"No, but I feel terrible; after all, it's because of me that you have to go into town."
"It's all right. I'll pick up some supplies while I'm there."
"Oh, and the journals?"
"I'll leave one on top of the desk in the study."
A contented Megan strolled back to the house, with Carl behind her examining the texture and fall of her red, curly tresses.
Carl left Megan bouncing about in the kitchen, preparing her brunch. He had left one of his early journals on his desk. It was thick and should entertain her until he got back.
After pushing the boat into the water and hopping in, he checked his wristwatch. Just enough time to make it to the hardware store. As he rowed down the river, he thought of Beverly. How was she? he wondered. He had buried her drawing deep, but he knew the rate of decay varied with each person. Carl had been unable to judge from the drawing the night before, because he had never dug up any of the previous coffins.
When a hint of the yellow and white house could be seen beyond the trees, Carl moved his boat inland without thinking. It was as if the green-grass-covered earth were a magnet and the shell of his boat were iron instead of wood.
He slipped his shoes off and rolled up the trouser legs, then stepped into the water, dragging the boat next to him. Carl let go of the boat once they both were firmly on land. Not bothering to roll down his trousers or to put on his shoes, Carl set out toward the house.
As soon as he entered the back garden, the hyacinth smell encircled him. This time the flowers were real, and he did not feel the same repulsion that he had experienced back at his home. Smiling, he fingered one of the blue-purple flowers while thinking how harmless they were. Perhaps he should pick a few and bring them back to Megan. She would like that. Megan wasn't so bad when she wasn't getting into mischief. Certainly she had the womanly charms that he enjoyed, even if the child in her sometimes angered him.
Carl heard a click and knew it was the French doors being opened behind him. He had almost emptied his mind of Beverly with the fresh sparkle of Megan's youth. There was a rasping noise that sounded almost like a cough. When he heard it again, he realized that it had not been a cough but his own name being wheezed out from someone's chest. His hand circled the flower, slowly squeezing it in his fist. His wrist made a quick snapping movement, and the crushed flower was free of its stem. Again, the sound pressed into the warm afternoon air, forcing him to hear the wave of pain that it carded. The tight fist opened and he looked at the flower he had destroyed, permanently useless as a beautiful object of nature. But it could fertilize the earth and give life to other plants. Carl sprinkled the petals onto the ground. Most of them settled across his bare toes.
Again, the air seemed heavy with the wilted cry that he could barely recognize as his own name. Why had she not come to him? What was her purpose in beckoning him? There was no salvation for her now; he was sure she was too far gone. He thought of turning back to the side gate and exiting the garden without acknowledging her plea. Yes, it was a plea. Even with the distortion in her voice, he could tell it was a cry out to him. What for? Did she simply want to remind him of what he had left behind in this house? Well, she did that every second of the day, whether she knew it or not.
"What is it, Beverly?" he asked without moving his head.
The only reply was that twisted sound echoing out of a decaying hole that once was a mouth.
"I can't stay with you, Beverly. There are errands I must run in town. I merely stopped by . . ." He hesitated. Why had he returned now to this house? "On impulse," he stated without lying.
Again, the terrible pressure of his name being pushed forward through the heat of the sun's rays.
He turned. It was still Beverly. Remnants of her beauty lasted in the aura circling her form. Her breasts, though, hung low over a bloated stomach. The abdomen was distended, and her sex was lost among loose flesh. The once-slender legs were now scrawny with purple splotches dotting what was left of her skin. There were tears in the flesh covering her limbs. A muscle protruded across her right forearm, and he watched the muscle weakly flex as she raised her hand to him. His stare traveled up to her face. The eye sockets loosely held her dark pupils; the bridge of her nose seemed flattened, the lips swollen but retracted over teeth that protruded from recessed gums. He watched her tongue move as she pronounced his name over and over.
Mesmerized, Carl moved closer to Beverly. The stink of her body made him pause as he squinted against the invisible sulfurous air. Still he saw her, not as his corpse but as his loving Beverly, who would greet his desires with the fulsomeness of her spirit. Her tongue called out his name, drawing him closer. Blocking his senses, his mind guided his body forward toward her outstretched arms.
As he crossed the threshold and moved into her bedroom, Carl felt her fingers touching the back of his head, mingling those craggy appendages with his silken, silvery gold hair.
"Caaarl," the voice called, and he heard the deep intake of air that whistled through her larynx.
He moved with her as she pulled him back to the bed. When she let herself fall backward on top of the bare mattress, he followed. No, he couldn't break the hold death and life had over him.
He lowered his mouth upon the gaping hole through which she wheezed and smelled the sourness of her breath. Their tongues met, hers parched, his wet with anticipation. His torso rested against the blubber under him and his hands searched the flaccid breasts as if for mother's milk.
His spine tingled as she drew her nails across the back of his cotton shirt. He felt her hands disappear between their bodies and he lifted up enough to allow them to undo his trousers. He was tasting his own death and was ready to enter it safely, securely, without the permanency he feared.
The miasma of Beverly's body seduced Carl, whose rigid manhood lasciviously sought entrance into her decomposing temple.
Carl felt the jolt of her body beneath him. She tried to pull her mouth away from his, stealing the thrill that once had been within his grasp. No! his mind cried as he held on tightly, managing to slide into her feminine orifice. His foreskin chafed against her walls, which with the continuous massaging motion broke down into a silky, bloody sludge, titillating his passion.
"Take my life, take my seed," he cried out as he spilled his molten sperm inside her.
17 - A Bouquet of Hyacinths
Megan slathered whipped cream over her golden waffles, then dropped five or six strawberries randomly on top, adding a quick dollop of cream as a finale. This was far better than what she had planned for that afternoon's meal.
After carrying the plate to the table, Megan left the kitchen to retrieve Carl's journal from the study. There it was, sitting on top of a dark-green blotter. When she picked up the book, her glance casually took in what appeared to be a rough draft of a profile on the right upper corner of the green felt. Not very good, she mused. Nothing like the work contained in the sketch pads. Good try, Carl, but no go. Megan chuckled and returned to the kitchen. She propped the book up against an empty cookie jar. Her behind plopped down upon the wooden slats of the chair.
She noticed that the cover of the journal was a tad weathered, with old water stains dripping down the edges. It must have gotten caught in the rain once or twice, she thought. Carefully she lifted the hard cover, then rested it gently back against the glass container. The handwriting could be described as neat scrawl. Not a single letter strayed below or above its proper space; however, the rounded letters sometimes took on messy loops and lines.
"I'm going to have to get used to your handwriting before I can seriously sit down and read this stuff."
Using her utensils, Megan began chomping into her food. Heaven, she thought, as sugary clouds of cream collided with a ripe burst of strawberry.
Again, her eyes passed over the first page of the journal, and she realized she was looking at dates and names of people and places, along with what seemed to be temperatures. No doubt this was some sort of index Carl had
used so that he could locate data easily.
She recognized none of the people's names, or the places except for Rio de Janeiro. I guess I'm a dunce when it comes to geography, she admitted.
By the time she had finished her meal, she was able to decipher most of Carl's script.
Maybe it was because her penmanship was not the best either; still, she was glad that she would be able to read it through without having to question Carl about whether something was an a or an o.
Megan washed the plates she had used and quickly ran a sponge across the table, being careful not to touch the journal, although she imagined that Carl would never notice another water stain among the conglomeration already there.
So now where should she go to read? There was Carl's study, but even during daylight it seemed to be dingy there. The bedroom was off-limits. She always fell asleep reading in bed, and somehow the kitchen didn't seem appropriate.
After picking up the book, Megan moved to the living room, where she still didn't feel comfortable. She tried the Afghan-covered couch, but felt round springs poke into her derriere. Sliding down onto the faded silk rug, Megan leaned her back against the couch, bent her knees, and rested the journal against her upper thighs. She opened the book and leafed through the pages, trying to gauge how long it would take to finish it.
Slowly a ray of sunlight coming from the window moved across her hand. Megan looked up at the window and decided that she should be outdoors. Immediately she made for the front door and fresh air.
As she rambled down the path toward the river, she caught the scent of hyacinths and decided to scout around for the flower.
Once off the trail, Megan squinted into the sun, trying to detect the hyacinths, which by the aroma had to be nearby. None was to be seen, and she would have kept on wandering if she hadn't tripped on several splintered wooden sticks. She caught herself, but it didn't save her from her own chastisement.
"There I go again. Just when one booboo is healing, I'm ready to replace it with another."
When she looked down, she saw a rectangular mound, something like what she had seen in the cemetery shortly after her father had been buried.
Megan, get a grip. Do you think Carl buried his hyacinth woman out here? Besides, he's already told you that she left with a model. She shook her head, as if that would shake the idea from her mind.
Her eyes searched the landscape but could see only old, dead foliage from some flowers, although there didn't appear to be any flowering plants in the vicinity. Megan shrugged and moved away, hoping to locate the hyacinths. The odor of the flowers became vague as she moved. She decided to retrace her steps.
As she returned to the earthen mound, she noticed the fragrance was at its peak. The dead flowers nearby didn't resemble hyacinths, and, besides, she reasoned, they were dead and couldn't emit that sweet odor.
Without thinking, Megan stood on top of the mound where the smell of hyacinths was most intense. Suddenly she sensed that the soil beneath her feet was liquefying. Quickly she leaped to the side, turning to look back once her feet were back on solid earth.
For a second the soil seemed to be breathing, inhaling and exhaling in a heavy, hushed panting. Then it was still.
''How can soil breathe?" Megan grumbled. Could there have been a mild earthquake, one that affected only a single plot of earth? No way! Was it possible for someone to hallucinate after having had too much sleep, the same as when you had too little? she wondered.
Megan paced the length and width of the mound, staring at it, defying it to move again. The grass grew tall around the plot. She hated thinking of it in terms of a plot, but that was what it appeared to be. Carl could have buried a favorite pet here, although there was nothing in the house that suggested he had ever had a pet. Besides, his personality didn't mesh with that of a dog or cat owner. Perhaps he had one of those exotic talking parrots from the jungle.
"There's got to be a good reason for this." She sat beside the mound and let her right hand pat it. "It must have been a large pet." She had doubted him before and had made a fool of herself. "Maybe he was digging a well or building a new shed." All improbable, but so was the idea that he had buried a human being here.
Megan scratched away some of the topsoil from the mound, then stopped to pick up one of the splintered sticks lying nearby. After several pokes with the stick, the pockmarked mound looked almost the same. No liquefaction, no feathers from a once-squawking parrot, and no limb pushing up out of the ground. She had read about dead bodies occasionally surfacing if not buried deep enough. But, she told herself, there was no body to rise up here. Yet there was something curious about . . . Megan, read your book and mind your own business, she commanded.
Listening to what she thought was her better judgment, she dropped the stick and flipped open the book. It was as good a place as any to read. There was fresh air mixed with the scent of hyacinth and an oak tree that offered some shade from the afternoon sun. Thus Megan joined Carl's trip down the Amazon in a slender boat, with a guide and two hired laborers.
Initially Megan followed Carl on the laborious land route into the jungle and waited with him for several weeks in a small village until the river swelled from the rains. Later she stopped with him in a village built near the Amazon. There they celebrated his arrival with a chicha drinking session. A few paragraphs later, she learned that the beverage was made of corn and copious amounts of saliva donated by the village virgins in order to bring about fermentation.
At this point, Megan's nose wrinkled.
"Can you believe that! What about hygiene? I know they're virgins, but still, who knows what horrid germs could be lurking in their saliva?" Megan's head turned from the book so that she could look over at the mound. "What am I doing talking to a clump of earth? It smells nice, but I'm certainly not going to get any entertaining conversation back. Oh, Carl, where are you?"
Megan had read enough to be prepared to interrogate the traveler if he ever returned. She forced herself back into deciphering Carl's handwriting and continued to read until she heard some distant splashing.
"Carl," she shouted as she rose to her feet. She ran back to the dirt path with the book grasped tightly in her left hand. Just as she appeared from out of the shrubbery, Carl was turning the near bend and seemed startled by her appearance.
"Megan, were you able to see me from the house?"
"Well, not"
"You must have been wondering when I'd be back."
"As a matter of fact, I was starting to get a"
"For you," he said, bringing a bouquet of hyacinths from behind him. His eyes sparkled, and his face almost appeared unlined from the happiness lighting his expression.
"You went back to the rental house. Did you do some work?" Megan took the flowers, cradling them in her arms.
"I believe I've managed to resolve a problem that existed for me there. And what have you been doing?"
"Besides gorging on waffles, you mean?"
"On you, they look good," he said lewdly.
"Not as many as I had." Beneath the mask of her denial was an invitation to explore her body to find out who was right.
Megan had never heard Carl laugh so freely. What could he have managed to straighten out? It must have been a heavy-duty plumbing problem, she thought. For a split second, Megan glanced back at the mound and thought of asking about it, but it could only ruin the mood, she knew. She took Carl's arm and started back to the house with him.
"The windowpane?"
"I didn't make it into town. I'll go tomorrow or the next day. Luckily, the nights are warm."
"But the scent?"
Carl leaned over and sniffed the budding hyacinths cuddled in her arms. "Lovely, aren't they?"
Panic hit Megan. Could she refuse this man? Would her resolve to keep the relationship platonic be washed away?
18 - Jealousy
She lay with splayed legs across the black and gray quilting of the mattress. Stunned. Resigned. Her bald head lifted sl
ightly to glimpse her own trunk. The wasted flesh looked singed under the passing twilight. She didn't remember looking like this when he had first taken her. On that day, there had been a bright afternoon sun that heated the loins of both lovers.
There was a cackle. She heard it inside her head. A wry kind of sound, the echo of humor mated with malice. She heard it again and felt the fetid air cross her lips. Her head sank back down upon the rough ticking of her bed, of her grave. It should be white satin, she thought, with a splash of red roses circling her body.
A low, gravelly chuckle baited her. It snickered in her ears and vibrated through her lips.
Then she was still again, with only the thin, fading light of day moving in the room. Dwindling sunlight sought out forgotten corners of the room as if attempting to hide from the moon's pale light.
Beverly closed her eyes. She didn't want to watch the sun's slow death.
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