Alabaster

"The first time Sinethella brought this box to me, first time she opened it and let me have a peek inside, I thought that I would surely die. I thought my heart would burst."

There are no more monsters left in the world, the angel would say to her as they flew across the land, east towards the sea. You don't have to be afraid anymore. You can rest now, Dancy.

"She read me a poem, before she let me look inside," the Gynander says. "I never was much for poetry, but I still remember this one. Hell, I'll remember this one till the day I die."

She would ask her angel about the box, and he would tell her not to worry. The box was destroyed. Or lost in the swamp in some pool so deep only the catfish will ever see it. Or locked away forever in the inviolable vaults of Heaven.

"But from my grave across my brow," the Gynander whispers, "plays no wind of healing now, and fire and ice within me fight, beneath the suffocating night."

Open your eyes, Dancy, the angel says, and she does, not afraid of falling anymore, and the Gynander opens the box sitting on her chest. Far, far away, there's a sound like women crying, and the ebony and scarlet light that spills from the cedar box wraps Dancy tight in its searing, squirming tendrils, and slowly, bit by bit, drags her away.

Dancy walked through the long dark tu

Too late, she thought. It knows I'm coming now, realising that the forest around her had gone completely quiet, not one insect or amphibian voice, no twilight birdsongs left to break the sudden silence.

Reluctantly, she held a hand out, penetrating the frigid curtain of air again, a cold that could burn, that could freeze living flesh to stone; she drew a deep breath and stepped quickly through it.

Beyond the vines, the blue house trailer was sitting there alone in a small weedy clearing, just like she'd seen it in her dreams, just exactly the way the angel had shown it to her. Light spilled from the windows and the door standing wide open like a welcome sign-Come on in, I've been waiting for you, Dancy Flammarion.

She set her duffel bag down on the ground and looked first at her knife and then back to the blue trailer. Even the shimmering, mewling things she'd faced back in Bainbridge, even they were afraid of this haunted place, something so terrible inside those aluminum walls that even boogeymen and goblins were afraid to whisper its name. Dancy glanced up at the summer sky, hoping the angel might be there, watching over her, but there were only a few dim and disinterested stars.

Well, what are you waiting on? the trailer seemed to whisper.

"Nothing," she said. "I'm not waiting on anything."

She walked past the three refrigerators, the burned-out carcass of the old Ford pickup, and climbed the cinder-block steps to stand in the open doorway. For a moment, the light was so bright that she thought it might blind her, might shine straight into her head and burn her brain away, and Dancy squinted through the tears streaming from the corners of her eyes. Then the light seemed to ebb, dimming enough that she could make out the shoddy confusion of furniture crammed into the trailer: a sofa missing all its cushions, a recliner the color of Spanish moss, and a coffee table buried beneath dirty plates, magazines, chicken bones, beer cans, and overflowing ashtrays. A woman in a yellow raincoat was sitting in the recliner, watching Dancy and smiling. Her eyes were very green and pupilless, a statue's jade-carved eyes, and her shaggy black hair fell about her round face in tangled curls.

"Hello there, Dancy," she said. "We were begi

"Who are you?" Dancy asked, confused, and raised her knife so she was sure the woman could see it. "You're not supposed to be here. No one's supposed to be here but-"

"I'm not? Well, someone should have told me."

The woman stood up, slipping gracefully, slowly, from the grey recliner, her bare feet on the linoleum floor, and Dancy could see she wasn't wearing anything under the coat.

"Not exactly what you were expecting, am I?" she said, sounding pleased with herself, and took a single step towards Dancy. Beneath the bright trailer lights, her bare olive skin glinted wetly, skin as smooth and perfect as oil on deep, still water, and "Stop," Dancy warned her and jabbed the knife at the air between herself and the woman.

"No one here wants to hurt you," she said and smiled wider so that Dancy could see her long sharp teeth.

"I didn't come for you," Dancy said, trying hard to hide the tremble in her voice, because she knew the woman wanted her to be afraid. "I don't even know who you are."

"But I know who you are, Dancy. News travels fast these days. I know all about what you did in Bainbridge, and I know what you came here to do tonight."

"Don't make me hurt you, too."

"No one has to get hurt. Put the knife down, and we can talk."

"You're just here to distract me, so it can run, so it can escape, and then I'll have to find it all over again."

The woman nodded and looked up at the low ceiling of the trailer, her green eyes staring directly into the flood of white light pouring down into the tiny room.

"You have a hole inside you," she said, her smile begi

"That's not true," Dancy whispered.

"Yes, it is. You've lost everything, haven't you? There's nothing left in the world that you love and nothing that loves you."

And Dancy almost turned and ran, then, back down the cinder-block steps into the arms of the night, not prepared for this strange woman and her strange, sad voice, the secret things she had no right to know or ever say out loud. Not fair, the angel leaving this part out, not fair, when she's always done everything he asked of her.

"You think that he loves you?" the woman asked. "He doesn't. Angels love no one but themselves. They're bitter, selfish things, every one of them."

"Shut up."

"But it's the truth, dear. Cross my heart. Angels are nothing but spiteful-"

"I said to shut up."

The woman narrowed her eyes, still staring up at the ceiling, peering into the light reflecting off her glossy skin.

"You've become their willing puppet, their doll," she sighed. "And, like the man said, they have made your life no more than a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Nothing whatsoever."

Dancy gripped the carving knife and took a hesitant step towards the woman.

"You're a liar," she said. "You don't have any idea what you're talking about."

"Oh, but I do," the woman replied, lowering her head and turning to gaze at Dancy with those startling, unreal eyes. "I know so very many things. I can show you, if you want to see. I can show you the faces of God, the moment you will die, the dark places behind the stars," and she shrugged off the yellow raincoat, and it slipped to the linoleum floor.