Back inside, Rita intercepts her first, a wink and a knowing smile, a teasing inflection to her voice. “Shame on you, Tricia. You know we have loaders for that kind of work.”

Miss Sally hovers nearby, “taking inventory,” tut-tutting without a sound.

Tricia decides on full disclosure. “His name is Jason. He just moved to town, says he inherited some old house up in the hills.”

Rita’s brow furrows. “The Creed House? That place is a wreck.”

Tricia shrugs. It can’t be any worse than her three-room roach paradise.

“They say it’s haunted, you know.”

Tricia scoffs. “Don’t they always?”

“The Creed House, you say?” When Miss Sally speaks, younger women perk up their ears and hold their tongues. “I knew a boy who lived there once, when I was young. This was just before the war, mind you. Bless me, could it really have been that long ago?”

A wistful sigh, distant sidelong glance down to the left, past the floor.

“Miss Sally,” Rita teases, “I never knew you were such a trollop.”

“You hush now, young lady. I was proper, even then,” subtle sinful smile telling them otherwise. “His name was Taylor, Taylor Creed. He went off to war and never returned.”

And now both younger women understand Miss Sally’s lonely life. All these years, waiting for lost love, filling the loss with work and suffrage while the world fell apart and grew strange around her. Tricia and Rita share a look of solidarity, there but for the grace of the Goddess.

“My precious Taylor. I can recall as clear as day,” she reminisces to no one in particular. “He had the most beautiful ice-blue eyes.”

# # #

Next evening, balmy and breezy, just before six, Tricia’s jalopy of a sticker-plastered Civic rattles up the long, lonely drive of Creed House. Thank the Goddess for sick days and Miss Sally’s forgiveness. Without them, she’d never have gotten this thing running.

Rita had offered to loan her own car, of course, but Tricia had politely refused. She had to do this on her own, and never mind all the old news clippings Rita had shown her in a scrapbook of local ghost tales, Creed House claiming souls as far back as slavery days, strange lights and noises, unexplained disappearances, rumors of secret cults devoted to dark gods with unpronounceable names. They are all drowned out by Jason’s rhythm in the life-web.

But she can see how the House got its rep. It sits there, cramped against looming hills, ancient cotton fields gone long fallow, a tumble-down neo-classical palace nearly engulfed by kudzu invading from the hills. Cracked-but-holding Doric columns lifting the second story out of its slump, the whole structure clings like a bloated tic on the world.

And Jason is there on the veranda, dressed to the nines, waiting for her with James Bond cool, stilling the dreadful dirge she otherwise feels in the life-web. He doesn’t even smirk when her Civic sputters and coughs up death-bed fumes, or when she tumbles, nervous, giddy, out of it in Rita’s borrowed clothes, white-trash chic, convinced she looks like a complete gimp.

“You look lovely tonight, Tricia.” She hadn’t even seen him come down from the porch, so fixated was she on her trashy high heels. He produces a bouquet of bright yellow and pink flowers from somewhere behind his broad tuxedoed shoulders.

“Flowers for the lady. Oenothera erythrosepala. I grew them myself.”

“Oh no whatsits?” She takes them like a prom queen, sniffs in their rich sweet scent, not realizing her eyes were closed until they open and Jason is there gazing down at her, oozing affection.

“Evening primroses, my sweets. Fresh from the night garden.”

“They’re as lovely as you.” She did not just say that, or let that eager smile erupt across her face.

“Come along,” he says, taking her arm in his, knowing she’d never resist. “I’ll give you the tour.”

And up the treacherous-looking front steps they go, arm-in-arm, Rhett and Scarlett, through the threshold of Creed House’s maw of a weather-stained double doors.

Tricia tries to ignore the distant buzzing trill, sentient swarm tickling her awareness from somewhere nearby. It must be Jason’s effect on her, dredging up dreams.

# # #

THUMP! Scritch, scritch, scritch… Tricia flinches, startled heart, as something behind musty plaster walls scampers away, skittering under oaken floors, in the cavernous library of Creed House, teetering two-story shelves packed with countless books towered at impossible angles, smell of dust and aging pulp, last stop on the tour before dinner.

“Sorry about that,” Jason says, comforting, caressing hand on her shoulder. “Rats in the walls. I suppose I should get rid of them somehow, but right now, it doesn’t seem fair.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, they’ve been here longer than me. This is more their home than mine, really. From their point of view, I am the pest.”

“That’s very enlightened, Jason. Violence is never the answer.”

“I’d say that depends on the question.”

His wink makes her think maybe there’s hope for him yet. Maybe she’ll tell him about some cruelty-free ways to repel rats. Maybe she will end up in that grand, gabled immaculate bedroom he’d showed her, after all (“my meditation chamber,” he’d called it, and she’d laughed throatily).

“Where’d you get all these books?” Her eyes browse baffling titles on botany, genetics, esoteric religions, cosmology; titles in Latin and Greek, like Necronomicon and De Vermis Mysteriis. Nothing she’d be inclined to read. Nothing fun, like Asimov or LeGuin.

“Part of my inheritance, mostly. They were packed away in crates in an old warehouse by the docks. Sat there for decades, gathering dust. I had the movers bring them here, and I put them on the shelves myself. Seemed fitting.”

“So, you haven’t actually read them?”

“Some of them,” he smiles wanly, clapping dust from poet hands that had been lingering on Greek titles.

“Come on,” he says, ice-blues turning to her now, a gentle touch on her lower back, nudging her towards one last door. “Our dinner’s probably just reached the right temperature.”

“I’d love to see your night garden.”

“You will. I promise. But first, I’m famished.”

And she lets him lead her out of that hall of lonely wisdom, his presence still overwhelming the swarm-voice at the back of her brain.

Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch… is the thing under the floor following them? Invisible spiders creep up her spine.

“What’s wrong, Tricia?” His voice, his silken touch, his life-web harmony, warm her suddenly, sooth her, quivers turned instantly from fear to arousal. God damn, he’s good. Is he causing this? Can he actually control it?

“Jason, can you…?”

“Can I…?”

She has to get the hell out of this room. “Never mind. It’s just, this place, it’s so…”

“Creepy? I know. But look on the bright side. You don’t have to live here.”

Somehow, that makes it all alright, and she giggles. Her belly grumbles. She really is hungry.

“If you’re lucky, Jason, I might help you spruce the place up a bit.”

“Let’s eat first, foul temptress.” He kisses her hand and rescues her from this ominous chamber, leading her through that one last door, a commanding glance back over his shoulder at the thing under the floor.

Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch… followed by one lonely buzzing trill, barely above a whisper.

# # #

Tricia expected more from the dining hall of this grand, macabre palace. True, it’s big enough to host balls of every sort, but the furnishings are Spartan: one average size, square, wooden table in the center of the room, checkered tablecloth, with only two chairs set at right angles to each other. A bachelor’s idea of kitchen chic, dwarfed by cavernous notions of glamour from ages past. It makes her feel small, an insect in a cathedral.

Jason, of course, is unfazed. He leads her to her seat, pulls it out for her. “You’re going to like this,” he promises, a gentle breath across the skin of her neck as she slides into her chair. The table before her is packed with covered dishes, hiding all choices from her, tempting. Then she remembers something.

“You’re a vegan,” he says. It’s not a question.

“How did you know that?”

“You told me, of course.”

Did she? She can’t recall. She must have. How else would he know?

Jason doesn’t sit down. Instead, he begins uncovering dishes, steam rising through dusty air, warming more than her face as she sucks in exotic aromas. “Mmmmm,” comes from deep within her. “It smells divine.”

“You don’t know the half of it. I’ve decided to go a little Iron Chef, and use the same ingredient as the focus for all the dishes. Try the soup.”

He ladles hot, dark liquid into her bowl; plop! –- large, meaty-looking chunks of something pinkish and rubbery splash the broth onto her place setting. Tricia looks close, for moment disturbed, stomach turning in suspicion. Has he tricked her?

“Don’t worry,” Jason says, wink and seductive smile. “It never had a face.”

Tricia, adventurous, scoops up a chunk of the pinkish, fleshy stuff, covered in clingy broth, brings it to her nose, takes in the scent. Rich and earthy, nothing like any kind of meat.

She wraps her lips around the chunk and sucks it in, tangy, woody flavor, mouth moistening for more. “It tastes like some kind of mushroom.”

“It’s called mi-go,” Jason says, ladling a bowl for himself. “A rare fungus that grows only in the riverbeds of the Himalayas. I had some spores imported a few years back. I cultivate them.”

“In your night garden?”

He smiles, sliding into the chair next to hers, at the corner of their small table. “I am fascinated by things that flourish in shadow, for whom darkness is a kind of light.”

Eyes locked again. Breathing deep, from their diaphragms, nostrils flared. She moves her emerald greens from his deep-well eyes to his luscious lips and back again. “Eat up,” he says, relishing his own spoonful of mi-go.

The meal becomes foreplay, and she lets it take her over, ignoring all the misgivings, all the lingering doubts. This feels like the center of the life-web, thrumming through every cell of her body, drawing her to Jason like a heroine to her destiny. Soon, they are feeding each other. She is in his lap, tongues dancing, hands caressing curves and lines, stroking hair.

He leans her back atop the rickety table, lightly kissing her neck, tongue-tip tasting tiny spots of skin, and she moans from deep within her soul. It’s too much, too soon, too fast, but Goddess help her, she doesn’t want it to stop. It’s been so long…

Everything after that is a blur. Then, welcoming, sensual darkness.

# # #

And she is dreaming again, of that looming eldritch world, spinning through lightless depths. Of soaring through space on membranous wings, following the forlorn call of a sentient swarm through the soundless void. But there is something else here now, a new feeling, desperate, demanding, pleading, raging. The cry of the oppressed, the massacred, the enslaved. Free us, mother. Send us home.