and he was fairly sure that no one had seen him with her. If he could get her back to her building.

Everything slipped into place then, and he made himself wait until three in the morning, when all of Merridale was sleeping. He dressed Sheila slowly and awkwardly, nearly panicking over his inability to fit her into her panty hose without twisting the legs. But after twenty minutes of backbreaking effort, she was dressed presentably enough that Martin Sanders felt confident that it would appear she had dressed herself. He took the scotch bottle from which she'd been drinking and splashed a bit on the front of her sweater and over her chin. Just enough, he thought. Don't overdo it. She drank, but she wasn't a drunk. And that's why, isn't it? That's why she fell—she wasn't used to it.

He was unable to pick her up, so he dragged her outside to his car and put her into the trunk on top of a blanket. On the way to her building he didn't pass a single car. It all went perfectly then—hauling her out, dragging her up the dimly lit stairway to her apartment, opening her door with her keys in her hand (fingerprints), turning on her lights, leaving the door open, and finally lifting her erect and letting her fall down the rubber-treaded concrete stairs. That was the worst. He was barely able to let her go, but he closed his eyes and forced himself to shove her slightly out so that she flopped loosely down the whole long flight, like a boneless rag doll, to strike her head with a dull
crack
at the bottom.

He ran then, ran down the steps, leaping fleetly over her, making himself slow down just a hair as he passed the sole streetlight on the way to his car parked in a shadowed corner. Then home. Home to a nightmare of stuffing soiled sheets in the washing machine, looking for long ash-blond hairs on the back of the couch, the upholstered headboard, everywhere, everywhere she'd stood, sat, lain.