It’s been a while since we’ve delved into the realm of fiction. Let’s have a short story, in honor of Halloween. This is a little longer than my previous stories, and a little darker. I’ll be in trouble with my mom and grandpa over the PG language. I don’t like it either, but it’s sometimes necessary. This story is one of those sometimes.

The story after the jump . . .

It was the mirror. That’s where it started. That damned mirror.

His wife had the mirror installed in their bedroom. It was nearly the length of the wall, and stood six feet tall. If he lived to be a hundred, Russell Callahan would never understand women’s infatuation with looking into mirrors. He hated mirrors. He hated the principle of mirrors. And he had a special brand of hatred for the ridiculously over-sized mirrors Janet Callahan had installed in their bedroom.

“Don’t be silly,” Janet said whenever Russell complained about the mirror. “It’s only a mirror. What’s not to like about a mirror?”

For a middle-aged man who is twenty pounds overweight, slightly balding and has yet to accept that his prime is behind him, there’s lots to dislike about a mirror. Nothing escaped a mirror that size, and Russell loathed it for exactly that reason. He had taken to dressing in the bathroom to avoid the mirror’s unrelenting and brutally honest assessment. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched; that the mirror had eyes. That was ridiculous, of course. The only eyes in the mirror were those of the guy with the beginning of middle-age spread and male-pattern baldness staring back at him.

It was the morning of October 10. Russell was awakened by the sound of the phone ringing. Somewhere, in another part of the house, he could hear Janet rustling around. She would’ve already fixed her morning toast and coffee by now. Her workday began at seven o’clock. Russell made it a point to never schedule an appointment before ten o’clock, allowing himself the luxury of sleeping in. Punctuality wasn’t Russell’s forte. In fact, he made a concerted effort to avoid work in general. Those who knew him best considered it a minor miracle that Russell—Russ to his friends, or simply R.C.—had made it through law school. But he had, and he passed the bar.

These days, he was more or less a trial lawyer. But he hadn’t litigated a case in over two years, preferring instead to take on light research projects farmed out by the big law firms in town. Russell, a.k.a. Russ, a.k.a. R.C., didn’t mind being a bottom-feeder. By settling for scraps, he could afford to be independent. And with his small office in a converted single-family home on the edge of town, he could mostly avoid people. A recluse? No. Russell was no recluse. He simply disliked people. Maybe that was a battle of semantics, but Russell figured there was a distinction: A recluse would shudder at the thought of being around people. Russell merely had little use for people.

Perhaps that was why he had unceremoniously ushered Erma Lawson out of his office when she had shown up to seek his services a few months earlier. He had slammed the door in her face—cutting off her shrill voice as she pleaded with him—with little more thought than he would’ve given a spider before crushing it beneath the heel of his shoe.

The little old woman—with her stringy gray hair, a protruding chin that had just enough hair on it to make a grown man shudder, and knee-high stockings—looked like something stepped out of a Brothers Grimm tale, right down to the black shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders and held in place with bony fingers.

The old woman had shown up on an unseasonably warm day in April, when the red-buds and dogwoods had just begun to bloom. And the apple blossoms. (His grandmother had always insisted on referring to spring as Apple Blossom Season). One minute his door had been closed, blocking out the cheerful bright sunlight and creating a drab gloom in the office. The next minute she had been standing there, as if she had slithered out of the HVAC vent. In fact, as she babbled incessantly about the whores of Babylon down at City Hall, he had an insanely hilarious moment when he pictured her with her hairy chin and stringy hair, slithering through the duct work of the old building.

“They’re after my property, Mr. Callahan,” she had said—practically screeched—in a voice as annoying as a pack of cats skating across a chalk board. “They mean to throw me out of my home and they’ve no right to do so.”

Russell had cleared his throat, pushing from his mind all thoughts of Erma Lawson slithering through his ducts.

“Who means to cast you from your home, Ms. Lawson?” he asked, glancing at his clock to see if he had time to head over to Ralph’s Sandwich Shop for a bite to eat before his three o’clock appointment.

“Those whores of Babylon down at City Hall!” the old woman had spat. “Those blasphemers! That home has been in my family for generations. Now they mean to knock it down as if it were nothing more than a rotten old tree. And for what? A playground! A slide and swing set!”

She had spit out the last few words with renewed vengeance, and then Russell remembered. Erma Lawson lived in a three-room shack over on Sycamore Street. The building was literally falling in, and the town had condemned it to build a playground for the school across the street. Or so City Manager Rhyne Shipley contended. The truth of the matter was that the old house was an eyesore. It would never be fixed up, so the town intended to demolish it, under the guise of needing a playground for the kids.

“Isn’t eminent domain great, Freddie?” You bet your sack it is, Russ ol’ boy. You bet your sack.

The truth of the matter was that Russell couldn’t take Erma’s case even if he wanted to—and he most assuredly didn’t want to. He had a big, fat conflict of interest. He had researched the old deeds to the Lawson property for the town. Hell, he had even drawn up the documents needed to proceed with condemnation of the property, which had been granted to Louis Lawson by the state in 1782, and had been in the Lawson family ever since.

He hadn’t intended to tell Erma Lawson this last part, the part about him being paid to assist the whores of Babylon, but she had continued to babble, finally standing up and pacing the floor as she talked, using one gnarled hand to gesture wildly while the other hand held the shawl in place. As Russell’s desk clock ticked closer to half past two, he became more concerned that he wouldn’t be able to make it to Ralph’s before three o’clock. He wanted a pastrami on rye. With Swiss cheese.

Hunter trumps politeness. Hunger stomps all over politeness. And, of course, Russell wasn’t polite to begin with. So he had stood up and escorted the old woman from the room.

“I’m afraid I can’t take your case,” he had said as he gently but firmly pushed Erma Lawson towards the door. “I have a conflict. I’m assisting the city in this matter.”

The old woman had stopped in her tracks. “Lucifer!” she spat. “Spawn of Satan!” Her face became even more contorted with anger. For the first time since she had begun her rant ten minutes earlier, Russell began to wonder about the state of the old woman’s ticker. He didn’t really care if she had a coronary; he just didn’t want her to piss all over his new rug when she did it.

Erma Lawson’s onslaught of insults continued as Russell pushed her through the door. “You’ll rue the day you ever got involved in my affairs!” she screeched. “You’ll rue the day, Mr. Lawson! You go on up to Virginia Avenue and lay your head down on your pillow tonight and not think twice about whether you’ll have a bed to sleep in by the end of the week, like I have to worry. But don’t rest too comfortable, Mr. Lawson. There’s a price to pay, and I’ll see that you pay it!”

Russell had shut the door, but could still hear the old woman shouting outside. He was a little alarmed that she knew where he lived, then dismissed it as harmless. She had a sharp tongue, but she had to be pushing eighty-five. How much trouble could one little old lady be?

That was the last time Russell thought of Erma Lawson or her impending eviction. After all, he didn’t often concern himself with the plight of Fellow Man.

But it all came back to him when he heard Janet’s muffled voice answer the phone down the hall.

“Hello?” Pause. “Yes it is.” Pause. “I’m sorry, Ms. Lawson, but my husband is unavailable. Perhaps you could contact his office later?”

Ms. Lawson. Erma Lawson. Russell climbed out of bed, annoyed. Old biddy is gonna bite off more than she can chew if she wants to mess with me.

Walking into the hallway, he took the phone from his wife’s hand.

“Ms. Lawson? Erma? I don’t know how you got my home number, but it isn’t appropriate for you to ca—”

“The day of reckoning has arrived, Mr. Callahan.” There was no mistaking the shrill voice that cut him off. “I told you that you would pay for getting mixed up in my affairs and assisting those whores at City Hall. It’s time.”

Russell was growing angry. “Are you threatening me, old woman?” he snarled.

“Dohmas haydeum,” she said calmly. The line went dead.

“Dohmas what?” Russell said, to nobody in particular.

“Who was that, Russ?” Janet was clutching her nightgown at the neck. For a second, Russell was reminded of a bony old woman clutching a shawl around her throat with bony fingers.

“A former client,” he muttered, brushing by his wife as he headed for the shower. He didn’t know what a ninety-pound old woman’s day of reckoning could possibly entail, and he sure didn’t know what dohmas haydeum meant, but he would be damned if he was going to stand idly by as someone called his damned house at six o’clock in the damned morning to threaten him, senior citizen or not.

A short time later, Russell was backing out of his driveway as he dialed Lance Hamontree’s number on his cell phone. Besides being a long-time friend, Hamontree taught history at the local junior college. He was also on the Wellington Town Council.

Hamontree answered on the third ring. “What’s going on, Soda Pop?” Russell Callahan equals R.C., as in R.C. Cola, which equals soda pop. Lame, but no one ever accused a history professor of having a sound sense of humor, and Lance had insisted on referring to Russell as Soda Pop since the two were classmates twenty-five years earlier. Russell had protested, but Lance waved him off. “What was Pony Boy’s brother’s name?” he had asked, referring to Rob Low’s character in The Outsiders, a movie the two had watched often during their high school days. “If Soda Pop is good enough for Rob Low, it’s good enough for Russ Callahan.”

“What time will you be in your office, Lance?” Russell asked.

“I was headed out the door when you rang.”

“Good. I’ll meet you there.” Russell hit the disconnect button before Lance could answer, tossing the cell phone into the passenger seat.

* * *

“Whatever happened to that old Lawson woman’s property out on Sycamore Street?”

Russell was sitting across from Lance Hamontree in Hamontree’s office inside Wellington Community College’s Building of Social and Natural History.

“Erma Lawson?” Hamontree laughed. “Crazy Ermy. She was a real schizo.”

“What do you mean was?”

“Well, far as I know, no one has seen her since her place was condemned. She didn’t show up trying to hire you, did she? Be careful around that one, Soda Pop. She’s crazy as a March hare.”

Russell shook his head. “Tell me about it. No, she tried to hire me back in the spring, when you guys filed eminent domain on her property.”

Lance raised his eyebrows. “No kidding? I thought you counseled the town on that matter?”

“I did. She came to my office, in a fit of rage because she was being evicted. I had to tell her that I was on the other team. She flipped out. Promised me that I would rue the day I met her, or some crazy shit like that.”

Lance laughed. “Told you she was a schizo. I’ll bet she was wearing those old hobnailed boots, wasn’t she?”

Russell nodded. “Yep. Looked like something out of a Tim Burton film or something. Her clothes looked like they were two hundred years old.”

“Maybe they were.” Lance pulled a file from a desk drawer. “Look at this,” he said, pulling a photo from the file and sliding it across the desk.

Russell studied the photo. “It’s a drawing of Erma Lawson.”

Lance shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Look at the date.”

Russell glanced at the date scrawled across the top of the page. “Seventeen fifty-two?”

Lance nodded, grinning. “We do a class project on local history each term, with teams of students assigned to each area of town. Last semester I assigned a group to the Lawson property. Since Louis Lawson was one of the first land grant holders in that area and the city was condemning the property, I thought it would make an interesting story, ya’know?”

He took back the photo, studying it. “Anyway, one of the kids found this in a book at the library. We figure it must be one of Erma’s great-great-grandmothers. Looks just like her, doesn’t it?”

Russell shook his head. “That can’t be. Look at the clothing. It’s identical.”

Lance nodded. “Yeah. Right down to the hobnail boots. Go figure, huh?”

“Weird.”

“Yep.” Lance stuffed the photo back into the file. “So why the sudden interest in ol’ Crazy Ermy?”

“She called me this morning.”

Lance set up straight. “She called you?”

“Yeah. She threatened me again. Said the day of reckoning has arrived.”

Lance shook his head. “You must be mistaken. She was gone when we tried to evict her. Sheriff Rawlins went up there himself. We gave her forty-five days, you know. She said we would all be sorry and we were expecting a fight. He took two deputies with him. She wouldn’t answer the door, so they kicked it in. Said the place was cleaned out. Looked like it hadn’t been lived in for years, with dust so thick on the floor that they left footprints in it. What do you make of that? Anyway, we—the city council, I mean—kept waiting for her to come and collect her payment for the property. She never showed. No one has seen her since.”

Russell grunted. “Weird. But this was her. I wouldn’t mistake that voice.”

Lance smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Sounded like a teacher’s nails on a black board, didn’t it?”

“Exactly.”

Lance shook his head. “No idea, Russ. But, listen, she might be just an old woman, but I wouldn’t tangle with her, if I were you. She calls you again, you call Sheriff Rawlins. Let him deal with her.”

Russell sighed. “Yeah. I reckon you’re right. Say, you mind if I take that file on the Lawsons with me, kinda look it over?”

Lance slid the folder across the desk. “Be my guest.”

Russell stood up. “Thanks, Hamontree.”

“Don’t mention it, Soda Pop,” Lance grinned.

Russell rolled his eyes. “Oh, by the way,” he said, stopping at the door. “Any idea what dohmas haydeum means?”

Lance narrowed his brow, thinking. “Nope. Don’t think so. Dohmas haydeum?”

“Yeah. That’s what the old bitch said just before she hung up.”

Lance shrugged. “Beats me.”

* * *

Russell was sitting at his desk, thumbing through Lance Hamontree’s file on the Lawson family, when the first coughing fit started. He rummaged through a desk drawer until he found a cough drop, wiped some pocket lint off it, and popped it into his mouth. He didn’t feel well, he realized. He hadn’t felt well since getting out of bed; he’d had a headache all morning, in fact, but had dismissed it as stress over the phone call from Erma Lawson to start the day. Lillian Jones, his secretary, had stopped to turn down the thermostat twice, complaining that it was too warm in the office. Each time, Russell had turned it back up, trying to ward off a strange chill that had settled into his bones. Now he realized that his muscles were hurting. More than hurting; they were beginning to ache.

He shook his head. “It’s the hypochondriac coming out in you,” he muttered. But he dug back into the drawer until he found a few aspirin and popped those, too. Just in case.

Thirty minutes later, he was heading out the door. “Lock up early, Lillian,” he told his secretary. “I’ll be home if anyone important needs me. Don’t feel too well.”

He intended to go home, draw a hot bath, and go over the Lawson file in the tub. But by the time he arrived home twenty minutes later, his only concern was getting into bed. His body ached with fever. He stopped on his way through the kitchen to grab an oral thermometer Janet kept in a drawer. It read 101.4. Dangit. The flu.

The flu had been going around. In fact, it seemed that more people had the flu than didn’t. There were stories of hospitals being overcrowded with patients; of tents being set up in parking lots to treat the sick. Even Wellington General was overflowing with sick patients. It was early for flu, but doctors were calling it swine flu. Not that it had anything to do with pigs. It had started in Mexico, quickly spreading to the rest of the world.

“Typical. Wetbacks are good for nothing but trouble. Am I right, Freddie?” I was thinking the same thing, Russ ol’ boy.

Russell often found himself in conversation with Freddie. As far as he knew, he had never physically known anyone named Freddie. The Freddie he carried on conversations with was his imaginary law partner. He liked Freddie. Freddie didn’t speak unless spoken to—after all, Russell Callahan was no schizophrenic—and he shared most, if not all, of Russell’s points of view.

They were saying it was a particularly deadly strain of flu, especially for young people ages nineteen to thirty-nine. Good thing I’m forty-three, he thought. Russell didn’t believe it was as bad as they were letting on, anyway. Whoever they were. Most people who thought they had the flu probably didn’t have anything except the typical early-autumn sinus crud. He blamed the news media for getting folks all worked up for nothing. There were plenty of lawyer jokes, but why didn’t anyone tell reporter jokes? Because Russell knew the truth: Hot on the rear bumper of every ambulance-chasing lawyer was a bottom-feeding journalist, looking for a cheap story at the expense of someone else’s suffering. The only difference between attorneys and journalists, as far as Russell was concerned, was that one was better educated than the other. And, if they were lucky, better paid.

Russell was thinking these things as he drifted off to sleep, still fully clothed, in the middle of the queen-sized bed he shared with Janet, his wife of eighteen years. In the over-sized mirror at the bottom of the bed, a picture was reflected of a feverish attorney sleeping a deep sleep—broken only by his snoring—as his fever slowly increased.

* * *

Twisting, turning. Moaning. Russell Callahan slept fitfully until his wife shook him awake, alarmed. She asked him what the matter was. Most wives, after all, are unaccustomed to finding their husbands in bed, fully clothed, drenched in sweat and talking to someone named Freddie in their sleep.

“Leph mah alone,” Russell muttered. Janet correctly interpreted that as “leave me alone,” but she had no intention of doing any such thing. Her husband was either sick or hungover. She was banking on the latter and hoping she was wrong. Retrieving her thermometer, she stuck it into Russell’s mouth, taking care to slip the tip under his tongue. A minute later, the LCD display informed her that Russell’s temperature was 102.4.

She shook him again. “Russell, wake up. You have to go see the doctor. You’re sick.”

Russell again waved her off. Worried, Janet went to the phone and called Dr. Terry Delecrouix. Delecrouix maintained a private practice in town. His offices had been closed for at least an hour, of course. But she knew he would agree to see her husband. Russ handled his legal matters pro bono. In exchange, Delecrouix provided medical care for the Callahans pro bono.

An hour later, the short Frenchman was standing in the Callahan master bedroom. He had been just about to take his wife out to dinner when Janet had called. He was irritated at the prospect of an after-hours call, but was well aware of the back-scratching concept of mine-and-yours. He hadn’t forgotten a particular incident a few years earlier, when Russ Callahan had shown up at his house near midnight after a certain former mistress had attempted to blackmail him with compromising photos. He wasn’t sure what tactics Russ had used to make sure the photos disappeared. He had a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t pass the muster of bar ethics, but he was smart enough to not ask questions. To put it bluntly, Delecrouix was indebted to Russell.

A nasal swab—Delecrouix had grabbed a quick influenza test as he left his office—confirmed that Russell had type A influenza.

“It’s definitely flu,” he told Russell, who had been coaxed awake by Janet to eat some chicken soup through his fits of coughing. “We can’t be sure it’s swine flu, of course, but it’s a pretty safe bet.”

Janet sucked in her breath. Delecrouix smiled. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you, Jan. The news media blows these things all out of proportion. Swine flu is really not much different from the regular flu that goes around every year.”

“Isn’t it true that swine flu kills more people than the regular flu?”

“Not really. We just hear more about swine flu deaths because they’re under a microscope. For healthy people, there is very little threat associated with flu. With any luck, Russ here will run a fever and have a lot of coughing for a couple more days, then he’ll begin to gradually get better.”

As Delecrouix talked and Janet worried, Russell dreamed. He dreamed of an old lady with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and held in place by bony fingers.

* * *

Staring at the damned mirror.

Russell couldn’t help himself. What else was there to do? He had slept out; slept until he thought he might never sleep again. Sitting up made his head swim. He was afraid to stand up; afraid he might be picking himself up from the floor if he tried. His fever was a consistent 103 degrees. Every joint in his body hurt; even his hair hurt. So, he lay in bed. And stared at the mirror.

But sleep can sneak up on a body. He thought he had banked enough sleep for a week, but Russell soon found himself drifting back into the realm of the subconscious. Erma Lawson continued to haunt his dreams. He dreamed of sheriff’s deputies busting through the front door of the old Lawson shack and discovering the place deserted. As the deputies scratched their heads and looked around the room, puzzled, a voice echoed through the shack, seeming to come from everywhere; seeming to come from nowhere. It meant nothing to the befuddled deputies. It meant everything to Russell:

“The day of reckoning has come.”

During his waking moments, Russell stared at himself in the mirror. When he slept, he dreamed of Erma Lawson. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Glancing at the atomic clock beside his bed, he saw that the time was only twenty minutes past eleven. In the a.m. He groaned. It already seemed as if he had been lying in bed for the better part of a week.

As he was waking up from his fourth—or maybe it was five; he couldn’t remember—period of sleep, Russell found himself staring at the picture that hung over the head of the bed. Staring at it through the mirror, of course. It was a framed print that Janet had picked up at some junk store, he was sure. The painting depicted a wolf lying next to a log in a forest clearing. The wolf had a jagged scar across its nose, as if it had tangled with another wolf and won. A slain rabbit lay at the wolf’s feet. Russell thought the picture was morbid; better suited for a deranged hunter’s lodge than a contemporary bedroom. But Janet insisted on hanging it over her bed. And when Janet insisted, she usually got her way. Hence, the mirror.

The wolf’s yellow eyes seemed to pierce through the canvas on which they were painted. Russell found himself staring into the wolf’s eyes. They seemed to grow larger as he stared. They were dazzling, like a harvest moon illuminating an early September night sky. He found himself blinking, thinking that he would be hypnotized by the eyes if he looked for too long.

* * *

Janet arrived home at five o’clock. She was right on schedule. She headed straight into the bedroom, where she took Russell’s temperature (103.4), then stood by the bed with a worried frown, clenching and unclenching her hands. When he spoke, it startled her; she hadn’t realized he was awake.

“I was hoping you had come to put me out of my misery, but I see you’re unarmed,” he said, a wan smile playing across his face. Janet would have ordinary worried that her husband was becoming suicidal, and spent the next two evenings analyzing whether his words were serious. But she was taken aback by his smile. It was faint, but it was still a smile. And Russell Callahan didn’t waste smiles. Later, she would lie on her side of the double bed as he snored the heavy, broken snores of the afflicted and try to remember the last time she had seen him smile. Her memory search would come up empty.

“You up for dinner?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Maybe just some 7-Up.”

She smiled, patted his arm.

“And my file from Lance Hamontree? Could you get it? It’s by the front door.”

“Sure,” she said, her smile widening. If he’s well enough to work, maybe he’s feeling better, she reasoned. Maybe he won’t develop pneumonia after all.

Russell wasn’t feeling up to working, but he did hope to flip through the Lawson file. Maybe it would give him something to do besides stare at the mirror. Since his eyes had settled on that morbid painting, he found himself drawn to the wolf’s eyes every time he glanced into the mirror. There was something unsettling about the way the animal’s eyes pierced through the glass.

* * *

Another night of fitful sleep—laden with dreams, of course—gave way to morning. Janet was off to work before dawn filled the bedroom with its ambient glow. The fever hadn’t relinquished its grip on him during the night. If anything, it had gotten worse. He felt as if he had been crushed beneath a slow-moving steam roller. Even his teeth hurt to the touch.

As the rising sun lit the room, Russell found his eyes drawn to the mirror again, to the bed where a slightly overweight, slightly balding attorney lay. Good, I’m still alive, he thought. But, geez, if he didn’t look like death. Then his eyes were drawn to the painting. Of course, the painting.

The wolf’s piercing eyes. The dead rabbit, its eyes wide with terror and eternally fixed. God, what had Janet been thinking when she purchased the painting? He scanned the dark forest behind the wolf, who was apparently about to dine on the dead hare. The second wolf was lurking in the shadows of the forest’s edge, as if it was still on the prowl for its own defenseless small animal.

Wait a second, Russell thought.A second wolf? Why hadn’t he ever noticed a second wolf before? Because you were too busy trying to ignore the picture, just like you try to ignore the mirror. Still, something about the picture seemed very wrong. He was trying to wrap his mind around exactly what it was when he drifted off to sleep once more.

The wolf’s yellow eyes continued to pierce through the mirror.

* * *

Trying to concentrate made his dizziness seem worse than ever, but Russell was tired of simply lying in bed, feeling useless. After waking from his latest nap, he began to flip through Hamontree’s file on the Lawsons. He pulled out the drawing dated 1752, marveling again at how the woman depicted on the paper looked like a spitting image of Erma Lawson.

There were other drawings as well. One dated 1823; one dated 1865. The 1823 drawing caught his eye. He had seen this one as Hamontree had flipped through the file. The subject was a man, but the similarity between he and Erma Lawson was undeniable. He must’ve been one of the Lawson clan. But it wasn’t the man’s face that caught Russell’s attention. It was his pet, or what appeared to be a pet: A wolf, sitting at the man’s feet. When he had looked at the picture previously, he had noticed the wolf, but hadn’t paid it much attention.

Russell had been stricken by the uneasy feeling earlier that something wasn’t right with the painting on the bedroom wall. Now he knew what it was. It was the scar across the wolf’s nose; the scar that made it look as if the wolf had fought his way to the head of the pack. He had seen a wolf with that scar before.

The wolf in the drawing from the file bore a jagged scar across its nose.

Russell was more spooked than he cared to admit. He decided to call Hamontree and talk to him a little more about the Lawson research project. But after swinging his feet to the floor, he thought better of it. His head began pounding and the room began to spin around him. Russell dropped his head back onto the pillow and stared at the wolf’s eyes in the mirror until he slowly nodded off to sleep.

As he slept, his fever returned with a vengeance.

* * *

The dreams returned, of course. Russell found himself in a dark forest. It was difficult to see, and Russell wished he had a light. Darkness didn’t appear to have fallen, but the canopy of trees blocked out the sun and much of the sky. Beneath them, the shadows were dark and long, and a mist rose from the ground. Russell looked down and realized he couldn’t see his feet through the mist.

He began walking, as if drawn by an unheard voice. He wasn’t sure where he was going, only that he needed to follow the direction his feet were taking him. He grasped tree limbs and branches to guide himself through the dark, occasionally bumping into a tree or wincing as an unseen branch slapped into his face.

Eventually, he noticed a lightening of the forest ahead. As he drew nearer to the source of the light, he realized it was actually a field. A small river flowed beside the field. He wasn’t surprised to realize that the field was the clearing from the painting. The wolf was hunched beside the log near its edge. It turned to look at Russell, baring its teeth as it saw him. He heard the beginnings of a guttural growl deep in the wolf’s throat.

Russell wasn’t sure whether to stand his ground or turn and run. He tried to think back to the wilderness survival classes he had taken as a Boy Scout. Bears and rabid dogs. Avoiding attack depended on how you acted in their presence. One you were supposed to maintain eye contact with. The other you were supposed to avoid eye contact with. One you were supposed to intimidate with a lot of noise. The other you were supposed to keep quiet. Damned if he could remember which was which.

Russell looked at the river, wondering whether the wolf would dare to swim across. As he looked at the clear water weaving through the edge of the forest, he was surprised to find that he was thirsty. Overcome with thirst, in fact. The wolf was momentarily forgotten as Russell stared at the water. He found himself walking towards the river’s edge. he stepped on a twig, and the sound it made as it snapped jerked Russell’s attention back to the wolf. The animal was still watching him intently, but was no longer snarling. In fact, it seemed merely indifferent to Russell’s presence.

As Russell stood and watched the wolf, it lowered its head, and Russell noticed for the first time the rabbit at its feet. Of course there is a rabbit, he thought. There was a rabbit in the painting, wasn’t there? Remembering the second wolf in the picture, Russell turned his gaze to the back of the field. He couldn’t see well through the gloom and the mist, but the pair of yellow eyes glowing through the darkness was unmistakable. As he watched, a second pair of eyes joined the first. And then a third.

A tearing sound caused Russell to look back to the wolf nearest the river. He felt his stomach flip as he saw that the wolf was ripping the rabbit’s belly with its teeth, eating the dinner that it had caught. The wolf watched Russell intently as it chewed. He couldn’t be sure, but Russell thought he saw blood dripping from the wolf’s mouth. Supper time, he thought insanely, and laughed. The sound echoed through the forest, and Russell realized that it was the only sound he had heard since entering the strange forest. Besides the wolf, of course, which had stopped chewing and was once more growling deep in its throat. Russell’s heart leaped into his throat, sure that the wolf would surely attack this time. After all, he was much closer now than he had been before; he had walked to the edge of the water.

But the wolf appeared to once again disregard Russell after a moment, and turned its attention back to its meal. After sniffing the dead rabbit, it lowered its teeth and ripped another chunk from the carcass. Russell choked down an urge to vomit.

* * *

Lance Hamontree sat in his office, broodingly staring at the clock on the wall. He thought about calling Russell, to check up on his old friend, but decided against it. He had been stricken with flu himself a couple of weeks earlier, and knew first-hand that the last thing Russell would want was a phone call to disturb his rest.

In fact, if Hamontree had been standing in the master bedroom at the Callahan residence, he would have known that Russell would have welcomed a phone call, especially one from his old friend. Russell had awakened from his sleep with a 105-degree fever. Half-mad with the delusion often associated with a high fever, he had glanced at the painting in the mirror and noticed that the two wolves in the picture had turned to four; the wolf with the rabbit, which Russell had come to think of as the alpha male, and three in the far edge of the clearing.

The additional wolves weren’t the only changes Russell noticed in the painting. As he looked at the alpha male, which appeared to be grinning at him, he saw blood dripping from its jaws. He tried to dismiss what he was seeing as a symptom of the high fever, but it didn’t work.

For the first time in his adult life, Russell Callahan was terrified.

But Hamontree didn’t know these things. Instead, he found himself thinking back to what Russell had told him about his encounter with Erma Lawson. Crazy Ermy, the guys on the town council had called the troublesome old woman.

Dohmas haydeum. That’s what Russ had said the old woman had told him before hanging up the phone. It would have been easy to dismiss it as the ramblings of a woman gone mad, but there was something about the words that set off alarm bells in Hamontree’s head. He had heard them before. They were on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t quite spit them out.

Grabbing a sheet of paper, Hamontree scrawled the words on the page, hoping that would jostle his memory. Dohmas haydeum. He stared at the words for several minutes. Finally, he shook his head with a smile and threw the paper into the trash can. He was accomplishing nothing. Besides, it was time to go home.

Grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair, Hamontree started to flip off the light, then stopped. He snatched the crumpled paper from his waste basket and smoothed it on his desk. He looked at the words again, sounding them silently in his head. The click was almost audible as his brain engaged. Not dohmas haydeum; domus Hadeum.

Domus Hadeum. It was Latin for Greek mythology’s Realm of Hades: The final resting place of the dead.

* * *

Russell was back in the forest. Feeling his way through the darkness and the mist. Approaching the clearing. Feeling the urge to lie down and drink from the stream. Hearing the low, guttural growl from the alpha male wolf with the slain rabbit.

Behind the field, deeper in the forest, another wolf howled. Russell shivered. He looked into the field. What had been only a few pairs of glowing eyes at the back of the field had turned to dozens. Hundreds, even. Russell tried to resist a strong urge to urinate.

“Can you wet your pants in a dream, Freddie?” You bet you can, Russ ol’ boy. You bet you can.

Russell laughed hysterically at the thought of talking to himself in a dream. The wolf jerked its head up and the growling resumed. Behind him, the dozens—no, hundreds—of wolves in the shadows behind the field circled impatiently, their yellow eyes dancing in the damp darkness.

Russell felt an urge to cross the stream and enter the field. A voice he recognized as his own demanded that he stop. He waved his hand at the invisible source of the words and stepped into the cool waters of the stream. The alpha male stood up abruptly, seeming to forget his prey for the first time. The growl from deep in his throat turned into a snarl, his lips curled back to reveal glistening white teeth that dripped with the rabbit’s blood. The pairs of eyes in the back of the field began to materialize into full bodied wolves as they stepped from the shadows into the light, advancing on the stream. Russell heard that they, too, were growling and snarling. A couple of them yipped impatiently as he had often heard hunting wolves yip when he lived in Montana.

“This is stupid. This is really stupid, Freddie.” Go on, Russ ol’ boy. The cure is just beyond the shadows. “Through there? The wolves will never let me pass.” Sometimes things aren’t as they appear, Russ. Go for it. The cure is just beyond the shadows.

Russell felt his bare toes sinking in the black mud that covered the bottom of the stream. He looked down and realized for the first time that he was wearing the Dallas Cowboy pajamas Janet had given him last Christmas.

He was close enough to see the raised hair on the alpha male’s back. A couple more steps and he would clear the stream on the far side. He hesitated as the wolf continued to stalk towards the bank.

The cure is just beyond the shadows. “Go to hell, Freddie.” Freddie laughed.

Russell stepped onto the bank. The alpha wolf lunged.

* * *

Janet was annoyed by the sound of the ringing doorbell. “As if I don’t have enough to worry about,” she muttered as she headed for the door. But it was only Lance Hamontree.

“Hey Janet,” he said. “How’s Russ?”

“Sleeping. He hasn’t changed. I’m worried about him.”

“Dangit. I was hoping he would be awake.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Not really.” Hamontree paused. “Janet, did Russ say anything about a phone call this morning? An Erma Lawson?”

Janet frowned. “No. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name. Who is she?”

“Just an old client,” Hamontree lied. “So he didn’t get a phone call this morning?”

“Yes, he had a call. I answered, but it was only Lillian Jones, his secretary.”

Hamontree nodded. “Okay. Listen, I let Russ borrow a file and I need it back. Do you mind—”

“No, not at all. C’mon. I’ll show you to his bedroom.”

Hamontree followed Janet to the bedroom, then nearly bumped into her as she abruptly stopped just inside the door. He was about to ask if she was alright when she screamed.

Brushing past Janet, Hamontree pushed his way into the room. His eyes first fell on Russell, comforter pulled to his chin as he slept, then to a picture hanging above the bed. The painting depicted a puppy in a field, playing with a ball of string beside a fallen log.

Then Hamontree saw the insanely huge mirror. Two words were repeatedly scrawled in lipstick across the mirror and the walls: Domus Hadeum.

“Who’s been in here?” Hamontree asked, turning to Janet.

She had stopped screaming and was looking at the mirror, eyes wide. “Nobody,” she whispered.

“Somebody must’ve been in here.” Hamontree’s tone was demanding. “You haven’t seen an old woman with a black shawl hanging around here lately?”

“No,” she insisted. “And nobody has been in here but me and, last night, Doctor Delecrouix. We only have the front door and I’ve been home all afternoon.”

“Well, somebody had to vandalize this room.”

Janet shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said, still whispering. “That’s Russell’s handwriting!”

“Bullshit,” Hamontree said. He tried to mask his fear with anger, and failed. He recognized the lipstick-smeared handwriting very well.

The carpet caught his eye. Black, muddy footprints, leading from the mirror to the bed.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Janet, walking further into the room, saw the footprints and gasped.

Hamontree walked over to Russell’s bed and pulled the covers back. Russell’s Cowboy pajamas were wet from the waist down, his legs covered in black mud. The bedsheets were a mess, smeared with the mud.

“He’s been outside,” Hamontree said.

“That’s nonsense,” Janet cried. “He couldn’t have gotten past me without me seeing him. Besides, he’s in no shape to get out of bed.”

It was true, Hamontree thought. Russell couldn’t get out of bed. For anything. The ammonia-based smell of urine was faint, but unmistakable.

“Call the doctor,” he said.

Janet nodded and started for the door.

“Call Sheriff Rawlins, too,” Hamontree called after her.

Hamontree tried to wake Russell, who stirred and muttered in his sleep. Only a few words were intelligible. For some reason, Hamontree wasn’t surprised to hear that “Erma” and “Lawson” were among them.

Janet reappeared at the bedroom door. “I called 911 and told them to send Doctor Delecrouix and the sheriff,” she said.

Hamontree nodded.

“Lance?” Hamontree looked around at Janet, standing fearfully in the doorway. “What does domus Hadeum mean?”

Hamontree sighed, and pulled a small book on Greek mythology from his pocket.

* * *

“In Greek mythology, the Realm of Hades was the underworld. It was the final resting place for the dead.”

As Hamontree talked, Janet folded and unfolded her hands in her lap, glancing nervously at the bed where her husband lay snoring in his feverish sleep.

“The ancient Greeks believed that all mortals went to the Realm of Hades when they died, to await their punishment or reward, depending on how they lived their life. They believed it was a dark and gloomy place, and the deceased entered by crossing the Acheron River. A beast—a three-headed dog—guarded the far side of the river. Beyond the river, the deceased entered either the Elysian Fields, the Asphodel Meadows or Tartarus, depending on what kind of life they lived. If they were neither good or evil, they would enter the Asphodel Meadows, where they would spend eternity in a land of neutrality. Before entering the meadow, they would drink from the river Lethe and give up their soul and identity, forever.”

Hamontree heard an approaching siren that would doubtlessly be Sheriff Rawlins. Sirens meant emergency. Was this an emergency? Who knew? Who cared? It was best to treat it as one.

“Anyway,” he finished, “the Latin translation for the Realm of Hades is domus Hadeum.”

* * *

Russell was dreaming again. He was returning to the stream, feeling his way through the darkened forest. Looking behind him, he saw his bedroom, and the bed. He realized that he was looking at the bedroom from the perspective of the mirror. At the foot of his bed, Janet was talking to Lance Hamontree. What is Hamontree doing in my bedroom? he wondered, before reminding himself that it was only a dream.

The field was no less gloomy than before, but this time there was no growling from the alpha male. The big gray wolf sat silently by the slain rabbit, his mouth seemingly pulled back into a grin, as if to welcome Russell. The scores of other wolves at the back of the field were no longer nervous. Instead, they sat patiently, as if awaiting an order from an unseen master.

Russell paused near the water’s edge. The cure is just beyond the shadows, he heard Freddie say. “Yeah, Freddie. I know. Just beyond the shadows.” He laughed. And stepped into the river.

The wolf didn’t raise its hackles this time; it didn’t budge. Just the same, Russell watched it catiously as he crossed the stream. When he stepped onto dry land on the other side and the wolf still didn’t move, he was convinced the danger was over. Whatever had made the wolves hyper last time, they were calm now.

As he had come into sight of the stream, Russell had again been overcome with thirst. After stepping onto the river’s far bank, he knelt by the edge of the water and drank. The water was cool and so very good. Russell drank greedily as he felt the cool liquid flowing down his parched throat. Finally, when he felt he could hold no more, he stood up, wiping his mouth with the back of his shirt sleeve as he stepped into the meadow.

Now he was sure: The wolf was grinning at him. No longer sitting on its haunches, the wolf had stood on its rear legs, as if it had spent all its life walking upright and on two legs instead of slinking about on all fours.

Russell looked nervously behind him. But he knew it was too late; the river seemed to be swelling, its previously clear, calm waters swirling and turning blood red. Getting back to the safety of the far side would be impossible.

Looking back at the wolf, Russell discovered something else: Its face had taken on an uncanny resemblance to the wrinkled face of an old woman. A tattered shawl was draped around its neck.

“Freddie?” Russell called. Freddie didn’t answer.

* * *

“Dadgummedest thing I ever seen,” Sheriff Rawlins said. He rubbed his hands across his big belly as he sat in the chair Janet had pulled in from another room.

“What do you make of it, Sheriff?” Hamontree asked.

Rawlins shook his head. “I dunno. But I’ll tell you this: This boy ain’t been out of his bed.”

Janet nodded. “That’s what I said, Sheriff. I would’ve seen him if he had left the house.”

Rawlins shook his head again. “That ain’t what I’m talkin’ about, necessarily. What I mean is that those aren’t his footprints. I’ve been roaming these woods since I was a boy . . . back when they was still woods and swamps, with hardly any houses around. We have clay. And we have good, rich topsoil. We don’t have black mud like that.”

“Where did it come from?”

“I’ve only seen mud in one place like that around here: Erma Lawson’s root cellar.”

Hamontree felt sick to his stomach. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Erma’s name had popped up, but he was. “What?”

Rawlins nodded. “Yep. When me and the boys went up there to evict her and couldn’t find her, we snooped around her property a bit. We went down into her root cellar. It didn’t look like anybody had been in there in sixty or seventy years. For pete’s sakes, it’s probably been that long or longer since anybody ’round here even used a root cellar. Anyhow, Andy–that’s my chief deputy–went down in there and said he sank up to his ankles in mud. When he came back out, he had that black mud caked all over his shoes.

Janet looked alarmed. “Okay, I’ve heard this Erma Lawson mentioned enough. I think someone had better tell me who she is.”

And as they waited in the bedroom for Dr. Delecrouix to arrive, Hamontree and Rawlins told Janet the story. She listened intently, and they were careful to fill in the details correctly.

No one noticed that Russell Callahan had stopped breathing.

* * *

Janet Callahan should’ve been mourning the loss of her husband, she supposed, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until the mess was cleaned up in the bedroom. So, armed with Lysol cleaner and a bucket of rags, she had tackled first the mud: Throwing the comforter and bed sheets into the trash and cleaning the carpet. Then the mirror. She scrubbed until her elbows were weak, and removed the sloppily-scrawled lipstick from the glass and the wall. Domus Hadeus. Russell had written it seventy-three times. She counted.

Sheriff Rawlins gathered two deputies and went back to the Lawson place to prowl around. He wanted to see if Russell had been up to the old root cellar in a state of delirium the day of his death. The chain and padlock that the city had fastened to the door of the cellar when the condemnation proceedings had finished were still in place. “Well, it’s impossible that he’s been in there,” Andy said. “Even if he broke the lock and got in, how would he have gotten the lock back on again when he left?”

Rawlins shrugged, but told Andy to unlock it anyway. The steps were covered in dust, undisturbed for months. Andy’s footsteps were faint and disappearing from his last trip into the cellar. Rawlins shrugged again, but Andy’s light settled on the floor of the cellar.

“Sheriff, look!”

There, in the middle of the room, were the prints of a man’s bare size twelve foot, sunken into the mud.

As for Hamontree, he had excused himself early from Russell’s wake, and headed for home. He wanted a couple of aspirin and to lie down in his favorite recliner. His head hurt. And he was coughing. Janet worried that he might be catching Russell’s flu, but he told her that was nonsense; he had already had the flu. More likely, it was stress over this whole Erma Lawson twist. He had thought he was shed of that strange old woman when the city council had finished condemnation proceedings against her and she disappeared.

The phone was ringing as Hamontree walked through the front door. He tossed the Lawson file onto a side table as he headed for the phone.

“Hello?” he answered. There was a pause on the other end. Then a voice. Hamontree would’ve been excused if he looked like he had just seen a ghost. In some ways, he had. The voice on the other end was unmistakable.

“The day of reckoning has arrived.”

* * *

Muddy footprints. Writing; not in lipstick, but with a PermaMarker. The words were the same, though. Domus Hadeus. Written seventy-four times in all. Sheriff Rawlins counted.

Nobody had alerted authorities when the bachelor Lance Hamontree hadn’t shown up at work. The college decided he must be taking some days off. But after the fourth day with no notice from Hamontree, John Higgins, the dean of the school, had had enough. He sent Katy Cobbins to Hamontree’s home to see what was going on. Katy was an eighteen-year-old freshman working hours in the school’s front office to pay for her academic scholarship. She wasn’t prepared for what she found inside Hamontree’s house when, after knocking with no answer, she simply opened the unlocked door and walked in to the sharp stench of decay.

* * *

Rhyne Shipley had been city manager of his hometown for twenty years. He was not happy to find out that one of his most faithful allies on the city council for sixteen of those years had died. He was even less happy when Sheriff Rawlins called and demanded a conference, throwing around words like “homicide” and muttering something that sounded like “dome us hey to us.”

Most of all, Shipley was not happy when the sheriff invoked Erma Lawson’s name. He had never been comfortable with the old woman and was happy to be shed of her when the board voted to condemn her property. He was even more happy—and immensely relieved—when she left without a fight, seemingly vanishing into thin air.

So Shipley was happy when Sheriff Rawlins had finished his report and left his office. He bade Rawlins goodbye and closed the door behind him. Taking a bottle of bourbon from his desk drawer, he sat down with a contented sigh. He wanted to have a drink. Maybe it would be just the thing to cure the headache he had had all day.

But before he could raise the glass to his lips, the phone rang. All the other city hall personnel had gone home for the day, and he decided not to answer it. But after the fifteenth ring, he relented and picked up the receiver. The voice was whispered and unclear. The message, however, was very clear.

“The day of reckoning has arrived.”

* * *

Wallace Stephens and George Shaw had been city council members in Wellington for two terms. Over glasses of beer at Ralph’s Sandwich Shop, they talked about the fact that the city manager, a fellow councilman and the town’s attorney had died strange deaths. First Wallace coughed. Then George. And as they talked, each mentioned to the other that he believed he might be coming down with something.

– 10/27/09