The Condonement

The first time it came was in my thirtieth year, on the night of the lunar eclipse. Unfolding its dark silhouette in a sliver of moonlight, it looked like some great bat or a sharp moist butterfly new from the pupa. In the beginning I couldn’t tell if it had a face or not; its frontal features were obscured in blackness. I’m not sure why I didn’t go for the bedside lamp, except the thing might not be there anymore if I turned on a light. Somehow that would have been worse. I remember making a vague poking motion at my husband Tristan, who was leaden as a pillar, and breathing deeply.

The creature moved no closer, but it extended a tapered, talon-like hand in my direction. The movement was deliberate, as malevolently attractive as a cat’s claw swipe. An invitation. My mouth went dust-dry.

I elbowed Tristan again, violently. He was petrified wood, face persisting slack and immutable in sleep. For an instant I resented him for his apathy, as if he took an active disinterest.

A shadow shifted. My head whipped back round, and the thing was gone. I felt a chill course the length of my leg. One of my feet was touching the floor.

"Come off it, Kath," Tristan assured me in his stalwart, no-nonsense way. "You were just dreaming,"

I gazed across the breakfast table at his clean pink face, with its fluffy but receding blond hairline. At that moment he reminded me of a complacent first-year grad student, poking holes in the argument of a less clever classmate. Which was exactly what he'd been doing when I'd met him. Deflated, I gave up trying to describe the visceral pall that thing had cast over me. And the latent desire for its return.

I don't know how long it had been there, watching, before I opened my eyes. Maybe the whole month since I'd last seen it. But it was patient, or at least it had time. An August full moon bled light across the bedcovers, but the shape had advanced no further than the doorway. I scrambled to a sitting position, kicking at Tristan in my haste to draw my knees up to my chest. He remained senseless, the steadfast breathing log. The thing inclined its head to the side, as if amused by my distress. Again the deliberate proferral of the hand. Steely digits unfurled 'til their gleaming tips flayed the moonlight. Black, black. And its movement made no sound.

It was spectral in the same long and deadly manner as a praying mantis. There was nothing overtly sensuous about it, yet somehow it exerted an attraction. My armpits, my upper lip, and the triangle joining my legs grew moist both with terror and the perverse urge to feel its touch. I pressed shaking fingers to my eyelids, forcing them closed. When I came to myself, the room was silent and empty save for the infuriating leitmotif of Tristan's breathing. Damn him, how could he sleep? My gaze found my own naked body, washed in moonlight. I was kneeling at the foot of the bed.

"Since when did you start sleeping in the nude?" demanded Tristan with an appreciative squeeze of my backside.

I brushed his hand away and turned back to the toaster. "I was feeling warm, I guess."

"Well give me a nudge next time you're feeling that way again."

I made a scoffing noise. "I'd have better luck waking the d--" My mouth seized shut at the imagined sensation of cold metal scraping my spine.

"You'll just have to catch me when I'm awake, then," he called from the back entryway, briefcase in hand. "I could always phone in sick."

"Get!" I told him with a nervous laugh. "You're going to be late." When I heard the screen door slam, I was oddly relieved.

The moon was a heavy orange orb, almost red, the kind they call a harvest moon. The shade stood right alongside the bed this time. I sat shock upright, and there was the tapered hand, inches from my cheek. I noticed a faint scent, rotten-fresh, like dried grasses in the night wind. I found no voice to shatter the metronome rhythm of Tristan's in-out, in-out breaths. Maybe I didn't want to. Without thought my hand was on those fingers—they were smooth and cool as ebony bones. The thing brought me up before it, and in a single scissor-like motion rent my nightgown from my body. The garment settled about my ankles like a discarded skin casing. Cold digits curled about my arm, and I was made to stand before the long mirror in the corner. The specter rose behind me in silhouette, the moonlight revealing nothing of its features. Spidery talons traced trails along my hips. Meeting like opposing currents over my belly, they travelled upward and apart again. The thing was appraising me, but it wanted me to see, to appreciate the process. One sharp hand came up beneath my left breast. A gleaming digit glided across the peak and forced a fan of warmth to climb from below. My body accepted this shock by propelling me into darkness.

I wasn't conscious of having been cold, but the fetid warmth I now felt was a luxurious balm. I opened my eyes on a cave-like wall. A fire burned somewhere behind me, causing weird filigrees to leap up the rock. In one shadow I thought I glimpsed the raven specter, but the image was fleeting. Only by groggy degrees did I realize my body was ensconced in a crude bed of animal furs. Their musky odour called vague images of sex and blood and humus to my brain. And something else, naked and unmistakably male, curled itself against my back.

Gasping, I flung myself onto my stomach, and with another half-turn, twisted to a sitting position. He came up with me, fingers twined tightly round my wrist. He was a young man, perhaps five years my junior. Lean-limbed, with slightly hawkish features. Dark hair fell dishevelled to a length just below his jawline. His expression faded quickly from surprise to something like knowledge. He released my arm, eyes moving over me. I made no pretense of covering myself. Despite the initial jolt of discovering him there, I hadn't any thought to. I had no thought at all.

There was nothing dream-like in the deliberate speed with which we moved on one another. There was a collision and a tangling of limbs too violent and irresistible to be sex; it certainly had nothing to do with lovemaking. This was primal, instinctual coupling. He was above me and within me, and I was wrapped around him completely, crushing him. As his torso arced away from me in release, my eyes came open. I saw them ringing us, as few as ten or as many as fifty—impossible to judge. A host of gaunt, glittering ebony shades. Which one had conveyed me here, God only knew.

There was no time to move, nor even to tense as one of those blade-like hands twined itself in my consort's hair, snapping his head backward. A sluicing motion sent a spray of crimson fluid across my face. He was choking, dying within me, and his blood was everywhere—growing sticky on the animal pelts, matting my hair, and sizzling upward in sickly vapours from the fire, where the things scattered it. By the feinting flames I caught snatches of their faces, smooth and vitreous as polished stone. Neither malevolent nor benign, all eyes and no eyes, they gazed on me and the fire in seamless dispassion.

I awoke in the dim predawn beside Tristan, who had ceased to exist for me an eternity ago. Writhing miserably away from him, I pressed my knees together as a defense against the soreness below, and thrust my fingers into my hair. It was clean and soft, free of his musk, his blood, and his death. It didn't matter. I knew what was real. I reached over the bed, feeling for my nightgown on the floor. It lay where it had fallen, shredded down the centre. I drew it beneath the covers and clutched it against me for a moment, like a ruined virgin. I couldn't cry. Mourning would have seemed obscenely hollow. I crumpled the slippery fabric beneath my pillow. I would burn it. Tristan rolled over and tossed a sleepily possessive arm across me. I felt profoundly nauseated.

After a couple of days I began to lie. I shoved the whole thing as far down the gullet of my subconscious as I was able. Too many showers, too many baths, trying to scrub the evidence of change from my skin, as if it could be read there even by strangers. Tristan, incapable of understanding why I shrank from his touch, chalked it up to a female imbalance. I was grateful for his arrogance. Perhaps, in time, when it became easier to forget…

I hefted the frozen turkey into the cart and began selecting squash for our Thanksgiving meal, sampling their fecund shapes for firmness.

"Katherine."

I turned. And swallowed a scream. He was taller than I would have thought. Fear hammered up my spine. "I--I'm sorry, I don't…"

Briefly he pulled the collar of his wool sweater away from his neck to reveal a fine red line of healing scar tissue. His voice was soft and deep. "They're not finished with us yet."

"Who are you?" I hissed. "How the hell do you know my name?"

"My name is Jared." He shrugged, as if it wasn't important. "Look, this is a small town. A little research goes a long way."

I was fighting the urge to bolt, and he laid a hand on my arm. That only made things worse, so he took it away again. "I had to find you before--" He paused, weighing words. "Just to see you when it was sane, when we could both be--human."

"What are you talking about?" I took a step backwards.

"They are the Reapers. We've been chosen, Katherine, and we've accepted. We are their vessels. They'll drain us, and when we're spent, we'll become like them."

"No," I said a little too loudly, drawing stares. "This is finished."

"You don't understand what's been set in motion." His brows came together, like he was teetering between sympathy and impatience.

"The slaughtered man plays the apologist."

Jared blinked. "We've both condoned this, Katherine. Our wills, united with theirs."

I shook my head fiercely. His sharp-featured image began to blur.

He took me by the shoulders, not ungently. "Your past is over," he whispered. "You gave them your hand."

I burst from the store, stumbling past the last few buildings that lined the main street. He was right--it was a very small town. I ran in the crisp October afternoon until the street became highway, unfurling its gray ribbon to infinity. Veering into a field, I flung myself down, face turned skyward. Dead grasses whispered round my ears.

Lying with my eyes closed, I concentrated on drowning the images in the sweet-fresh-rotting smell of the season's last wildflowers. Still the obsidian silhouettes pounded my consciousness. I could almost feel the animal hardness of Jared's body slamming into mine. The thick treacle of the field became his crimson lifespray falling on me, infusing and smothering.

I jerked upright, comprehending all at once the attraction of the shades. Each, like the blasted hull of a plant stem that had released all its promise--both blossom and seed--was empty. Empty but fully haunted by the lingering ghost of sex, the ravaged knowledge that came with the harvest. The Reapers, he had called them. Yes--dead but irresistible. Inevitable points on an ever-turning circumference. Cognizant and full of horror, I rose to my feet. It was time to be getting back--soon it would be full moon.