The Big Dark Sky (11)
Here, in this place, the end will begin.
No. The end already has begun. Four are dead and another waits to die.
Having walked the length of the street, Asher returns to the saloon, which is at the heart of the settlement. The weathered walls of time-silvered wood glow softly with reflected moonlight, a gray ghost of a building. Most windows are broken out and boarded over from inside; others are etched by dust, like cataractous eyes.
After finding Zipporah on the second day of April, Asher had spent a month hauling in supplies and weatherproofing the saloon for the coming winter. With thirty-four large tubes of caulking, several rolls of insulation, and a lot of plastic sheeting, he has banished the wind that had enjoyed easy access for decades. He has installed a cast-iron pot-bellied stove to provide heat and used a chain saw to cut a firewood supply from dead trees in the forest.
From the exterior, the saloon looks as it did when he first came upon it. Inside, a spare yet cozy living space is furnished with an armchair and footstool. Two straight-backed chairs stand at a simple plank-top table he constructed himself, where he can sit to take his meals and spend hours every day writing the manifesto that will change the world and bring an end to human history.
Ophelia will be where he left her: sitting on the floor, her hands zip tied in front of her. A padlocked chain around her neck shackles her to a wall stud.
He climbs two steps onto the wide veranda. Approaching the front door, he expects to hear Ophelia weeping softly. Sooner or later, they all weep, the men as well as the women. If ever Asher abducts others who strive to meet their fate with tearless courage, he will employ whatever methods are required to break their resolve. They must not go to their deaths with the illusion that dying means something. He intends for them to understand that they are nothing, that they mean nothing. He needs them to die twice, first to suffer the death of the spirit and only then the death of the body. This is the path that all of humankind must follow in order to ensure that the future envisioned in his manifesto comes to pass.
This Ophelia bitch is not yet weeping.
He opens the door.
7
Most days at dawn, Joanna Chase took a long, brisk walk to clear her mind for a session of writing. Santa Fe was a city with a richness of museums and churches and missions, with much beautiful architecture to distract a fitness enthusiast from the tedium of morning exercise.
That Thursday in August, under a cloudless pale-blue sky, she took a shorter walk than usual, a mere ten minutes to Katherine Ainsley’s house. Even though retired as the general manager of one of the city’s best hotels, Aunt Katherine was always up before first light. Joanna passed under the spreading branches of the thirty-foot juniper that shaded the house, and went around back. Through panes in the kitchen door, she saw Katherine dressed in red silk pajamas and matching robe, sitting at the breakfast table with a bagel, a plate of lox, a pot of tea, and the newspaper.
She knocked and let herself inside, and Katherine said, “If I’d known you’d stop by, I’d have fired up the Keurig and made coffee.”
Joanna loathed tea. She said, “It’s an impromptu visit. I only decided to annoy you en route.”
“Dear, you couldn’t annoy me if you tried. Well, not since you were sixteen. In those early teen years, you could be a pisser.”
Joanna crossed to the coffeemaker. “Gee, I don’t recall that.”
“How convenient. There’s plenty of lox in the fridge. It’s sugar cured, the kind you like.”
Selecting a single-serving vanilla-bean coffee from a drawer full of choices, Joanna said, “I’ll just have caffeine.”
“The dreams again?”
“I went to bed at ten thirty, woke before three.”
“Sleeping alone for a long period is unhealthy. It causes nightmares among other things.”
“Is that the finding of a peer-reviewed Harvard study, Auntie Kat, or just your personal experience?”
“I worry about you, child. You’re alone and lonely.”
“I don’t recall complaining of loneliness.”
“Not directly. But in so many words. In so many, many words. One can be a feminist and still believe life is better with the right man.”
At sixty-six, Katherine was vibrant, attractive—and planning her third wedding. Her first husband, Bernard, walked out on her thirty-five years earlier when her career became more successful than his. He was the wrong man. Harry married Katherine the year that Joanna graduated college; he was a lovely guy, and they enjoyed eleven years together before cancer took him. A year after Harry passed, Katherine met Saul, a second Mr. Right.
Watching the hot coffee drizzle into her mug, Joanna sighed. “Auntie Kat, men my age are different from those in your generation. A lot of them can’t commit to anything but themselves. This coffee machine is more reliable.”
“But no fun to snuggle with.” In sheeny swishes of scarlet silk, Katherine went to the refrigerator, produced more lox, and put it on the table with a plate and utensils. “A bagel? Cream cheese? Salmon does for the female libido what oysters do for men.”
“Not in my experience,” Joanna said as she brought her coffee to the table and sat opposite her aunt.
Putting aside the newspaper, Katherine said, “Did you dream of the grizzly bear again?”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t a nightmare. It didn’t scare me. I picked a bouquet of wildflowers for it.” She stirred coolness into her coffee. “It kills my father, so I give it flowers? What’s with me? Seems sick, doesn’t it?”