“Cool, baby.” I turn to G. “Can you fucking believe Kandel is playing the organ? Just like Hank and just like K!”

“Sounds like Vincent Price possessed by Linda Blair. Could mean she’s inhabited by Henry. The Hankenlew. Could mean anything. We don’t even know it’s her yet. My beach vision has evaporated. Means we’re gonna have to go up those winding stairs.”

“So you have no additional psych on this, G?” I’m wondering what the Linda Blair reference was—is she a dyke? Did Hank have a Linda Blair fetish? Lonnie certainly did. I remember him saying to me once, “Anyone who can fucking hover over the bed is OK in my book,” like it was a sex skill. No time to ponder.

++++++++++++++

Then the creepy as all shit organ starts up. “ ‘Vincent Price possessed by Linda Blair’ is how I think you described this, G,” I go. “And I didn’t even know what you meant by that.”

“I dunno either,” G says. “I had a crush on Linda Blair at one time, that’s about it, and not when she was a kid, when she was older. She was in a film called Savage Streets, I rented it on VHS and it got me off somehow. Maybe around the time my fuck of a hubby was brutalizing me.”

“Woman noble—innermost—forever!” P says, somewhat inscrutably, though I guess she’s just pumping a honeysuckle fist for G and Linda Blair.

“So how are we playing this, G?” I ask. “Just like last night?”

“Yeah. Stay on my hip with the shotgun. Paulina a few stairs back, Miriam at the bottom of the stairs and watching the door. And first we check the main room, staying outta view from the balcony, though they woulda heard the car this time, the organ wasn’t playing when we pulled up.”

The crows fly off as we approach the door, which was pretty much expected. Actually, I was expecting them to talk, do a fucking Heckle and Jeckle or something, but that’s just my paranoia.