The House on Black Lake (31 page)

“Is that what you talk about at your men’s club meetings—your covert fraternity of rapists and cold-blooded murderers? Is that what you spend your time philosophizing about while you’re planning your next human sacrifice?” I comeback with fervor, then grab a handful of Faithful’s mane and pull myself onto his bare back.

“Take your hands off me!” I scream, as Ramey drags me from the horse and throws me to the ground. He straddles my chest with sturdy thighs, stationing his full weight below my shoulders. Immobilized beneath him, my lungs crushed under the weight, his powerful frame sinks deeper into the cavity of my chest until I can scarcely breathe. As I lapse beneath his commanding dominance, he wraps his hands around my neck and places his thumbs firmly against my windpipe, exposed more fully as he tilts back my head.

“Have you ever made love like this,” he asks while pressing and releasing, playing my vocal instrument at whim.

I struggle to speak, to create consequential words to dissuade this subhuman from snuffing out my life—but the emitted sounds are equally horrific. They are the squeals of the slaughterhouse—even more terrifying than the murderous gleam in his eyes.

Seeking refuge from the unthinkable, I gaze beyond him into the night sky, scattered with wild stars, like millions of eyes peering through dark cloth. The black robes will have their way after all, and celebrate the victory. My sacrifice will create no abundance or profusion of wealth. But why continue the battle when the odds are so staked against me and allies clearly nonexistent.

Flashes shoot through my consciousness, obscuring the starry sky. Like the photographs in Egan Schlotter’s trunk. Bullet shots of life, random pictures, split seconds of mind-blowing pain entangled with ineffable, unimaginable joy. Innocence lost, never to be recovered, and time marches forward, a roaring river of emotion and imagery, memories recorded, now wildly flashing.

My sons, my dear sons, forgive me
...

“Will you remain still if I move off you?” I hear Ramey ask me. My eyelids flicker open to view him slide off and move to the edge of the blanket, where he lowers his head to his knees and covers his face with his hands. Woozy and lightheaded, I lie still and wait for the dizziness to pass. A strange choking sound issues from him, and I open my eyes to a sight I would never have imagined possible, not in a thousand lifetimes.

Ramey Sandeley is crying.

“Did you bring me to the lake to kill me?” I ask him in a hoarse whisper.

“I’m sorry if I frightened or hurt you. Please forgive me; forgive me for everything. I never meant to harm you. I only wanted to stop you from leaving me.” He lifts his head and looks at me through streams of tears.

“The first time I saw you was the first time I felt myself come alive. Your eyes pierced through mine like fucking razor blades and I saw in you all the wonders of the universe. I felt I’d found my mate, someone I could share all the crazy fantasies, ideas, and dreams. And in the darkness, every night, I wished you close to me, to stave off the monstrous evils that dogged me. It was you, only you...”

He wipes his tears with the back of his hand, takes a deep breath, and pushes himself up from the ground. His face contorts as he appears to struggle against an insurmountable force.

“Sacrifice means nothing unless you are willing to give up something you can’t live without. I brought you here for a purpose. But things have changed.”

“Is that why you left me on the island?”

“Yes.”

“What has changed?”

“I told Ruth. I confessed everything.”

“You told her you planned to kill me?”

Ramey has regained his composure, but the breakdown has washed away the rugged facade.

“Ruth wants a divorce. The contract was due to expire in a few months anyway. She asked for half my estate and joint custody.”

“Did you agree to her terms?”

“She knows my secrets. There was no choice.”

“I wish you both the best, Ramey.”

He casts me a flippant smile and gazes deeper...

“I’m leaving in a few hours.”

“That gives us time.”

“We have no future.”

“There is only the moment.”

“I’ve released you, Ramey.”

“No you haven’t.”

“It’s over.”

“It never began.”

“The torment began long ago.”

“Torment?”

“
Longing.
I can’t endure it any longer. It must come to an end. This phase is finished. I’ve evolved. I’m not the same woman I was when we met.”

“No. You’re not the same woman. That’s why you’re here.”

I lower my eyes and steel myself against a wave of self-pity.

“Long ago, after I first met you, I made a promise at a shrine: an unmarked face for a life of truth. I realize now that I have been a fool. I destroyed a privileged life for nothing, and there is no destiny awaiting me, only loneliness and misery.”

“Are you telling me that after having come so far you’ll depart without a taste of what you came here to experience?”

“I didn’t come here for that.”

“That’s not true.”

I am silent for a long moment and then confess: “I searched my entire life for love, but when it came unbidden it was not what I thought it would be. There was no joy, nor possibility of fulfillment or peace. I came here for resolution, to rid myself of you, not to cause myself more grief. If I give myself up, it will destroy me.”

“Why do you define making love as giving in, and why do you give up so easily? Before you can begin a new life or enter a new world, you must first seek transformation. And that can only happen by letting go of false values and embracing all aspects of yourself, especially those you find most distasteful, as they hold the greatest power. We both saw something in each other we needed, so let’s find out what that is. Likely you’ll be done with me once you’ve had me,” he says with a wry smile.

He draws off his T-shirt, unbuckles his belt and drops his jeans, then casts the clothes into a pile at the edge of the circle. He stands naked before me with arms spread wide.

“I give myself to you completely, in absolute surrender,” he says, and his plaintive voice brings me to the fine edge of tears.

“It’s a cruelty of fate that we found each other too late.”

“Fate makes no mistakes.”

With these words my resolve is shattered. Outside myself, I watch my hands move quickly to strip away clothing, piece by piece, and let the garments drop where they will. With shaking hands, I free myself from the bondage of the cloth and find a freedom in nakedness I have never known.

“You’re more beautiful than I could have ever imagined,” Ramey says, and moves to where I stand.

There is magic in this circular glen, an otherworldly current. I feel wired with billions of raw nerves sending shivers of new sensations. Waves of bliss and terror collide and give birth to a beauty, a newborn feeling, utterly nameless.

Ramey draws me to him, enfolds me in his arms and lowers me to the ground. It is the first time I have smelled it... the raw stench of the mate. His skin burns hot and his fervor is voracious yet gentle. He explores me with the assurance of a man who has known many women, while caressing with the wonder of a man who has never before seen or felt a woman. His touch holds the reverence reserved for one who is cherished, worshipped—sacred.

And I savor all of him. The taste and texture of his hair and skin, the rough parts and the smooth, every inch of his body traced and recorded. The nuance of each moment is lived fully and completely. I gather these treasures to be secreted for a lifetime and relished in the last moments. These memories will reside with me at the end of my life and guide me into eternity.

“Why are you weeping?” he asks me.

“Tell me you love me, even if you don’t mean it,” I say, peering through gray-blue windows into a world of endless possibilities.

“I love you and I mean it,” he whispers.

And with those words I open my heart, body and soul to him, and he glides inside with the ease of two who were destined to become one. Our union charges Ramey with a ferocious intensity. His thrusts are fierce, nearly brutal—there is no escape, no retreat from his ruthless passion. His crazed desire is met by a vicious urgency of my own, something I cannot control and won’t. We writhe in the filth like vile curs, humping, grinding, biting, and tearing at each other, merciless—moaning, squealing, like rabid beasts. I want to devour and be consumed by him and more, so much more.

A shimmering light moves into the circle and I feel I am dissolving inside the mist. “Give yourself over completely, don’t fight it, let go. It’s time. Don’t be afraid to disappear inside me.”

“I’m afraid to let go. I am terrified I’ll go mad or die.”

“You’ll go mad or die if you don’t give in.” His eyes focus deeper. “It’s the part of you I most desire.” He slows his pace to slip his hands beneath me and draw me firmly against him. With languid strokes, he guides me to the pinnacle, the threshold, the edge of the abyss. “Let me take you there. Ride with me to another world, fly with me...”

“If I were to perish in this glen tonight, it would be worth the sacrifice, if only to have experienced this feeling once in a lifetime,” I murmur, and rise into the throes of a glorious ecstasy, to the place where time stops.

I
AWAKEN AS ONE DRUGGED, IN A FOG OF CONFUSION AND DREAD,
from a supernatural dream, a hallucination so vivid and powerful I am uncertain if I was actually transported into another dimension. Flashes of the profound images fire through my mind and the burning terror grows as I hear what sound like whispers coming from the outer edges of the brush. Sprawled out next to me, Ramey looks strangely unreal. The mist of rain that fell while we slept gives his skin a dewy and luminescent sheen, like that of a newly hatched being. The tattooed symbols on his lower back appear darker and more deeply fixed, as though carved into his body.

Warm droplets from the thick mantle of branches covering the sphere fall on me as I dress myself with shaking hands. The beauty of the glen has transformed into an eerily claustrophobic prison and a sorrowful desperation has seized me. I feel something terrible is about to happen—and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

“Come back to me,” Ramey says and rises up from the ground.

“I’ll be jailed if I don’t make my flight,” I say, and move to where Faithful feeds at the edge of the circle.

“You can’t leave,” he says, and moves to re-dress himself.

“You can’t leave, because we’re not yet done with you,” Georgie growls, as he lumbers through the sludge leading into the sacred ring. Roger Sandeley follows closely behind, robed but not hooded, and carries a spear in his hand. André Labat, who appears badly beaten, limps behind them with his head bowed. Beneath a veil of dark glossy hair his face is as pallid as a corpse on ice.

“Here,” Roger says to Ramey, “take the sacred blade. Let’s finish this quickly. There is little time left before sunrise. I assume you’ve taken care of what was needed.

“Tie her to one of the trees behind the altar,” Roger instructs Georgie.

As I turn to bolt, he grabs me from behind and drags me to a spot near the altar where a smattering of elms huddle.

“This sprig of a tree will work,” Roger says. “It looks like a fine conduit.”

Georgie shoves me against the slender elm and cinches my wrists with remnants of leather strips he has taken from a trough near the fire pit. He draws my hands back until I cry out, arms nearly pulled from their sockets and tightly bound against the trunk.

“You’re quite the tree whore,” he says, and rips open my blouse to expose my bare chest.

Roger wears an expression of rapt concentration as he leads Georgie and André behind the tree.

“Let’s begin the ceremony,” he commands in a voice that echoes through the glen. He removes a pouch from a pocket inside his robe and inserts fingers to extract an oily residue to anoint me with an insignia on my forehead and chest. Chanting an invocation, a bringing forth of the disciples, he expresses disappointment for those members who cannot be present for the supreme offering.