Jack Page didn't expect to see Carla Beck at happy hour so soon after she had become the object of an intense round of verbal intimidation at the staff meeting just four hours earlier, but then they had been planning this night for the past few weeks. And what better way to bitch and moan about work and your stupid boss then after work, on a Friday night, at happy hour?

It was certainly more appropriate than the confines of the office, specifically the seventh floor boardroom where the sorry excuse for a meeting had taken place. They usually did the happy hour thing once every three weeks or so, always at the same place: a Mexican restaurant on Pasadena Avenue called Mijares. The restaurant sported a nice outdoor patio with large tables, which provided the perfect atmosphere to suck down strawberry margaritas or Corona's, munch on appetizers, and bullshit until evening fell.

A dozen of Jack's co-workers were already crowded around a large table when he arrived. Of those dozen probably five of them reported to Lori, his boss. And of those five, only two others had been in that shit-sorry excuse for a meeting. One of them was Carla.

After sitting down at the table closest to them and ordering a Corona, he grinned at the others from his perch. "Thought I'd be too devastated to show up, eh?"

Brian Gabriel grinned back and laughed. "Yeah, well, I figure if you were as much the asshole that Rudy said you were at that meeting, you would be at your lawyer's by now."

Jack chuckled and shook his head. The meeting they were talking about was originally designed as a 'rap session'. Jack Page worked as a desktop publisher for Free State Insurance Corporation, and the department he was employed in was Secretarial and Support Services. He was the only non-secretary in the department; all of the other staff members were farmed out to provide secretarial support for a variety of middle-managers and executives. Because of some nimrod executive decision, it was decreed that in order for the support staff to receive bonuses for the following fiscal year, they would have to set down a number of departmental goals. None of the aforementioned goals, however, had anything to do with their jobs. Among these goals were such illuminating things as touring a district office, attending workshops and computer classes, attending at least one class designed to improve communication and business skills. And attend 'rap sessions', one-hour meetings in which you sat at the big conference table and traded tips of the trade. How to deal with stress, what to do if a certain problem arose. That sort of thing.

Only that hadn't happened at the first rap session, which Jack had made the mistake of attending. Their boss, Lori Williams, had been present, and she made it clear that she "wanted to hear a comment from everybody in this room." She then proceeded to randomly select people to draw gossip, such as "have you ever had a problem with anybody you work with? It can't be managers, and you don't have to name names." As expected, the stories that flowed through started innocently enough until they had turned personal and ugly. By the time Rudy Garcia, a secretary who Jack privately thought was an incompetent moron, said that when he first came to the department he thought Jack was an asshole, all bets were off. Within fifteen minutes time professional relationships were damaged, Carla was near tears, and another secretary whom Jack didn't know was red faced with embarrassment and refused to look at Rudy, who'd taunted her. And through it all Lori was going around the room, trying to get other people to verbally maul each other some more. She had resembled Jerry Springer more than she did a manager.

The experience had left Jack with a bad impression on the way Lori was running things that he refused to work for the rest of the afternoon. He stayed in his cubicle and surfed the Internet for the next few hours, then he left at his appointed time. After a brief pit stop at his apartment to change into more casual attire, he had cruised over to Mijares, originally planning to have a beer or two and some dinner and leave.

Only instead he had four beers and wound up talking extensively to Carla Beck, who had been sitting silent and forlorn at the edge of the table where the group was seated. Jack didn't know Carla well, but he had heard through the grapevine that the woman wasn't that well off. She was in her mid-forties, with wavy brown hair that fell to her shoulders. Carla was what you thought of when you thought 'white trash'. She favored frumpy skirts and slacks at work that framed her chunky frame loosely, and tonight she dressed in faded blue jeans and a white blouse. She had wide hips and large breasts, and she would have been pretty if she hadn't lived such a hard life; the lines in her face made her appear weathered. Her nose looked like it might have been broken at one point, and she had a small scar on her chin. She had a nice mouth, though, and if you looked past a missing tooth or two, she had a pretty smile that brought dimples to her cheeks. What mattered was that Carla Beck was a genuine sweetheart.

`Jack started off by trying to joke around with her like he always did, but Carla wasn't buying any of it. She smiled faintly but it looked forced, and when it became apparent that conversation at the main table was focused on something besides that piss-poor meeting, Jack turned to her and asked her point blank. "Are you okay?"

Carla looked up at him, meeting his gaze. "Yeah...I'm fine."

The tone of her voice suggested she wasn't. "Listen, I know you're probably still bothered by what happened at the meeting. It pissed me off, too."

Carla sighed. "Yeah, but big deal. What can we do about it? Lori would fire me if she knew that I tried to do something."

Jack had felt sorry for Carla at the meeting, watching her on the other side of the table as Lori pressured the woman to reveal exactly who in the department bothered her, knowing very well that the person in question was sitting next to her, seemingly oblivious to it all. It was obvious from Carla's body language that she had been comfortable with coming out with her feelings. A public forum wasn't appropriate for airing such issues, anyway. In fact, it bordered on workplace harassment.

"Yeah, well, I think I'm gonna do something," Jack said. He hadn't really been bothered by Rudy calling him an asshole, but he wanted to say that to put her at ease. "I don't think it was right for Lori to do what she did. If people have issues with each other, that's something they should be able to do confidentially with Lori, not participating in a free-for-all slug-fest in front of everybody. It's unprofessional and counter-productive."

Carla still looked wounded and defeated. "Yeah, but what can you do? She's the boss. What she says goes."

Going this route with her was beating a dead horse. He took a sip of his beer and tried to muster a smile. The only thing he knew about Carla was that she was divorced, with two daughters who were in their late teens and early twenties that were already out on their own. She had originally come on the staff as a temp, and after two years Lori had hired her on a permanent basis as a floater. Meaning she floated around from department to department, assisting other secretaries as needed. It was a shitty job, and for all Jack knew it was the lowest paying position in the department. He would be surprised if she made twenty-five thousand dollars a year.

Carla had almost finished her beer and Jack offered to buy her another, which she accepted. When fresh beers came, Jack changed the subject. It was obvious that Carla didn't want to dwell much on the meeting; she still appeared bothered by it. He changed the subject to another work issue, which led to a conversation on stereo equipment, which led to music, which led to sports, which led to other things, which led to more beers, and before he knew it everybody else had left, they were both more than a little tipsy, and then they were walking out of the restaurant, arm in arm drunkenly. Carla said she lived just up the street a ways and Jack thought he would just walk her home, wearing off the buzz, but then one thing led to another and the next thing he was aware of they were at her place, in bed.

Jack lay in the darkened room, staring at the ceiling. Carla lay snuggled next him. The blinds were opened slightly, spilling moonlight into the room. He had been surprised at the sudden turn of events, but he had been even more surprised at her living conditions.

Carla Beck's current residence was room 204 at the Lucky Star Motel off of Colorado Boulevard. He hadn't said anything to her as she led him into the room, but now as he lay in her bed, Carla comfortably snuggled against him, he debated on whether he should bring it up. He wanted to ask her why do you live in such a dump? But as he thought about it he realized that it all fit: her low pay scale, coupled with whatever had happened to her in the past that would have caused her to be divorced, would be sufficient excuse to live in a motel. He wondered how long she had been living like this.

As if she had read his thoughts she said, "If I hadn't been so drunk I wouldn't have brought you here."

"Are you sorry for what happened?" Jack asked.

A pause. "No." She was silent for a moment. "I just didn't want you to see how I lived."

Jack thought about that. He didn't know what to say.

"I haven't always lived like this," she said.

"What happened?" Jack asked.

"The usual shit," Carla sighed. "My husband left me and took everything."

"And this was all you could afford," Jack confirmed.

"Yeah." She shifted around beside him in the bed. "My job doesn't really pay all that well."

"I can imagine," Jack said. He felt sorry for Carla.

"I never really had any job skills before I came to Free State," Carla continued. "In fact, this is the first real job I've ever had."

"You were just a housewife before?"

Carla nodded. "Yeah. I thought that was great." Then, in a lower voice. "Boy, was I wrong."

Jack didn't want to go into her personal life, but she appeared to be freely divulging the information. "I was so desperate to leave home that when I did, I didn't know where to turn to," she said. "I had a little money with me, but I knew it wasn't going to last. Then I met Mike, my husband, at a bar. We hit it off real quick, and I fell for him fast. I was only nineteen. Young and stupid."

"You got married young?"

She nodded. "About a year after we met. I had Darci two years later, and then a few years after that I had Michelle. Mike had a good job as a general contractor. He made enough money so I didn't have to work. It sure beat home."

"Where's home?"

For a minute he didn't think she was going to answer him. She stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then she said, "I'm from back east. Pennsylvania to be exact. A real rural area. We had no running water, no electricity. We were dirt poor."

"Are you Amish?" It spilled out of Jack's mouth before he could stop it.

Carla shook her head. "No, my family isn't Amish." Then, in a voice so low that Jack wasn't sure if he heard it right, she said, "When I was young though, sometimes I wish I had been in an Amish family. Even that would have been preferable to where I was."

"Your home-life was that bad?"

Carla sighed. "I'm sorry if I'm making it sound as if I came from this hell-hole, but really...no." Carla shook her head. "It really wasn't that bad. It was just..."

"Eccentric?"

Carla appeared to think about it, then nodded. "I guess you could say that."

"So there were good things about where you're from?"

"I suppose I shouldn't be so harsh on it, but, yeah, there was." Carla sat up, her back propped up against the headboard. Jack sat up, too. "Living in the country does have some beautiful advantages: the clean air, the open space, the wild-life. It's really quite peaceful."

"Did it ever occur to you to maybe go back after your divorce?"

Carla shook her head vehemently. "No. I couldn't do that. That would just make things worse."

"Why?"

She wouldn't answer. Jack began to fear that he had stepped over the line. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to--"

"No, it's okay", Carla said. "I started this."

"We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

Carla was silent again. She appeared to be struggling to hold back the tears. Jack felt uncomfortable. "You okay?"

She nodded hesitantly.

"Was it that bad?" he asked.

Carla sniffled, staring at the wall in front of them where the nineteen inch Minolta TV was bolted to the wall. "Sometimes I think about that and I wonder if it was as bad as I made it all out to be."

"What do you mean?"

Carla appeared to think about it for a moment. "Have you ever looked back on an event that you used to think was bad, only to later think it wasn't as bad as you had thought?"

Jack nodded. "Well, yeah. High school was like that."

"That's what home is like," Carla said.

"How long has it been since you've been back?"

"I left twenty-two years ago," Carla said. "I've never been back."

"Not even to visit?" Jack found this astonishing.

Carla shook her head. 'Not even to visit."

"But you're thinking what it might be like to go back now, aren't you?"

Carla nodded, sniffling. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Yes," she whispered.

"Are you afraid of going back?"

Carla appeared to not know how to answer this question. "I don't know. Sometimes I feel scared, and other times...other times I think it would be so much better for me if I went back and never set foot in the modern world ever again."

Never set foot in the modern world ever again. Christ, had she lived in a stone hut back there? "Do you really hate it here more?" He asked.

Again, Carla appeared uncertain. "I don't know."

Jack thought about this. Maybe her parents had been alcoholics or something; maybe they had abused her. He didn't dare ask her, but a part of him wanted to know. "Maybe a short visit back might help. You know, give you a chance to confront whatever it is about your past that's bothering you."

She seemed to think about it. "I don't know. That might be a good thing to do."

He almost asked why not? He smiled and put his arm around her shoulders. Maybe the best thing to do would be to change tactics. "Maybe it wouldn't be. But then how would you know if you don't at least try?"

She nodded slowly, looking at him. "Yeah, I see what you mean. Still..." That look of uncertainty came back to her.

"What?"

"It's going to be so much different. I haven't been in that environment in twenty-two years. I would be...I don't know...I would feel so uncomfortable and out of place."

"Do you think it's really changed that much in twenty-two years?"

"No. But then, I've really changed. My whole world-view has changed. Going back now would be..."

"Like going to a foreign country, or something?"

She nodded. "I guess you could say that."

They were silent again. After a few minutes, Jack asked if he could smoke a cigarette. She needed one too, and they lit up and leaned back against the headboard, smoking silently, each lost in their own thoughts.

"I know we don't know each other that well, but..."

"Yeah?" He looked at her, waiting for what he was expecting.

"If I went back for a few days would you come with me?"

That wasn't what he was expecting. What he was expecting was more in the line of I know we don't know each other very well, but I enjoyed our time together and I hope we can do it again. Maybe...see where the relationship takes us to next. What she had asked him instead was unexpected.

He thought about it. He could use a vacation. And he had never been in that part of the country before. As long as she paid for her own airfare, he wouldn't mind tagging along. Hell, it might be fun.

That decided it for him. "Sure." He grinned at her. "When do we leave?"

The smile she flashed back at him seemed to suggest that, right at that moment, Carla Beck was the happiest woman on the planet.

# # #

"You okay?"

They had pulled to the side of the narrow dirt road that Carla indicated, and now as they sat in the rented Ford Escort somewhere in the deep woods of the Pennsylvanian mountains, Jack felt a shiver of foreboding pass through him. Until now, he had never been nervous about the trip. That was all rapidly changing.

Carla looked up at the old, ramshackle house set back against the dirt lane with a look of fear. The late afternoon sun was hidden behind trees with skeletal branches that spread themselves over the grounds. The house was Victorian, with high gables along the north and south ends, indicating a roomy attic and a long front porch. The house seemed to tilt to the left, as if the foundation it rested on was slowly sinking into the earth. The shutters leaned off crookedly, the paint was peeling from the gray walls. Dead leaves floated along the weed choked front yard amid a light breeze. The shades were drawn over all of the windows. The house looked haunted.

"So this is where you lived?" Jack asked, looking up at the house. It had been three weeks since their conversation at her motel room. Since then, Carla Beck had been a frequent visitor to his bed, but they had never discussed the subject they had spoken of the night they had consummated their relationship. Except for a few brief discussions on his accompanying her back east, Jack had respected her wishes. They'd lucked out on two round-trip tickets to Philadelphia due to stiff airline competition, and it had been fairly easy to get the few days vacation time.

Carla Beck sighed and reached for the door handle. "I might as well get this over with." She opened the door and got out.

Jack followed her out. Upon landing at Philadelphia International Airport, they had rented a car and driven northwest, reaching the foothills of the mountain country two hours later. They had landed at two p.m. east coast time, and by the time they'd checked into a cheap motel along Route 87 it was closing in on five-thirty. The homestead was another thirty minutes through winding, heavily wooded terrain. Carla had wanted it to be her first stop after they checked in so she could get this over with as quickly as possible.

Jack followed her up the yard to the rickety wooden steps that led to the sagging porch. Carla hesitated a beat, then stepped forward and rapped on the thin wooden door.

They waited for what seemed a long time. Carla rapped again, harder. After a moment the sound of shuffling footsteps could be heard from inside and the door opened a crack. Jack couldn't see who was peering out, but he could tell from the expression on Carla's face that it had to be one of her parents. "So...you've come back, haven'tcha?"

Carla's voice was hoarse. "Hello, mother."

The door opened wider, allowing Jack a glimpse of the darkened interior and the occupant of the house.

The woman standing in front of them was old and stooped. Wearing a frayed, gray housedress, her white hair was tied in a bun behind her small head. Her eyes were the same watery-blue as her daughter's, her face sunken, chin bony. She drew an equally faded gray sweater closer to her thin, cadaverous frame and peered up at Jack. "Your husband, I take it? Looks mighty young to have been married some twenty-odd years now." She had a thick Pennsylvanian Dutch accent; what came out was: yer husband, I taike it? Looks maighty yung ta hafe be'en muarried some twenty-aud yeaurs naw.

"He's not my husband, ma; just a friend."

Carla's mother glanced at him once more, then turned to her daughter. "Well, come on in then if you're a mind to. I always knew you'd come back." She turned and began heading into the gloomy interior of the house.

Carla seemed to have regained some of her nerve; she stepped past the threshold of the front door and followed her mother into the dismal old house. Jack glanced back once at their rental car, then followed Carla inside the house.

The house was dark and dusty. He stood in a small entry hall and to his left was the living room, shrouded in shadows. To his right was another room, cloaked in darkness. Carla moved down the hall, following her mother toward the rear of the house and Jack followed, trying to take in as much as he could. It was obvious that the place hadn't been cared for in a very long time. The furniture he passed was old and drab. The wallpaper was faint and peeling. Dust motes swirled in the atmosphere, illuminated by the light from lanterns that were placed along various portions of the hallway. He passed a kitchen on his left but didn't pay much heed to it because now he was in the rear of the house where both women were, and as he entered the room he saw that it was what appeared to be a den or family room. It was lit by several oil lamps. The furniture here looked more cared for, the dust less of a nuisance. The old lady sank back in a worn easy chair and bade her daughter to sit down. Jack cast a quick glance around the room, noting the strange sculptures decorating the end tables and bookshelves, the equally weird paintings depicting strange subjects matted in frames, and the wall of books that took up one wall. The odor of mold was in this room as well, but that could be because of the books. He felt an irresistible urge to look at the books, but he sat down on a red mauve sofa opposite Carla and her mother.

"So..." Carla began. She looked nervous. "How's dad?"

The old woman looked at Carla as if she were the dumbest person alive. "Humph. Guess you don't know, don'tcha. What, with you packing up and leavin' us like that all those years ago. Your father's gone on to the other side."

Even though it was dark in the room, Jack could clearly see Carla's face turn pale at the mention of this. Jack's initial impression was an obvious guess; in the time that Carla was in California, her father had passed away. She was hearing this for the first time and was justifiably shocked at the news.

"No," Carla said, hand going to her mouth, eyes wide. "It can't be, it--"

"But it is, child," the old woman said, leaning forward and attempting to take her daughter's hands. "It is. And you know what your father told you. You still remember, don't you?"

"No!" Carla was clearly frightened, and now Jack was nervous watching her. This wasn't the reaction somebody would have upon hearing that a parent had died. This was something else, something of a more primal fear.

"Yes," the old woman croaked. "You do remember. He always knew you would come home. You were always his little girl. And you know how much he would have wanted you to go with him. To go with us."

Carla shot out of her chair, screaming at the top of her lungs. The suddenness of her act and the intensity of her screams stunned Jack. For a moment, all he could do was look up at her stunned as she screamed, eyes bugged out, face deathly pale. Then she turned and began running down the darkened hallway toward the front door. Jack bolted out of his own seat and chased after her, never even thinking of Carla's mother or the affect her sudden turn of behavior had on the old woman.

# # #

Carla refused to speak of the incident. For the remainder of the evening she was silent and fearful. She refused Jack's offer to go into town--Birksville, population 145--for supper at the little cafe on the main drag of town, so he went by himself. By the time he returned to their motel room she was asleep, the thin sheet drawn over her as if she were using it as a shield against some otherworldly invader. He watched her sleep for a moment, then stepped outside and sat on the porch of the motel, smoking silently and thinking.

He had had to chase her past their rental car before he caught her. Once he grabbed her she had jumped as if shocked by a strong electrical current. For a moment it almost appeared as if she didn't recognize him; she was looking at him, but her eyes were still wide, all pupils now, and while she was seeing him she was looking at him in terror. But then as suddenly as the expression came upon her face, she had seemed to gain control of herself and she collapsed into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Jack managed to get her into the car and drive them to their motel.

And now she was refusing to speak to him about it. The most she had said were fitful mutters of "I shouldn't have been so foolish!" or "He knew, he knew all along," and "I've felt them calling to me all this time." Jack listened to her and tried to make sense of what she was saying, but couldn't. Quite frankly, he was beginning to fear for her sanity.

He smoked two cigarettes then stepped back in the room. He glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was eight-thirty, still early, and he was far from tired. In fact--

"Jack?"

Carla was awake, her head supported by two pillows, looking up at him. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying and now she sat up slightly, the top sheet slipping down into her lap. She had fallen into bed wearing her clothes, and now as Jack approached the bed he tried to think of something to say to ease her troubled mind. "You okay?"

"No," she said. "But I think I owe you an explanation. Sit down."

Jack sat down at the foot of the bed.

"You probably won't think much of me after I tell you this," Carla said, her voice husky. "But the reason I reacted so strongly the way I did was because of what my mother said."

"Something about your father going to the other side," Jack said; he had developed a theory on that himself while he was outside smoking. Her father was now deceased. Both her parents had been crazy. They had heaped a tremendous amount of psychological torment and probably physical abuse on her as a child, and somehow the phrase 'going to the other side' was the kicker. Maybe it meant death. Maybe they'd had some kind of crazy suicide pact.

Carla nodded. "When my mother told me he had gone, I knew right away. But he's not dead. Not really."

"Excuse me?" Was he hearing this right?

"You've got to understand something about my father, Jack," Carla said. "He was a very dangerous man. Not dangerous in a physical sense. He wasn't a violent criminal, he didn't rob banks or kill people or anything like that. But he was a dangerous man. He messed with things only a crazy man, or perhaps an evil one, would mess with."

Jack stared at her, trying to make sense of it all. Carla looked at him, her composure getting stronger. "The closest I can describe what my father was, was a...a mystic. Or a wizard. He was very deep into the occult. I grew up with it."

"Your dad was a devil worshipper?" Jack asked.

"Satanism was child's play to my father," Carla said. "What my father was into was beyond Satanism. It was...it was about going further back, to the outer reaches of time and space, to a time before our very being, to a time before the earth was even formed."

"I don't think I'm following you," Jack said, shaking his head.

If Carla heard him she didn't indicate that she had. "I grew up with it. It was all I knew for years. I thought it was normal. My mother knew about it, but I never realized my mother was into it the way my father was. Mom cleaned house, sent me to school, made sure I had clothes, made sure we had food. My father worked. When he came home he shut himself in his rooms in the attic and dabbled."

"What did he dabble in if he wasn't a devil worshipper?"

Carla was silent for a moment, as if thinking of how to continue. "When I was younger and I asked my mother what daddy was doing, she would tell me he was studying. One time I got the nerve to peak into his room. It...even then, it was creepy. There were desks and lots of old books and papers all over. He had a skull, a human skull, on the table, and there were all kinds of papers tacked on the walls with weird shapes drawn on them. There were other weird shapes drawn on the floor in chalk. Weird symmetrical shapes, circles over triangles and stars, shapes that I can't even describe. I didn't understand any of it at first, and what I saw scared me. In fact, it was almost ten years later before I saw that room again..

"Sometimes I would lie awake at night trying to fall asleep while my father was deep into his studies. Sometimes I heard him in there, saying something in a weird language. Sometimes it sounded like he was...praying."

Jack shivered. Christ, even he was getting a little spooked by all this.

"Sometimes I heard other things." She looked down at the bed, as if afraid to continue. "One time I heard him speaking that weird language and...I could swear...I heard a second voice, as if it was answering him."

"What was it saying?" Thinking of what it was like for Carla as a little girl in that big dreary house, going through what she was describing to him, was giving him a severe case of the willies.

"Nothing you would recognize as what we know as language," Carla said, her eyes wide. "But then...it was a language in a sense. A language far older than the world itself."

This was getting too much. "I don't think I'm following you, Carla," Jack said. "What the hell do you mean by 'far older than the world itself'? There's no such fucking thing."

Carla stared at him for a moment. "If you only knew," she said. "There are things out there...just waiting to gain their foothold on our world. They can't wait to enter our world and tear us to pieces. We're beneath them. They were here long before earth was inhabitable to the creatures that live here now. And for some reason they...they lost their foothold here. They were banished to another dimension. And...somehow...my father found out about them through studying obscure texts he managed to track down in obscure parts of the world when he was in the military. He began to...communicate with them. He...he made them an offer...and they accepted!"

"What the fuck are you talking about!" Jack tried to sound angry, but he was also beginning to be a little afraid, too.

Carla ignored him. "One afternoon when I was sixteen years old I came home and I saw that what he had been doing the night before had worked." The huskiness returned to her voice. "He had been involved in something intense in his rooms. He had been praying again, chanting to something, and a few times I heard him refer to it by name--he called it a...a...it's hard to pronounce. And then I heard this sound, like the blowing of the wind. It was like there was a hurricane outside, the wind blowing the trees hard in a sudden gust. It was so windy I actually went to my window and looked outside." She looked at him, deadpan. "But there was nothing. The wind wasn't blowing at all. But I could hear it, howling and moaning around the house as my father's prayers and incantations grew worse.

"When it was over there was silence for perhaps five minutes. Then I smelled this horrible smell, like...garbage or something. Or shit. It was awful. And then I heard a voice that sounded like a thousand bullfrogs croaking together at the same time in the stillness of a swamp. It had a voice and it told something to my father in that croaking voice and my father answered it..." Carla's voice began to hitch. "He answered in that same, droning, croaking voice!"

She paused a beat before continuing; Jack could feel his pulse quicken as his belly turned to ice. "I pulled the covers over my head and huddled there, so afraid. I couldn't sleep. I was awake all night and when I got up to go to school I tried to pretend that I didn't hear what had gone on. I came home from school through the back way behind the house and I saw it. Whatever daddy had called had pulled itself through the woods behind the house and left a ten-foot wide swath of dead vegetation in its path. It went deep into the woods, as far as I could see, and it left a slimy, smelly residue. And...as I followed its tracks from where it started I saw that it had set off on its path from our house. The entire west wall of the house all the way up to the attack was coated in that shit. It had crawled out of our attic!

"That night my father actually joined us at the dinner table for the first time in months. He looked insane. He kept...trying to put his arm around me, trying to...be the father he never was to me. And he kept saying that he had summoned it and that it was going to come back for the three of us. That it was going to take all of us to the Other Side. And that the dimensions would be turned inside out, allowing them free reign into our world.

"That was the last night I ever spent in that house. The next morning I took the hundred and seventy-two dollars I had saved in my bank, and a change of clothes and my toothbrush and stuff, and packed them into my book-bag. I didn't even go to school that morning, just hitched a ride into Philly and bought a one-way bus ticket to as far as I could go."

"How far was that?"

"St. Louis, Missouri, at first. I got a job waitressing and lived in a motel for awhile. I was gonna stay, but I felt that was too close to Pennsylvania. I saved up two hundred bucks and bought a bus ticket to California a few weeks later. I've been there ever since."

Jack thought about this as he sat on the mattress. It was a warm muggy night and the air conditioning was on low, cooling the room nicely. "So, I take it you got to California and met your husband and everything was hunky dory after that, right?"

Carla looked at him with something that resembled shame. "You think I'm crazy."

"No. I don't think you're crazy. But I think your mother is pretty off her rocker. I mean, just look at her -- "

"You don't know her the way I do."

"She's a fuckin' nut!" Jack snapped. "Jesus Christ, she's fed you this shit since you were a kid, Carla! Can't you see that? She probably made the shit up when you were little to keep you in line and you bought it hook, line, and sinker. There's no such thing as what you're talking about, things beyond time and space and all that bullshit. What the fuck is this shit about things coming from..." he sputtered to remember the right description. "...beyond whatever the fuck they're beyond. And all this bullshit about your father offering whatever it was he offered and -- "

"My father offered them the three of us," she said, her features serious. "He offered my family. We were to be the gate to let them regain their foothold in the world."

"Bullshit!" Jack hissed.

"My father was a coward," Carla said, her mouth set in a grimace as she stared at Jack, her brown eyes cold and determined. "He was the kind of person everybody in town pushed around. From what I gather, he must have been that way as a child. He could never stand up for himself. I know that now. He used to tell me that the world was no place for people like us, that it would just chew you up and spit you out. That it was created to hurt you. He fed me this over and over. And I can see how I let this affect me. I got into an abusive marriage, and I'm in an abusive working relationship with Lori. I let people take advantage of me. He was like those two kids that shot up that high school in Colorado -- mad at the world and he was going to make the world pay. Only instead of going on a killing spree, he turned to things even more dangerous. What my father finally did can very well be the end of the world as we know it."

"How can the bullshit your dad was into be the end of the world?" Jack shouted. "The guy was a lunatic! All he did was dabble in a little black magic bullshit that doesn't exist!"

"You aren't listening," Carla said, glaring at Jack. "This isn't just black magic. My father discovered something more ... more real than mere black magic. The Old Ones are real. They once ruled the earth. They're more real than the deities we've created out of our flights of fancy. So real that the select few that have stumbled upon this knowledge have come away with such fear of what would happen if they were to ever break through the barriers that..." She seemed to be at a loss for words. "This is more than just the occult, Jack. It's about harnessing a power that holds the balance between maintaining the earth as we know it, creating the right atmosphere to throw open the gates of chaos. But my father...he found a way to communicate with them, something few men have tried. Most people foolish enough to try have failed with horrible consequences. But not my father. He made a deal with them. He offered himself and his family as sacrifices, what they would need, in order to gain their foothold into our world."

"What, so your old man offed himself and your mom, is that it?" Jack sneered.

"No. They were probably used as...as portals."

Jack threw his hands up in disgust. "What X-Files bullshit!"

Carla ignored him. "Dad was excited that the ritual worked. He said all it would take would be for the three of us to perform the rites he recited to us over dinner that night, and the Old One he summoned would claim his sacrifice. Once the three of us were claimed and in their world, the dimensions would turn inside out. It would have a rippling effect around the world. It would be like the sound of a great storm, with great roar of wind only there really would be no wind -- it would be the sound of the universe tearing and then it would peel back and it would be like a great dark cloud blotting out the sky. Only it wouldn't be the clouds of a storm...it would be the peeling back of the universe."

"Bullshit!" Jack yelled.

Carla was trying hard to hold the tears in, but she wasn't doing a good job of it. For the first time since they had been together, Jack saw how she would look as an old woman. He saw her as the old woman he'd seen early that afternoon, at that old, gray house in the woods. "You don't understand, Jack. You just don't understand!"

"I understand," Jack said, trying to calm his anger down. He scooted toward her and tried to take her in his arms at an attempt at comfort. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. It's just...you've got to understand what you're saying, Carla. Your mother's been living alone for who-knows how long, and -- "

"And my father is gone," Carla cried, drawing away from him. "He's not dead, he's gone! Gone to the other side, and I was supposed to be here! I was supposed to go with him! We all were! We were supposed to never feel pain or despair ever again, and in return for that we were to provide the opening for them to come into our world, so they could take over again." And then she broke down completely, crying uncontrollably. Jack felt helpless; he could only sit beside her on the lumpy bed and make a clumsy attempt at consolation, stroking her back, her brown wavy hair.

After awhile the sobbing eased up. Carla wiped her eyes. "I know it's hard for you to understand. Nobody ever did. That's why we were always shunned when I lived out here. But my father...he was very powerful. He still is very powerful, and...the things he called upon are more powerful than your...comfy little Judeo-Christian world-view. Daddy guided me back here. I can feel it. He helped me come home!"

Jack didn't know what else to say. There was no use in arguing with her. That would just create more problems, and it was something they didn't need now. All he could do was listen and be there for her, to keep the demons at bay.

Eventually she calmed down enough to sink back into bed again. Jack sat up in bed with her, rubbing her shoulders, holding her hand, until she fell asleep.

Jack checked his watch. It was ten-thirty. He was wide-awake and far from tired.

He waited until Carla went into a deep sleep. Then, when he was certain that she wasn't going to wake up again, he let himself out quietly and sat outside and smoked and thought about the things she had told him.

# # #

It was the longest night Jack Thomas had had in a long time.

He couldn't sleep. No matter what position he lay in, he just couldn't fall asleep. He had returned to the room at midnight, stripped down to his boxers, and slipped into bed beside Carla, who lay snoring on her back. He'd tried to fall asleep to no avail. He just couldn't sleep, and it wasn't Carla's snoring that kept him awake. It was his mind, which just couldn't get the story she'd told him out of his head.

At some point he must have dozed. He lay in bed until six a.m. and when he knew he wasn't going to get any more sleep, he got up and went to the bathroom. He urinated, flushed the toilet, then brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He checked on Carla, saw that she was still fast asleep, then he changed quickly. He let himself out quietly. He was hungry, but he had more on his mind than food. He wanted to prove Carla wrong, show her that her mother was nothing more than a senile, crazy old woman who belonged in a hospice, or better yet, a state run mental hospital.

He climbed in the rental car and, using the map as guidance, he drove back to the house where Carla had grown up.

He got lost three times on the drive over. All those back roads looked the same and the trees hung over the road, stretching out branches that looked skeletal even in the bright bloom of summer. After forty minutes of driving he finally found it. He recognized the landscape as he drove up the heavily wooded terrain, heading into the deep woods of the mountains.

When he rounded the curve that led to the house he leaned forward and squinted. The house was there all right, but it looked a little more decrepit than it had looked yesterday. Of course the morning sun was hitting the structure at a different angle now, bathing it in more light. When they had come by yesterday, it had been in the long shadows of late afternoon. Jack pulled to the side of the road and got out of the car.

As weathered and beaten-up as the house was yesterday, it definitely looked more jacked-up now. The driveway was still bare and empty. As he walked up the crumbling walkway, Jack noticed the weeds that were sprouting everywhere; poking through cracks in the concrete porch; climbing up the trellis. When he knocked on the door he was startled at how flimsy it felt, as if it was going to fall apart at the slightest hint of strength.

He waited for a moment, listening for any sign of life from within. He knocked again, suddenly getting the feeling that whatever was in that house was as dead as the grounds outside.

His heart was pounding in his chest; he felt light-headed with nervous tension. He gripped the doorknob and turned it. It opened and he stepped inside.

The first thing he noticed was the strong, pervading odor of mold and rot as he stepped within the crumbling structure. A plume of dust swirled in front of him, clogging his nostrils. He coughed, blinking in the darkness as he tried to peer inside. "Hello? Mrs. Beck?"

His voice echoed back. "Beck...Beck....Be...Be..."

He stepped into the living room. It was in shambles; broken furniture leaning against the sagging walls, the carpet torn up. Jack saw an end table and touched it; it was thick with dust. He sneezed suddenly, and the force of the sneeze expelled the dust, swirling it into a cloud. This made him sneeze again, and he backed out of the living room, trying to control his sneezes.

With rising trepidation, he stepped further into the house. It was gloomier, dustier, than it had been when he and Carla had experienced it yesterday. He stopped at the stairway that led to the second floor, one hand on the crumbling banister, and debated on whether he should venture upstairs. The house was silent; it felt like there was nobody in the house except for him.

"Mrs. Beck?" he called. "Anybody home?"

When the echoes died he put one foot on the bottom step. The wood creaked. He could tell that the minute he put all his weight on the stair that it would collapse. He tried the next step. It seemed sturdier. Carefully, testing each step as he went along, he made his way to the second floor.

He inspected every room on the second floor. Each room was empty and filled with dust. Some rooms, like what looked to be the master bedroom, bore crumbling, bare furniture, long since reduced to rot from disuse. The windows were closed, faint light filtering through dirty, filmy curtains. Jack didn't even think of trying to flip on a light. Somehow, he had a feeling that there would be no electrical power in the place.

He climbed the narrow stairway to the attic, feeling nervous as he entered. The attic room was large and, with the exception of a huge desk that took up most of one wall, completely bare. He approached the desk slowly. This was probably Carla's father's study, where he had come to work on his supposed black magic. Jack took in the room, checking it out carefully. There were no books, no papers, no crude occult symbols drawn on the floor or the walls. There was no sign that this had been the ritual chamber of a black magician. Aside from the strong odor of rot -- stronger here in this room for some reason -- there was nothing out-of-the-ordinary.

What the hell is going on? he thought, heading back downstairs to the living room, the odor of mold and dust everywhere. It was as if the place had been unoccupied for years. But how could it be? We were here yesterday! I saw Carla's mother with my own eyes!

His eyes tracked down the hall to the front door, and when he saw what was on the floor his heart skipped a beat.

There were three sets of footprints in the dust. There was his set from today going from the front door to the rest of the house and up the stairs. The other two pairs were his familiar tread again from the day before, and Carla's. They went from the front door to the den, the only two rooms they had entered in the house yesterday.

There were no visible tracks of a fourth person.

This can't be right, Jack thought. He skirted around the footprints, grasped the doorknob and let himself out.

He was almost to his car when a boy of about ten years old rode by on his bike. Upon seeing Jack exiting the house, the boy stopped and looked up at him with surprise. "Hey Mister! Did you just come out of that house?"

Jack stopped at the car, still trying to find a logical explanation for what he had found in the house. "Yeah," he said, fumbling with his keys.

"Why would you want to go in there?" the kid asked. He was freckled, with brown hair, wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a striped shirt. "That place has been abandoned for years."

"Abandoned?"

"Yeah," the kid said, snapping a wad of chewing gum. "It's supposed to be haunted, too. Some crazy old lady died in there a long time ago. At least that's what my older brother and his friends say."

"What else do they say?" Jack said, the door to the car open now.

The kid shrugged. "Just that nobody goes in there because the people that lived there used to be witches 'n stuff and did things. And now it's haunted. Nobody goes there now." Then, as if he had made his point, the kid pedaled away.

Jack watched him go, then turned back toward the house. Then who the hell did we talk to? Who was that old woman that claimed to be Carla's mother?

Jack drove off, these questions chasing him all the way back to the motel.

# # #

When he returned to the motel, he didn't tell Carla what he had found in the house. He had thought about telling her on the drive over, and decided that if he did that she would really freak out. As it turned out, she had almost done so anyway. "I woke up this morning thinking you were gone," she said, pacing the small room. At some point while he was gone she had showered and changed into fresh clothing. Her hair was freshly brushed, gleaming on her shoulders. "I thought that they had...come and gotten you or something."

"No way that's happening," Jack said, mustering a grin.

Carla lit a cigarette. She looked at him. "I did get to do some thinking, though. I don't know what I was thinking when I went back there."

"It's okay," Jack said. He lit a cigarette, too. "You needed to go home to realize this."

"Maybe." Carla thought about this, smoking silently. "I don't know. I know that...everything that happened to me was so real, though."

"But it's not. They manipulated you into believing that."

Carla sighed, took another drag. Now she didn't look too sure. "I don't know what to believe."

"I think we should leave," Jack said. He moved toward his duffel bag at the foot of their bed. It was time to turn this shit around and get her mind off of this.

Carla broke down. She buried her face in her hands, heaving sobs that shook her shoulders.

"Hey," Jack said, feeling like an idiot now. "Listen, everything will be fine. We'll get out of here and -- "

"What do I have to go back to?" she cried, looking at him through tear-filled eyes. "A piece of shit job where everybody pushes me around and takes advantage of me, no friends. I've got a crappy life, and...I've got nobody back home!"

"That's not true," Jack said. "You have me."

Carla sniffled. "That's sweet." She reached out and touched his face gently. "Really, it is. But face it. I'm so much older than you." She held back a sob and at that moment she was so beautiful to Jack, so beautiful that he just wanted to take her in his arms and shield her from the world. "You don't want to be with a crazy old woman like me."

"You're not old," Jack quickly said, but he silently agreed with her. True, she wasn't that old, even though she had fifteen years on him. But she was crazy. Maybe not in the clinical sense, but she did have her problems. And he couldn't deal with them. Still, he cared about her. "Listen," he said, taking her shoulders, trying to calm her down and divert her attention to something else. "Why don't we go out for a little bit. We won't go back to the house. We won't even talk about what happened. Our plane doesn't leave till tomorrow; let's use this day and have fun. Let's drive around, explore, have a picnic in the woods or something. We can even find another place to stay tonight. Somewhere more romantic." He kissed her, smiling. "C'mon, it'll be fun."

She nodded and mustered a smile. "Okay," she said, wiping a tear that had trickled down her cheek. "Okay." Jack didn't know if she was agreeing to appease him, or if she really meant it.

They checked out of the motel, packed their stuff in the trunk, then climbed in the car and started driving. Carla told him to drive south, toward Berks County. It was closer to Philadelphia and maybe they could find a little bed-and-breakfast place. They drove on twisting turning roads until they found a two-story house with a large wrap-around porch. The sign in the yard advertised it as a bed-and-breakfast. Jack pulled up and they checked in for the evening. Jack felt better as he hauled their overnight bags to their rooms. He was determined to have a good time with her this last night in Pennsylvania. He was determined to keep her mind off of her parents.

They spent the rest of the day taking a hike through the area, stopping to browse at an antique store. They had a late lunch at a little roadside cafe, then took a long walk back to the bed-and-breakfast. Once back in their room, they showered and changed into some clean clothes, then lounged on the bed, the television turned to the evening news. Carla was quiet all evening as they watched TV, and Jack could tell her mood had changed for the worst. She was probably thinking about what had happened last night. Twice he thought about telling her about his encounter at the house this morning, then wisely vetoed it. As evening fell he put his hand on her shoulder. "Hey," he said. "You okay?"

She turned to him and he saw that she had started crying again. "No," she said, shaking her head.

Jack took her in her arms.

He held her for a couple of minutes, trying to soak up her sorrow. He kissed her softly, holding her, and in time she responded to his attempts at keeping her demons at bay. She returned his kisses, and when they fell back on the bed it was with all the passion that they had shared in the early weeks of their relationship. When Jack made love to her she cried out again, this time, it seemed, as if she were bidding goodbye to him for the last time.

She climbed out of bed, her back to him. "I've made my decision," she said.

"What decision?"

Carla didn't look at him. She kept her gaze averted to the window, gazing out at the moon-filled night. "I know that what happened at the house yesterday was a sign. They're waiting for me. I know what to do. I'm sorry Jack. I'm sorry you can't understand, and I'm sorry...that I have to leave you. But it's the only way."

Jack was about to protest again when she got down on her knees as if she were going to pray. She raised her arms up and began singing, her voice high and musical yet weirdly fluting, as if the notes she were singing were coming from some deep place in her soul. Jack watched in numbed surprise and confusion. Christ, she's really lost her mind, he thought.

He couldn't tell what she was singing. The words weren't any he had ever heard before. They were guttural, primitive sounding. They floated and rode in crescendos, like the music coming from a flute. It was a steady stream, in a language Jack didn't recognize. She's making the shit up. She's fucking crazy, she's just spouting gibberish.

The wind picked up outside, suddenly looming louder than Carla's singing. This only made Carla sing louder, and Jack could now see that her eyes were closed, face tilted to the heavens. It sounded like there was a hurricane going on outside; the wind howled mercilessly, the trees whipping violently, and he could feel and hear the house buckle under the strong gusts. A strong smell of excrement burst suddenly in the room and Jack fell back against the headboard, gagging. Carla was smiling now, her singing growing more urgently, as if she were encouraging whatever it was that was happening. The wind outside grew stronger and the building shook more, this time not from the wind but from a deep rumbling that seemed to burst forth from deep in the ground. Its shaking tumbled him off the bed.

There was a sudden flash of light, and an explosion knocked him against the wall. Something that looked like a hovering transparent mass of protoplasm with hundreds of writhing snakes attached to it hovered over Carla as she reached up with eager hands to embrace it. It made a sound like the croaking of a thousand bullfrogs, and the last thing Jack heard before he blacked out was Carla answering it in that same croaking bullfrog voice.

# # #

"I'm telling you, there was no storm last night!" The proprietress exclaimed as she stood behind the counter the next morning. Jack was in the lobby, his hair standing up in wild corkscrews, feeling haggard and worn. Contrary to what he heard last night, it was a bright and sunny day outside, without a hint that the region had been hit with a sudden, violent storm. "It was a perfectly peaceful night except for you and your girlfriend making all that racket."

"There wasn't a storm, or an earthquake?" Jack asked, his voice rising in falsetto. "I can't believe you didn't feel it. It shook the whole building."

"There was nothing!" the proprietress snapped, her gaze fixed steadily on his. "Now I suggest you and your lady friend check out now."

"She's gone," Jack said, his mind still fumbling with what had happened. Carla's strange singing, the sudden wind and thunder from the ground that knocked him out of bed, the sudden explosion, the bullfrog voice, that thing he saw before he blacked out. And then coming awake this morning on the floor with a nasty bump on his head, seeing Carla gone, her clothes scattered on the floor. "It took her. It came out of the sky and took her."

"If you aren't out of here in five minutes I'm calling the police!" the proprietress warned.

There was nothing else Jack could do. He wandered back up to his room and began gathering their things up. Maybe Carla had climbed out of the window last night. He would check. He packed their things together then headed downstairs, spending only a minute at the front desk to pay the bill, the proprietress giving him the evil eye the whole time. When he put their stuff in the car his mind raced with his next step. Before he left he would go behind the house and see if he could find anything in the back. Maybe she had torn a piece of clothing in her mad haste to escape to whatever it was she was escaping from. He didn't give a fuck if the proprietress called the police. He needed the police anyway to help him look for Carla.

The proprietress was standing on the porch, watching him. When he started trudging to the side of the house she darted inside.

Fuck her, he thought as he made his way around the side of the house to the rear, where their room overlooked. Let her call the fucking cops.

He reached the rear of the house and looked up at their window and stood there, his mouth agape in shock and horror. He stood there for a full minute, not even hearing the proprietress call out in her shrill voice "I've called the police! They'll be here any minute!" He simply stood there and looked up at the window, then looked at the wall of the home and the ground, letting his gaze trail down the rear of the property, then back up the wall of the house again.

There was a path from the woods that travelled all the way up the wall of the house to their second floor window, and it was coated with a grayish-green slime.

Just then the sky suddenly turned dark, and the sound of a great wind rose. And as Jack turned to look up at the sky for the source of the storm, he realized that the wind wasn't blowing, and the dark shape wasn't a cloud.