Page 127 of Mazywood

He almost hadn’t called Mazelle. For six nights, he went to bed with a clean heart knowing that one more day had passed without calling her. He hadn’t had sex in nearly a year—and Maria hadn’t touched him in as long as he could remember—but he hadn’t called the most beautiful woman he knew even after she invited him to.

Jerry felt the hair on the back of his neck tingle, so he turned around and saw that Mazelle was watching him from the window the way she had been waiting for him to arrive. He couldn’t make out the look on her face through the pane, but something was wrong with this girl that wasn’t just about a disappointing career. He imagined that adorable smile she’d had when she first started playing Little Mazy, winning over the whole world, including him.

He blew her a half-hearted kiss and didn’t wait for a reaction before he followed the path toward the side of the property. Hope you’re okay, kid.

He walked toward the three cabins, taking the pathway through the lawn turned muddy by snow melting in direct sunlight. Ahead, the cabins were nestled by snowbanks in the shadows of the trees blanketing this side of the property. As he walked, he noticed that Mazelle was matching his pace inside the house, moving from window to window to watch him in that bright red robe. She scurried like she wanted to make sure he wouldn’t break in.

Crazy broad, he thought despite his efforts at penitence. He needed to get the hell home.

The white wooden cabins across the backyard from the kitchen porch were fashioned like miniature seaside cottages with their own small porches. Ten yards sat between each of them, an impression of solitude. Hadn’t the driver said he was going to a cabin? Jerry paused, scanning them. None of the cabins looked occupied, all curtains drawn and lights off.

With an embarrassed sigh, he climbed the steps of the nearest cabin and knocked on the door. “Hey, uh…” What did he say his name was? “… Grady? Sorry, but this ain’t working out, man. Can you just give me a ride back to town?”

No answer. Nothing stirring. Shit.

At the next cabin, he knocked again. “Grady?” he called.

No sound came from inside.

But behind him, a loud set of wind chimes rattled with discordant music, nearly burying the thunk against the house’s wall. Jerry whirled around so fast that his neck cramped, but he wasn’t fast enough to see anything except gold-colored chimes swinging wildly beneath a window farther down the wall.

That wasn’t any fucking wind. Had Mazelle done that?

But no—when he looked toward the closed kitchen door, he saw her red robe pressed against the window inside. She wouldn’t have had time to run to the other window to ring those chimes, much less get back in place so fast. She was just watching him like… (Like she’s waiting for something.)

A heavy shroud of dread fell over him. Something was going on not quite within his grasp, and his chest felt bricked up. She’d brought him out here to the middle of nowhere and now her driver had vanished?

“Grady?” Jerry called as he jogged to the last cabin. This one was the most shaded by tighter formations of pine trees, with cooler air because of the packed snow. He knocked with unintended force, six or seven times. His knocking was loud enough to hear anywhere on the grounds, with the side of his fist, the way he would have pounded if he were trapped in a dark room. “I’ll pay you thirty bucks cash to drive me to town!”

No one was going to answer. He panted. His breath’s condensation showed him how hard he was breathing.

He’d walked into a trap. In his old neighborhood, you had good instincts or you didn’t grow up, and Giovanni Lorenzo had always had excellent instincts. Everything inside him screamed that he should run. (Did you tell anyone you were coming here? she’d asked. Jesus.)

This stank of a hit job. But instead of having her driver shoot him in the car, Mazelle seemed to be toying with him. Playing a game. You stupid pezzo di merda, he chastised himself.

He looked up at the trees spiraling above him and realized he had seen this place before—in a dream. The night he had the inspiration to take Mazelle to the party at the Ambassador, he’d dreamed of standing in a spot identical to this one, penned in by towering pines on the porch of a white dollhouse. The memory colored itself in with each new detail.

And Scout. Mazelle’s dog had been standing on the kitchen porch staring at him from nearly the same spot where Mazelle was watching him now.

But he hadn’t been Scout as he’d known him. In his dream, Scout had been growling at him, gnashing his teeth, his eyes flashing pale white. And blood had caked the dog’s nose and mouth. It had seemed so real, had scared him so much, that he couldn’t stop thinking about Mazelle all day. And he’d told her about his dream that night in his office.

The rest was the booze, too awful to remember.

Now she wanted to kill him. And now he was here, yanked into that long-ago nightmare by strings he couldn’t see. The dream had been trying to warn him even back then.

He had to get to the road.

Instead of being loud, now Jerry sought silence. He crept down the porch steps, avoiding snapping twigs and ice. He glanced at the kitchen door’s window to see if Mazelle was still watching him—and her neck swiveled to track him like a falcon’s as he ran toward the gate. Her face was gleeful with that awful grin.

Jerry ran as far as the middle cabin, then he heard snow shifting parallel to him, on the other side of the cottage. It sounded like something being dragged fast by machinery. When he stopped running to try to assess the threat, the sound stopped.

He bent over, his hands on his knees. His rising clouds of breath made him realize he might die here. Mazelle wouldn’t need a shotgun—the strain of his presence here was already killing him. When he inhaled, his chest hitched when he’d only taken half a good breath. He might be having a fucking heart attack.

But he couldn’t shame Maria by dying here, so he started running again, one leg loping wildly as he searched for a gait that didn’t squeeze tears into his eyes from the pain. His hand was on his chest, pressing as if to keep his ribs from seeping through his fingers.

The odd racing sound beside him started again, but this time Jerry clocked the movement. Nothing was being dragged—something was racing with him. Whatever it was, it was fast. It moved in short bursts, changing direction slightly in rhythmic pauses, but it wasn’t Grady.

Something low to the ground. The size of a dog.