She always escaped.
And in time those nightmares had faded. Thank God.
“What are your plans now?” Knowles asked her.
“I have an apartment,” Kay said. “I’ve been given the opportunity to stay on at George Ross. Laurie…still cries, but I think she’ll be all right.” Kay smiled; or tried to, because her lips trembled. “I never realized how very much I loved and needed Evan until he was gone. Sometimes in the night I still reach over to the other side of the bed for him.” Her eyes glistened. “I want him so much to be there. Love’s funny, isn’t it? What’s the old saying? You never know how much you’ve got until it’s gone. But he’s not really gone, not really. No one’s ever really gone unless you forget.”
Knowles sat still for a moment, examining her face. No, he decided. This woman wasn’t lying. He felt more certain now than ever that whatever had happened in Bethany’s Sin was locked away from him. Perhaps forever. No, no, he thought, scratch that. I’m a police officer, and maybe someday I’ll dig up something. He rose to his feet. “I suppose that about wraps it up, Mrs. Reid. Thank you very much for coming in.”
Two figures standing on a plain of charred ruins. A woman and a little girl, holding hands.
“I don’t like this, Mommy,” Laurie said. “Let’s go home.”
“We will, sweetheart,” Kay told her softly. “In just a little while, we will.” They stood on what remained of McClain Terrace: blackened facades of houses with collapsed roofs. Nothing but timbers left of the Demargeon house, as if it had been struck by God Himself. The house where the Reid family had lived was a charred shell: roof sagging; windows empty, gaping holes. Kay had wanted to come to this place one last time; after today she would not return here again, and their lives would start fresh from this place and point in time. It was such a beautiful house, she thought, looking at the ruins. Such a beautiful village. She moved closer, shoes crunching ashes and shards of glass. Something fluttered on the ground, and Kay bent to pick it up.
It was a page from one of Evan’s short stories. She could see the typewritten characters only faintly, and before she could read it the breeze had crisped it into ashes that spun out of her grasp, floating, floating, floating away. That same breeze made ghost-voices moan from empty doorways.
Kay wiped her face—quickly so Laurie wouldn’t see and become disturbed—and then said, “Come on. We’d better be getting home now.” They crossed the lawn of ashes toward Kay’s second-hand Vega, climbed in with ashes still clinging to their shoes. Kay hugged Laurie to her for a moment, then started the car and left McClain Terrace behind.
Yellow lights blinked on Blair Street. A detour: a maze of trash and fallen trees still awaited the cleanup crews. Kay had to turn onto Cowlington.
And as they passed the burned-out hulk of the museum, Kay slowed, staring up at it. She pulled the Vega to the curb and sat for a few minutes, her heart slowly beating, beating, beating. Evan’s tomb, she thought. But why? What had happened in those last days? What kept hammering at the door of her mind, even now the memories trying to force their way in? Something that Evan had been trying to warn her of, all along? Something she’d dismissed with a wave of her hand and an accusation? The breeze whispered around the corners of the house. Spirals of ash spun up, twisted, dancing back and forth; one of the spirals, caught in the teeth of the breeze, whirled down toward the Vega. Kay smelled a hot, scorched smell.
“I don’t like it here, Mommy,” Laurie said.
“We’re going,” Kay said. She put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb, accelerating. “We won’t come back to this place anymore.” Someday I’ll know, Kay told herself. Someday I’ll be strong enough to let those memories in, and I’ll see what it was that Evan saw. She stroked Laurie’s hair. “Home in just a few minutes,” she said, and glanced down at her child.
Laurie smiled. For the briefest instant Kay thought she saw something strange in the little girl’s eyes, but then Laurie blinked and that half-seen, half-recognized glimmer was gone. Laurie slid across the seat against her mother, thinking of how much she was going to miss Mrs. Omarian. Mrs. Omarian with those funny stories about those funny women, those stories that were too funny for daddies to know.
But, somehow, Laurie didn’t feel like laughing anymore.
They left Bethany’s Sin.
And turned toward the city.
Time shall come when the female shall conquer
the male, and shall chase him far away…
—ANCIENT ORACLE
Afterword
Robert McCammon Tells How He Wrote Bethany’s Sin
This is the question fired at all authors: “Where do you get your ideas?”
You can answer by saying you clip interesting articles out of newspapers, you remember your dreams, you’ve overheard a conversation you think might be the seed for a story, and so on and so forth, but I think there are really two intermingled answers: “I see something strange, and I’m curious about it.”
That’s how Bethany’s Sin, my second published novel, was born.
I used to drive the same way to work every day, a twisting route through Birmingham’s Southside. On that route, I always passed a rather forbidding-looking Gothic house with a simple sign out front. That sign said: WOMEN’S CLUB. Nothing else.
Women’s Club. Okay. We start from there.
I never saw anyone enter or come out of that house, though there were always cars parked in front. Lights were on at night. A shadow moved across a window: someone looking out? Women’s Club. Anybody know what they do in there, or what purpose the club has, or anybody who belongs to it? No. It’s just…always been there.
Now we enter the realm of the imagination. Imagine, if you will, a town whose center is the Women’s Club. It’s a lovely town, of course: The lawns are always perfect, the storefronts are neat and appealing, the streets are clean, and there never seems to be any crime in this town.
But there is, of course, the Women’s Club.
See how these ideas get started?
I used real place names as towns that surrounded Bethany’s Sin. After the book was published, I received a letter from the mayor of one of those towns. The mayor said I ought to come up and spend a few days, and see just how wrong I was about that area.
That’s what she said.
I didn’t go.
After reading Bethany’s Sin, tell me if I was chicken or not.
I still have no idea what went on—goes on, because the place is still there—at the Women’s Club. Maybe all men suspect strange things go on behind the walls of anyplace we’re not admitted. Maybe it’s just a place where…well, where women’s club stuff goes on.
A friend of mine, married for many years, read Bethany’s Sin and told me he found himself awake late one night, looking at his wife as she slept peacefully beside him. He told me he thought of horses in the dark, and falling axes, and he wondered if he knew everything that went on in his wife’s mind. Maybe he was afraid there was a place in her where he wasn’t admitted, and what went on before those walls were…
Better left unknown?
But then he got up against her and kissed her cheek, and everything was all right. After all, it’s just a book. In our society, loved ones don’t kill each other, do they?
I pass the Women’s Club occasionally. I have yet to see anyone enter or leave, but the lawn is always perfectly manicured, the building itself is well-kept, the walkway leading to its front door clean and swept. Everything is just as it should be. The Women’s Club members must be very proud of their house. They know how much appearances count, in this imperfect world.
Late at night, there are lights on in the Women’s Club.
And somewhere, if only through the nightmare landscape of the mind, there are hoofbeats in the dark.
Robert McCammon
June 1988
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A modern master of horror, Robert R. McCammon is the author of nine novels, including the
New York Times bestsellers Swan Song and Stinger, Baal, Bethany’s Sin, The Night Boat, and They Thirst (all available from Pocket Books). In THE WOLF’S HOUR, his finest work yet, Mr. McCammon blends a riveting tale of World War II suspense with a beautifully crafted werewolf story—to create one of the most intriguing heroes in contemporary fiction. A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Mr. McCammon is currently at work on a collection of short stories and a new novel to be published soon by Pocket Books.
Robert R. McCammon, Bethany's Sin
(Series: # )
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