The Vanishing (46 page)

Epilogue

Dexter and Pam waited by the grammar school swings for Tony and the others to come, but when the full moon rose high enough to cast their shadows on the sand, it became pretty clear that none of their friends was brave enough to show up.

No matter. They didn’t need anyone else anyway.

The Place no longer worked, but Dexter had found the new location. The two of them cut through the trailer park, walked past the old house that had been converted into Aunt Edna’s Beauty Parlor, then continued down the street to its end, where two unfinished luxury homes sat at opposite sides of the cul-de-sac.

People had started using the empty lot between the two unfinished houses as a dump, throwing unused concrete, yard waste, cans and bottles, even the frame of an old motorcycle onto the cleared section of ground. Dexter led the way around the back of the piled refuse and stopped.

‘‘Here it is,’’ he told her.

The two of them found a place to hide behind a jumble of cut branches.

They waited.

A woman arrived alone. She immediately kicked off her shoes and pulled down her pants. After taking off her top and bra, she rolled down her panties and pissed in the dirt, stirring it into mud and applying it to her face with her fingers. She got on her hands and knees and chanted: ‘‘Engine, engine number nine. Take me quickly from behind.’’

It came from the culvert this time, shambling forth from the darkness, a thing of hair and snakeskin, with deep eyes that could not be seen and sharp small teeth that could.

As Dexter and Pam watched, it took the woman roughly, rudely, in a way that made her scream.

And around them the flowers bloomed.

Born in Arizona shortly after his mother attended the world premiere of
Psycho,
Bentley Little
is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of numerous previous novels and
The Collection,
a book of short stories. He has worked as a technical writer, reporter/photographer, library assistant, sales clerk, phonebook deliveryman, video arcade attendant, newspaper deliveryman, furniture mover, and rodeo gatekeeper. The son of a Russian artist and an American educator, he and his Chinese wife were married by the justice of the peace in Tombstone, Arizona.