The Sixth Station(94)

Many people in Languedoc, France, still believe that when the wind is blowing in the right direction, a chosen few will always smell the stench of the burning flesh.

I fell into a light sleep—I was more concerned about the assassin I knew than the assassins that I didn’t know sneaking up on me. Nonetheless I began to dream—a nightmare.

In it, I, scary clown hairdo intact but looking like the lady in the tapestry, was standing on the sheer cliff face of a mountain. I was balancing on a rock with one hand, a rope around my waist, thousands of feet above the ground. From the belt of my tunic hung a small leather bag and a sword.

I looked down and saw a massive bonfire in the valley below. My eyes, like binoculars, watched as hundreds of men, women, and children climbed ladders and found places for themselves on the massive woodpile, where they were tied to stakes.

Crusaders lit the wood, while they laughingly made obscene gestures and yelled obscenities to any Templar Knights who had joined the martyrs.

The flames caught immediately and the fire began to lick the soles of the feet of the doomed. They started singing and screaming as they writhed in the flames and their flesh burned off their bones.

I could see faces melting and babies at their mothers’ breasts screaming in torment as their little bodies were consumed.

In a uniform gesture, all those melting faces then turned toward me high above them on the mountaintop. They were beseeching me to do—what? I didn’t know! I could smell the horrible stench of burning flesh and hair. The screams, the screams! The near-dead on the flaming bier sang out words that seared into my brain the way the fires seared into their flesh.

I made a double sign of the cross, turned my back to the mountain, and fell backward into a giant abyss.

I sat straight up in bed—yet again—gasping for breath, covered in sweat, my heart pounding.

There was a horrible stench—and it was real—burning up my nostrils.

Baghdad. God—no. It’s burning flesh!

I jumped out of bed, ran to the window, and threw open the wooden shutters. All seemed peaceful outside, but the smell was so overwhelming that I started to gag.

We’re on fire! I have to wake everyone up!

I ripped the door open to warn the family in the house—and there he was, right outside my door. Calm as can be—Pantera, I mean—sitting on a chair that was propped up against the wall, still sporting that shit-eating smirk.

“You! Why are you sitting here? There’s a fire!”

Without moving so much as a muscle, Pantera said, “No. That would be the smoke from the Prat des Cramats you smell.”

“The Valley of the Burned?”

“Precisely.”

“It’s on fire again?”

“No.”

“But—”

“But does your mother know you open the door to strange men in your underwear?”

I looked down and could feel my face getting red. No, it wasn’t because I had ripped the door open in my panties, but because I had ripped the door open in giant white gramma drugstore panties.

His smirk almost widened into a smile. For the first time I noticed he had a gap in his front teeth.

Shit. This isn’t good.





31





Screw him.… I’m not going to try to cover up. Tough it out.

He looked me up and down. “Don’t worry, I have no desire to overwhelm you and make you mine.”

“You should do stand-up. Ha. Ha. Ha. And frankly, I’d rather eat a pound of escargot. Two pounds.”

I slammed the door, bolted it, and tried to go back to sleep, but the horrid, rancid-smoke smell kept me from falling into a deep sleep. Loath as I was to admit it, however, knowing that Pantera was outside my door, and clearly without malicious intent, did make me less anxious.

A rooster crowed at daybreak, then the church bells began pealing right outside the window, it seemed, and so I rolled around and finally got up.

What are they all rushing to get up to do? There’s nothing to do here.

I took a brisk shower with the handheld faucet in the tub, wiped off with that same one towel, and got dressed.

Again, the choice was jeans, a T-shirt, the same jacket, and boots. I ran my fingers through my tragic ’do and put on the red lipstick.

Why did you do that?

I opened the door. No Pantera.

Huh?

There were two ways downstairs, I discovered. One was via the outside staircase, and the other through a tiny door, which opened to an even tinier spiral staircase that was barely wide enough for my frame. It opened into the kitchen, where Pantera, I was astonished to see, was yucking it up with the family and taking the fresh croissants out of the ancient oven for the landlady, who was clearly smitten.

“Bonjour, Madame Roussel,” Pantera said.