Alabaster

"Then I guess we'd best get to it," the monster sighs and stands up again. "I got other business this night besides killing you."

All the shadow things suddenly withdraw, pressing themselves flat against the crumbling walls of the church or retreating into the foyer or the exposed rafters. And Dancy Flammarion stands her ground and waits for the monster to make the first move.

XII. PensacolaBeach (December 1982)

Held fast in invisible currents, Julia Flammarion drifts away from Santa Rosa Island towards deeper water. She's almost weightless now, suspended here in the twilight realm between two worlds; above her, the clamorous lands of sunlight and seagulls, and far below her feet, the silent, lightless lands of cold abyssal solitude. There were a long and terrible few seconds of panic when she opened her mouth and the sea rushed past her teeth, forcing its way down her throat, flooding her lungs and stomach. Her head and chest seared with that alien, saltwater fire as her life streamed so easily from between her parted lips, racing back towards the shifting mirror surface, a dancing line of bubbles like the silvery bells of jellyfish. But then the panic passed, because the dead don't need to breathe, and the pain passed, too, and now there's the most perfect peace she's ever known. Dimly, Julia thinks she must be sinking, and more dimly still, she wonders if the angel was right after all and maybe the gloom below her is only the yawning entrance of the burning Catholic hell that awaits all suicides. Not that she ever really doubted it, but it would be nice to learn that it was all bullshit, her mother's god and Jesus on his cross and the angels and all the rest. It would be nice to float a bit longer, neither quite here nor quite there, not dead and not alive, and then her consciousness pulling free at last and nothing to take its place but compassionate oblivion.

She would ask no more of heaven than that.

Julia's eyes flutter open as something that might have been a fish darts quickly past her face.

So, she thinks, at least I'm not alone.

And she's hoping that the fish comes back, that there might even be more than just the one, when a point of blue-white light appears in the murk far below her. Hardly more than a flicker at first, but then the water around her grows suddenly warmer, buoying her upwards as it rises, and the flicker blossoms into a dazzling wheel, so wide she can hardly even see its edges, spi

And then the wheel of light is gone, just as abruptly as it came, but the sea about Julia no longer seems peaceful or merciful or kind. And even half-awake, half-awake at best, she knows without knowing how she knows that something has come out of the wheel. The same way she knew she wasn't alone that first day in the clearing in Shrove Wood, the same way she always knew whenever the angel was about to start talking to her. And the panic returns, much worse than before, because this isn't simply pain or death, this is something unseen rising up towards her, and if there were a patron saint of suicides she'd pray that the unseen thing is only a shark or a barracuda, some great eel or stingray or sawfish, only sharp teeth and snapping jaws to take her apart, to tear her limb from limb and be done with this slow death.

And then she must be more than half-asleep, because the sea has vanished, and Julia Flammarion is walking through the Wood on a su

Somewhere nearby, a crow calls out hoarsely, and the girl looks up. Julia can see that her eyes are pink, and her hair as fine and pale as cornsilk. The girl, who can't be more than five or six years old, is holding a fat bullfrog in one hand. She sees Julia, too, and she smiles and begins splashing through the creek towards her.

"Look, Momma," the girl says, holding up the bullfrog. "Have you ever in all your life seen one this big?"

Look, Momma…

And Julia knows perfectly damn well that the albino girl's only mistaken her for someone else, and in a few seconds more, when she comes closer, the child will realize her mistake. But then the girl stops, the creek flowing about her bare legs, and the bullfrog slips from her fingers and swims quickly away.

"Momma?" the girl asks, looking down at her empty hand and then back up at Julia.

I'm sorry child, Julia starts to tell her, but I ain't your momma. I ain't nobody's momma, but then the girl turns and begins splashing away down the creek towards the sinkhole. Julia stands up, ashamed that she's frightened the kid, even if she's not sure why. She starts to call out to the albino girl, wants to tell her to be careful because the rocks are slick and it's not far to the falls and-

– there's only the caressing sea again, pressing in on every inch of her, the half-lit sea filling her, drowning her because she's asked it to, the agreeable, indifferent sea washing her away-a handful of mud, a pinch of salt, blood and a bit of sand, but there's nothing of her that won't dissolve or disperse. Only a passing moment's sadness that the autumn day by Wampee Creek was merely some smidgen of delirium coughed out by her dying mind, her life's last cruel trick, when it's only her and the sea and-

No. Her and the sea and just one other thing, whatever it was came slithering up out of the wheel of light before her dream of Shrove Wood and the albino girl. The thing that isn't a shark or a barracuda, that it isn't anything that belongs here. Nothing she can see, but Julia feels it, like tendrils of scalding water twining themselves tightly about her legs, forcing her back up towards the surface. And then its inside her, burning, prying her body and soul apart to find some slender crevice in between.

A pillar of fire dragging her to life again.

A child with white rabbit eyes.

And still and always, the world buzzes on like angry bees. Let it come and go, appear and vanish, for what have we to lose?

Blood and thunder, fire and a mad woman with a knife.

Have you ever in all your life seen one this big?

The briefest flicker of blue-white light, a searchlight beacon hiding itself in her womb, where no one will ever think to look.

The body of woman is like a flash of lightning…

There are arms around Julia, then, the strong arms of a man hauling her up and out of the angry, cheated sea, the man's voice shouting for help, the voices of other men and the slosh of salt-water breaking against their bodies and the hull of a boat painted yellow as sunflowers and canary birds. And before Julia Flammarion blacks out, she sees the boat's name printed boldly across its bow-Gulf Angel.