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"I won’t hold him long, and I’ll be careful."

Luther steps forward, leans down, and lifts the baby out of her arms.

"Support his head," Vi says.

Luther cradles the baby’s head in the crux of his arm.

Vi takes the pillow from behind her back and hides her nakedness.

"What’s today," she asks.

"Why?"

"I want to know my son’s birthday."

"July twenty-ninth."

"Thank you."

Luther stands there for several moments, gazing into the face of the sleeping infant.

"You’re never going to let us leave, are you?" Vi says.

"That’s up to my father."

Luther bends down, hands Max back to Vi.

"That’s for him," he says, motioning to the stuffed dolphin on the dirt floor.

"What’s his name?"

"Dolphie."

"Thank you, Luther."

He nods, turns to leave.

"I saw what you did to that family in Davidson," Vi says. "And their two boys. Why are you nice to my baby?"

"I don’t know."

It is one of the rare truthful moments of Luther’s life, and he leaves, trembling.

# # #

On a humid summer night, just before bedtime, Rufus walked into the kitchen of his silent house and poured himself a glass of buttermilk. Then he strolled the narrow hallway between the kitchen and the foyer and unlocked the small door beneath the staircase. As he descended into the basement, sounds of retching and agony emanated from the inhabited cells. He took a seat on the bottom step, the dirt floor cool beneath his feet, and sipped his cold, thick milk.

That would be Andy groaning and Beth sobbing between bouts of nausea. Their heads probably felt like they were imploding. Nothing to do for them really but let them ride it out. They’d be good as new in a few days.

Rufus wiped his milk mustache.

Baby Max was screaming now, fighting mad at having been woken again.

Yesterday, the first of August, Rufus had stopped dispensing drugs. The haloperidol, Ativan, nitrous oxide—it all abruptly ended. Vi had been weaned off the narcotics during the summer leading up to her delivery, but Andy and Beth had, with brief exceptions, been very fucked-up since mid-November. Rufus had never kept anyone on the needle this long, and though he’d anticipated this brutal withdrawal, the payoff would be well worth the risk.

For the last nine months, he’d dedicated a minimum of six hours per day to working with his patients, and their sessions with the mind machine and drug-enhanced hypnosis had been wonderfully productive. In addition, they’d all watched countless hours of home movies, and with the aid of laughing gas, had begun to see the humor and innocuousness in violence.

Andy in particular seemed to be moving beyond the illusions that plagued him.

As Rufus climbed the stairs back up to his bedroom on the second floor, where his angel, Maxine, was already fast asleep, he realized he hadn’t been this excited and hopeful since Orson.

# # #

I woke to a gentle, rocking motion. There was light here, more warmth than that awful darkness. I detected the cry of gulls, slap of water falling back into itself, and the imperceptible whisper of wind moving through open space.

My eyes opened. I found myself sitting in the cramped cabin of a boat, Violet King across from me, a baby in her arms, Beth Lancing at my left.

Duct tape had been applied to our mouths.

Vi was awake, Beth still unconscious, her chin resting against her collarbone. I went to shake her awake but couldn’t move, my wrists, ankles, and torso having also been thoroughly duct-taped to the high-backed chair.

I looked across the table at Vi and raised my eyebrows. She responded with a headshake—she knew as little as I concerning where or why we were here.

We sat there, immobilized, confused, watching the time on the stove clock creep toward noon. Through an ovular window above, I could see the tinted blue of the sky. Sleeping bags and wrinkled clothing had been stowed in the V-berth.

Barely audible voices emanated from the deck.

I tried to think back, to claim some recent memory, but could not.

The cabin door opened. Luther ducked and stepped down inside.

"Gonna need a hand with them, Pop!"

One by one, we were lifted