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The train rattled on, as did the projector; the sheet-screen burned still, heatless, unconsumed. And I felt Mrs. Whitcomb rock back on the heels of her high-buttoned boots as though slapped, kick-skirt flaring; felt her lips tighten, her heart skip, her ears burn. Felt her give a long, ragged breath, before gathering enough courage to ask the terrible thing before her—

What?

(you heard me, daughter)

I’d never seen a photo of Hyatt; there weren’t any that I knew of. So instead I saw Clark, of course—grinning sly over his shoulder, trying to catch my gaze so he could spout a string of well-memorized advertising jargon and have me sing it back to him in the same slurred, jazzy way, all inflection, no real content. A bare sketch of conversation, pared down to the simplest of all emotions: contact, acknowledgement, affection. I see you, Mommy; do you see me? I—

(love)

The idea, sweet Jesus. The very fucking idea of something, anything, telling me that, about Clark . . . it lit me up, inside. Or was that her, Mrs. Whitcomb? All that fear, all that awe—

—and now, anger, sweeping it all away. Plain human rage, like a landslide. Like a flood.

You took my son, she said, toneless. And you killed him. Continuing then, for all she must have known it meant nothing: How long ago? Was it the same night, or later? Did he live with you, here? Was he happy, even for a little while? He loved you, you vile thing; I saw the evidence—his drawings, his trances, his tiny ecstasies. God damn me, I loved you too, in my way.

I was never given a choice not to.

And here I remembered an interview I’d read once with Larry Cohen, non-practising Jew and director of many fine no-budget horror films (The Stuff, Q: The Winged Serpent, It’s Alive!), in which he said that if any of us really believed in God then every time we prayed, the only thing we’d ask for would be for Him to leave us the hell alone.

To all of which Lady Midday didn’t quite nod, but neither did She—did It—completely disagree. Only replied, in that same dreadful voice—

(he does his work, yes, for which he was chosen)

(as you do that for which you were chosen)

(as you complete it, now)

And again: What?

The film, of course: Mrs. Whitcomb’s ultimate vision of Lady Midday, plucked straight from her head and packaged for mass consumption, with Vasek Sidlo’s unwitting help. The image that forms a door, opening from both sides, to let Lady Midday—her inspirational muse’s gaze, her inquisitor-executioner’s judgements, her ceaseless thirst for sacrificial blood—back into an unwarned, unprotected, supposedly safely disbelieving world at last.

To take possession of someone capable of mastering this language of images and illusion, almost from birth, and use it to create something that could seize an entire audience’s hearts and minds at once, restarting the cycle of worship in an altogether new way.

Dzèngast had been destroyed during World War I, I

vaguely recalled from my research, long after Mrs. Whitcomb’s ill-fated honeymoon. Which meant that our all-powerful She had already been effectively busted back down to a fairy tale by the 1920s, one unlikely to be told outside Wendish circles, with fewer and fewer people identifying as such. So how else could She expect to gather together another patch of “old heathens” to feed Her the elderly and compromised, to chuck their exceptional offspring into the earth’s open maw, if not through the wildly flourishing new international church of cinema? Where else could She hope to find and train a fresh Kantorka, one whose Cult of Lady Midday-proselytizing songs and stories might reach millions without Her even having to open Her mouth?

And Mrs. Whitcomb had played right into it, trying to save Hyatt, trying to save herself. Trying to placate this creature that chased her from cradle to grave, from the murder field in Lake of the North District, where she’d first felt Her touch, to this fast-moving Toronto-bound passenger train she stood in now, watching reality’s skin peel away under the toxic weight of her life’s “work.”

Thinking: I saw You. I saw Your reflection. You were behind me, like a light, on fire; You cast me like a shadow, and then I disappeared. And since then there has been nothing but light, and the light is still here, and I just want it to stop, all of it. I want to sleep, to lie down in the dark. I want it to stop.

Poludnice, a little sunstroke, under whose scrutiny this shell of delusion in which we cocoon ourselves becomes nothing but dust and ashes. That moment of knowing things are literally irreparable, a last jolt before nothingness, as you shrink down to an easily extinguishable spark.

Was this what you saved me for, from my father? Mrs. Whitcomb asked. Was this the game, all along? Was I never anything but a key to you, and my boy the key to me?

Those pitiless eyes. That unforgiving glare. These words, soft as death, and just as inescapable.

(what else?) was all Lady Midday could apparently think to ask in return.

The film blazed on, impossibly bright. No darkness anymore, no contrast. Around it, the train compartment had begun to bleach, to lose consistency. Because Lady Midday was so close now, close enough to touch the screen from its other side. In a moment, she would climb through, and Mrs. Whitcomb could do nothing to stop it—tear down the sheet, perhaps, and stuff her back inside? No. The wall beneath would split; the train would crack in half. The sky would crack, and take the earth with it.

I did this, I watched Mrs. Whitcomb whisper to herself. I am doing this. I let this happen. Hearing, as she did—

(yes, you did; you do)

(you do my work, for you are mine)

(you always were)