She felt the cool air of a stranger’s house on her bare breasts and hips and belly. Through the window she heard some family let out a mindless cheer, barely audible, like the shore roaring in a seashell or something half imagined carried on the wind.

He pointed to the bed, and she walked over to it and sat down. He stood before her, outlined dark in the moonlight. His broad shoulders and narrow waist, his thick thighs and long legs, the strong jaw, the full head of hair. She found where his eyes would be and saw a faint shimmer of white in the darkness. She maintained eye contact with him as she leaned back on his bed, feet still on the floor, and spread her legs for him and felt the cool air of his house kiss her sex. The air caressed her curls and made them unkink. He knelt between her legs.

Everything in her life funneled down to this moment.

She watched as his jaw moved in a way she’d never seen before. He looked up from between her legs and put his hand over the bottom of his face.

“Don’t look,” he said.

“But…,” she said.

“You don’t want to see this,” he said.

She reached out and gently moved his hand away. She wanted to see everything. Their eyes met and it felt like the first honest moment they’d ever shared. Then he dipped his head down, and his face opened all the way, and she saw darkness come crawling from his mouth.

He was right. She didn’t want to see this. She leaned back and looked up at the smooth, white painted ceiling, and his breath tickled her pubic hair and then she felt the worst pain she’d ever experienced. Followed by the greatest pleasure.

CHAPTER 38

“Do you think Patricia’s all right?” Kitty asked, looking in the rearview mirror.

They were parked in Maryellen’s minivan at the far end of the Alhambra Hall parking lot. Maryellen sat in the driver’s seat with Kitty riding shotgun. Mrs. Greene sat in the back.

“She’s fine,” Maryellen said. “You’re fine. I’m fine. Mrs. Greene, are you fine?”

“I’m fine,” Mrs. Greene said.

“We’re all fine,” Maryellen said. “Everyone’s fine.”

Kitty let the silence last a full five seconds this time.

“Except Patricia,” she said.

No one had an answer to that.

“It’s seven,” Mrs. Greene said in the dark. No one moved. “Either Mrs. Campbell has done it by now, or it’s too late.”

Clothes rustled, and the back door thunked open.

“Come on,” she said.

She got out of the minivan and the other two followed. Mrs. Greene took the red-and-white Igloo cooler out of the back, and Kitty carried the Bi-Lo grocery bag. The cooler clanked softly as their tools slid around inside. They wore dark clothes and walked quickly, turning onto Middle Street, preferring to take the risk of someone spotting them walking rather than have an extra car parked outside James Harris’s house for three hours. People in the Old Village had a habit of writing down license plate numbers, after all.

Middle Street was a long, black tunnel leading straight to his house, lined with cars spilling out of driveways. The cold wind tugged at their coats. They put their heads down and forged forward, walking fast beneath the leafless trees and dead palmettos rattling in the wind.

“Have you bought your Christmas presents yet?” Kitty asked.

Mrs. Greene perked up at the mention of Christmas. Maryellen gave Kitty a sideways look.

“I get the big things during the after-Thanksgiving sales,” Kitty said. “But I start planning people’s gifts in August. This year I’ve still got more blanks than I normally do. Honey is easy, she needs a briefcase for job interviews. I mean, it’s not that she needs it but I thought it would be the kind of thing she’d want. And Parish wants a tractor and Horse says we need a new one anyway, so that’s taken care of. Lacy, I’m going to take to Italy as a graduation present next year so she’ll get something small for now and she’s fun to shop for anyhow, and as long as whatever I give Merit is bigger than what I get for Lacy she’s thrilled. But I do not know what to buy for Pony. It’s different to shop for a man, and he’s got this new girl he’s seeing, and I don’t know if I have to get her a present or not. I mean, I want to, but does that make me seem overbearing?”

Maryellen turned to her.

“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked.

“I don’t know!” Kitty said.

“Hush,” Mrs. Greene said, and they passed the last house before James Harris’s and they all fell silent.

The huge white house loomed over them, dark and still. The only light came from the living room window. They stepped off the street into his driveway then sat on the bottom step of his front stairs, took off their shoes, and hid them underneath. With Mrs. Greene leading the way, they stepped onto the cold boards and quietly climbed up to his porch.

He’d left his porch lights off so they were concealed by darkness, but Kitty still looked around nervously, trying to see if anyone was watching them from their windows. A cheer drifted to them on the wind, and they all froze for a moment. Then Kitty put down the paper Bi-Lo bag around the corner of the porch away from the living room light, and Mrs. Greene carefully placed the cooler in the shadows next to it. Kitty pulled an aluminum baseball bat out of the grocery bag and gave the sheathed hunting knife to Maryellen, who didn’t know how to hold it. She decided it was just like a kitchen knife and that made it easier.

“My feet are freezing,” Kitty whispered.

“Shhh,” Mrs. Greene said.

The rushing wind helped hide the sounds they made as Maryellen carefully opened the screen door then tried the door handle while Kitty held the bat down by her leg, just in case. Mrs. Greene stood on Kitty’s other side, holding a hammer.

The door popped open, silently and easily.

They stepped inside fast. The wind wanted to slam the door shut, but Maryellen eased it gently into its frame. They stood in the quiet downstairs hall, listening, worried that the howling wind rushing through the door had alerted James Harris. Nothing moved. All they heard was a piano concerto surging softly from a radio in the living room to their left.

Mrs. Greene pointed to the stairs leading up into darkness, and Kitty took the lead, palms sweating on the rubberized grip of her baseball bat. She held it straight up by her right shoulder and walked sideways, left foot first, right foot coming behind, one carpeted step at a time. Mrs. Greene walked in the middle, Maryellen in the rear. They needed to get him down before she could use the knife.

Every footstep was soft, soundless. Mrs. Greene jumped when a plummy man’s voice started announcing the next selection from WSCI’s Classical Twilight down below them in the living room. Every step took an hour, and any second they expected to hear James Harris’s voice from the top of the dark stairs.

They regrouped in the darkness of the upstairs hall. All around them were closed doors. A CRACK echoed through every room in the house and Maryellen almost screamed before realizing it was the wind shifting the window frames.

The master bedroom doorway stood dark in front of them and from it they heard a soft, wet suckling sound. They crept toward it, until they stood full in the doorway and the bright moonlight showed what lay on the bed.

Patricia lay back, arms flung over her head, a carnal half-smile on her lips, naked, her legs spread, and between them, blocking their view, crouched a shirtless James Harris, back muscles pulsing. His shoulder blades spread and retracted like wings as he fed on Patricia, his head by the join of her thighs, one large hand on her left thigh, gently pushing it open, the other on her stomach, fingers squirming on her pale flesh.

The sheer ravenous hunger of the sight paralyzed them. They could smell it, thick and carnal, filling the cramped room.

Kitty recovered before either of the other two women. She adjusted her grip, took three steps forward, ending with her left foot almost on James Harris’s right ankle, and brought the bat straight off her shoulder, swinging hard in a powerful line drive.

The bat caught him in the side of the head with a metallic TONK, like a sledgehammer hitting stone, and Kitty let go with her lead hand and let the bat come around in a full arc, almost popping Mrs. Greene in the chin. A gout of regurgitated blood pulsed once out of James Harris’s mouth and splattered across Patricia’s pubic hair and belly, but otherwise he kept sucking, uninterrupted.