"They'll help you." The girl reached out. She touched Roger's leg. He let her hand stay there. "It will be okay. You're sick."
"Sick?"
"Yes, you need help."
Roger knew what kind of help she meant. She meant the kind that happened in a hospital, a loony hospital, which might be worse than jail. Roger jerked his leg away from the girl. He wasn't going to go there no matter what the girl said.
"No."
The girl started to scramble backward, moving like a crab on her hands and knees. She flipped over and started to stand up, but Roger grabbed her from behind. He pinned her to the ground.
"No. No. No. No."
She kept repeating the word, her voice a hoarse whisper, as Roger turned her over so they were face to face. Her neck was exposed. Roger moved up, using his knees to pin the girl's shoulders, leaving his hands free.
"I'm not sick," he said.
He took the girl by the hair with his left hand and, with his right, brought the knife across her neck with a swift, clean motion. The girl gasped. Bright, red blood pumped out of the wound, spilling down her neck and over Roger's pants leg into the ground where the clearing soaked it up like a thirsty beast.
*
When the girl stopped breathing and after she'd stopped bleeding, Roger wiped the knife on his pants' leg. He knew the blood wasn't enough, the clearing wanted all of her. The clearing wanted everything.
He had no choice. He had to bury her and hide her from the world. Even if the cops knew about him and the clearing and the girl, he still had to try to hide her. He had to at least try.
He dug the hole, slowly and carefully. He should have been more tired after all of the work the day had brought, but the clearing kept him going. He knew that. He felt the burst it provided, surging through his body like adrenaline. When the hole was dug, right next to the spot where the last girl lay, he dragged the new girl over and prepared to push her in. But before he did, he stopped.
The painful pressure grew at the center of his body. He remembered burying the last girl, and taking her one last time before he placed her body in the grave. The clearing was telling him this was all right, this was the thing he was meant to do—take one last thing before he said goodbye.
Roger gritted his teeth with anger. He bit down so hard he thought his teeth might chip. He didn't want to do it. He didn't want to do the things the clearing told him to do. But the urge was so strong, so consuming. He felt like he was going to explode. His breath came in heaving convulsions.
"No," he said. "No."
He fell to his knees, crippled by desire.
He placed his hands on the girl. He felt her soft flesh beneath his fingers. He grabbed a handful of her clothes.
"No."
He pushed and rolled her into the freshly dug grave. He grabbed the shovel and began throwing the dirt on top of her, covering her face first and then the rest of her. He didn't do a neat job. He just wanted to not see her anymore, to take away the temptation that burned through his body like hot iron.
When he was finished, he dropped the shovel. He wiped the dirt off his hands, hoping to leave the clearing behind forever. He felt a dizziness come over him, and as he walked out of the clearing, he stumbled. The place wanted to hold him, to keep him there just as he had kept the girl in the house. But Roger wouldn't let it. He'd break its hold.
He pushed himself to his feet and ran from the clearing without looking back.
CHAPTER THIRTY
In the weeks since the vision outside Dan's house, Diana felt as though her nerves were becoming metal springs. They were coiled and taut and ready to bounce at the slightest provocation. She jumped when a door slammed somewhere in the building, and when she entered the apartment, she took extra care turning the two locks and fastening the chain on her front door. Only after completing those gestures, only after barricading herself in her own apartment, did she realize how pointless they were, and that was the most frightening fact of all.
Her enemies didn't exist outside. The real enemy lived inside, somewhere in her own brain, an organ which was once again turning against its owner, like a well-trained attack dog that decides to savage its master. Except, Diana believed, her brain had never been well trained. It had been turning against her for a number of years, and after a long dormant period, was now back with a vengeance, ready to finish the job. How that job would be finished and what the ultimate measure of victory or defeat would be, she couldn't guess. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.