Welcome back, fellow travelers on the highways of American lore. I see you’ve returned to Delaware and have been asking about our stories. All right. Pull over up ahead and let me take you back to back in the day. Don’t worry. You’ll be on your way soon enough though, perhaps not quite in the same frame of mind.

                        

          Picture glossy crimson fingernails gracing carved bone. A small, singular artifact, a jaundiced cylinder boasting a cherubric face under a broad dome lid, its lifting handle formed like a serpent’s tongue. One nail circles its forked end, and giggles.

          “What is it?” Portia Milton asked, flicking back brown hair. She was flirting. Thinking. Avoiding? Perhaps all three.

          Devon Barnes II hawk circled his cluttered Victorian parlor, watching the woman more than the relic she coveted. “Pyxis, a small, harmless Roman storage device, though the name and origin are Greek, I’m told. Some placed jewelry within. This one holds a cosmetic. I’ve only recently gotten them back from a theft a year ago. Went through hell to get this one out of police custody.”

          “Is this human bone?” she joked.

          Devon lowered his head, feigning an ominous tone, “I’ll leave that up to you.”

          By now Portia had picked up the little dead object and held it in the palm of her artificially tanned hand. “Love the baby face. Wait. You said it holds. Not held?”

          “Yes.”

          Her brow creased and back arched. “Huh. Wouldn’t the contents have long ago, I don’t know, dissolved by now?”
          He took what he deemed this opportunity to approach her, very close, to continue circling the lid with his own, blunt, fingernail. He presumed it would elicit more giggling from the young woman. When it achieved the desired result, he smirked. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? However, I have found it’s essence remains as fragrant as when it was first created around the time of Caligula.”

          “Was he a bad emperor or good?” Portia asked.

          “Does it really matter?” Devon leaned forward.

          Portia broadened her smile, titled her head and admired this man’s expensive brown suit. Then she backed away. “I suppose not.” She removed the lid from the chubby-faced innocence of the pyxis and, after a nervous laugh, lifted the container to her nostrils. “Oh! So strong but, it, takes me away to another place, uplifting every sense. Like a liminal space. That is divine.”          

          “Opal balsam and cashmeran, held together by beeswax. At least, that is the estimation from a friend who dabbles in chemistry up at DuPont.”

          “You’re well connected,” she said after another long, exquisite inhalation. “God this is, like, ambrosial?” She found herself feeling airy, a high-heeled shoe lifted up behind her, twirling around the parlor. Girlish giggling intensified. “There’s nothing on the market like this, and the fact it’s still fresh is…”

          “Is erotic too strong of a term between strangers?”

          Her eyes sharpened long enough to thrust the point.

          “I digress.” Devon returned to circling, shoulders limp, upping passivity. “As you can see I have many curios, relics far surpassing those in any antique store up and down the East Coast. My parents were full of stories and old wives’ tales. I grew up on the past, those hitherto forgotten yarns from far away, especially Greece, Rome, and Egypt. Even this little town has heaps of dark legends.” He waited for her to show a sign of interest, but once nothing bubbled to the surface, “If you love this one so much, why not take it with you?”

          “It’s probably pricey,” Portia said, “More than reason enough. I came in here after perusing the other antique shops. This town has a lot, and I mean a lot. Not even the ones in New York or down in Savannah pack it in like here.”
          “Valmar takes more pride in the former dusk  than the coming dawn,” Devon added, studying Portia, seeing her take a bit, an oh-so-miniscule bit of the pyxis’s essence and apply it to tender underbelly of one wrist. Slitting then rupturing of eyes after excitement. The chest heaving, tight upper part of a burnt umber chiffon dress pulling back as its expansive lower end fluttered in a breeze haunting the parlor via two open windows. 

          “Two hundred?” Portia said.

          “I would have offered one,” Devon answered.

          “No!”

          “I have several more. My contacts in Rome and Capua are, ah, rather energetic. We scurried like rats in some rather dank corners. Only the best, and, bonus, as I obtain quality products in good quantity, the low price ensures returning clientele.”

          Now he spoke words that seduced Portia’s ears. So she moved close to him placing the redolent appendage under by his lips. “What do you think?”

          He sniffed but briefly, as if blocked by some intense cold, but chanced to turn the hand over. He pressed his lips against the subtle veins of orange tan skin. “Perfection. A modern woman draped in Roman splendor.”

          One final twirl round the parlor, flitting between small circular tables holding broken skulls from Germany, lead candle holders out of 18th century France, boot scrapers from the Wild West. Shoehorns and ceramic lanterns. Chairs for Quaker children and other nameless unknowables from beyond yesteryear. 

          True to her word, Portia dropped two hundred dollars in crisp bills onto Devon’s countertop, gave the man a playful wink, and made for the front door of this unmarked abode sitting at the end of an alley in this obscure Delaware township.

          “Question. If I run out of fragrance how do I replenish this?”

          “One needs little to gain the pleasures the pyxis offers, so it may well hold you over for a considerable length of time. However, should you require such, simply buy another.” Devon raised an eyebrow.

          Portia accepted what she deemed a challenge. “That confident, are you?”
          “Madame, when it comes ot this particular piece of ancient divinity, my customers always come back.”

          Portia returned home, to Delaware City, a brief jaunt up the way from swampy, tedious, devotional Valmar. Here the Delaware River broadened and the old nineteenth century canals once promised to turn the area into the next Philadelphia sat idle. Victorian buildings along the main street to the river let out unheard chants to sky and water only the haunted fort on Pea Patch Island beyond might hear. 

          She parked a 1971 gold Ford Pinto in the driveway of a symmetrical Federal style brick three-story on Clinton Street. Hair in the wind, nose filled with the salty Atlantic from high tide coming up the river and that precious residual of pyxis charm kept her light on her feet.

          Indoors, purse on the table, Portia meandered past a veritable garden of houseplants and flopped into an old leather chair. She took the cherubric pyxis out of the white gift box Devon had stored it in. She turned it slowly, feeling its minute warbles and nicks under soft fingertips.

          Another whiff of its contents, then she opened all the windows to let in the sea salt, returned to the chair, and rested.

          “Best day out ever.”

          “It’s not trash day,” old Emma Plant said, watching Portia from across Clinton. 

          Portia wiped sweat off her face using the back of thick garden gloves. She had her hair inside a bright red paisley head scarf and form in a T-shirt and denim overalls. “Getting an early start?” She appeared confounded. “Got a rank smell in my house.”
          “Oh?”
          “Yeah,” Portia removed the gloves. “Rancid. I mean, really. Gotta be the trash. It doesn’t smell too bad, just, regular? But it can’t be anything else.”

          “Sure you haven’t killed anyone?” Emma jested.

          “If I ever do it’ll be my landlord.”

          “Now why would you ever wanna take out my sister?”

          “You mean you wouldn’t?”

          Emma shrugged, laughed. “Tried once or twice. But she’s made of sterner stuff than me!”

          Portia joined in on the laughter as she backed away towards the door. “Have a good one.”

          “Hold on a minute. If you’ve got an odor that won’t go away, it might be mold. Better stock up on bleach, and call my sister to have a guy check things out.”

          “Think I can get her to drive down from Boston and actually, I don’t know, do landlord stuff?”

          “Who knows what lurks in the minds of vampires besides sucking us dry,” Emma broke into a chortle, “but you have to try something.”

          “I bet immortality is a real bitch.”

          “Not with her skin, and she’s ten years older than me!”

          Portia waved goodbye and returned to the apartment, picking up The Morning News, sniffing and watering plants. Humming a diddy, maybe Joan Baez, perhaps Joni Mitchell. Couldn’t recall and it didn’t matter, only the mood the vibrations from her mouth offered. 

          By noon she had scrubbed the apartment with such flourish she could almost hear her mother’s resoundant approval from beyond. The very air came in lemon herb zeal, settling her spirit enough to take time to relax. Kick off the tennis shoes. Read the newspaper while sipping orange Pekoe. A long hot shower, followed by several hours of grainy color television programs. Then, to bed, windows open, a whiff of the pyxis for good dreams.

          To push away the stench, which had returned by night. 

          She strode down a phantom lane where everything living and artificial came in the same old arsenic green film shade. People in tunics, going to and fro, some free, others in iron collars. Stone for roads, stucco or cement for buildings winding out forever. In a puddle of rippling water she finds herself, hair coiled tight at the back, curls piled up high forward as if a halo or crown of beauty. She is effervescent, the world her stage–

          A hot gasp after the boom. Portia laid in bed, gripping the covers. She caught nothing but pitch black then let one creeping hand lift off the nightmask. Eyes spacious and aquiver. 

          The noice fell again, on the opposite side of the bed. Frightful, she jumped out before something dared climb in, and grabbed a hefty flashlight kept on the nightstand. Feet hastily shoved into slippers. Slapshot thoughts of running. But Portia remained, glaring across the bedroom, lightbeam shaky towards the open window.

          She sniffed and the free hand went to her gut. Putrid. The whole night had wafted in to drench her in wretchedness and she teetered over which disturbance held more sway.

          A third sound, more of a hard knock on the floor. Around the bed. Four. Five. 

          “Get the hell out of my house!” Portia raised up the flashlight like a club, waiting to brain the man who dared climb up through the window.

          A hump arose on the other side of the bed, wet, burbling. Portia made out a back, bent over to a full, smooth curve. Until the potent symmetries of a spine poked through, constrained only by, not skin or cloth, but some tender integument that never ruptured.

          Another woman came up to meet the bedroom and its shivering flashlight. Curvaceous though embedded inside the unknowable covering that never ceased bubbling. Hair tight, serpentine at the back, crowned in curls high at the front, but splintered and dipped in a viscous gel. She was a form lacking a face. If she had one, it hid behind a veil of a million hair thin strands moving side to side.

          Her form caught Portia by surprise. “What are you doing in my house?”

          The woman held up both hands, shifted her form, and Portia could make out, somehow, this being was admiring herself in the full-length mirror ahead of her. 

          “You reek?” said the woman.

          Portia backed into the bedroom door, fearful of this invader with the lilting tone and body pulsing like a spider’s egg sac.

          “Get out!”

          The woman faced her, hair veil parted by two muscular hands, fingers ending in thick dark feline nails. 

          Portia screamed, enraged. The face made her irrational, frenzied; it had to get out. She charged the woman and pummeled her with the old stainless steel flashlight. One blow three ten back pushing her back, assaulting, creeping damp spine against the open square space of the window.

          Until she swung hard and knocked this thing out of her home. Down. Collapsed, like a damp ball, into a spicebush below.

          Portia slammed the glass frame shut, then the other window. She locked her bedroom door, sat in the corner o the bedroom, knees at her chin, flashlight out. Rocked back and forth through the remainder of night.

          “I can’t understand it,” Portia whispered.

          The state policeman paced her living room, boldly rubbing shoulders with hanging flora. “It’s like I said. While the bush clearly shows signs of having been crushed, lots of snapped branches, there’s no sign of breaking or entering and your bedroom window is intact.”

          Portia bit her lip, then a few fingernails. She returned to folding laundry from the hamper for calm. The policeman noted this, along with the noseplug and rubber gloves on the woman’s hands. 

          “Have you been cleaning?” he asked.

          “On and off. I need to get some bleach for the stench.”

          “Stench?” the policeman lowered his pair of expensive sunglasses to the precipice of his nose. “Like rotten peaches?” 

          Portia’s nose wrinkled. “No! That’s a weird choice.”

          “Pardon, Miss. I come out from down Valmar. Sometimes you catch that old familiar peachy ferment in your nose hairs on hot summer nights. Country folk give more care to scent. Skunk smashed on a backroad. Manure in a fresh field. Gotta learn to appreciate the smell of spilled tractor fuel. The wretched and the sweet. It’s an old expression.”

          “Well this is mid-Fall and there’s nothing sweet about it. My neighbor says I probably have mold.”

          The policeman let a vibrant smirk crease his face. “Is that so? You check for leaks? You know moisture’s the thing when it comes to controlling mold.”

          “Not yet.”

          “Best get on it. Control is key.”

          “Is it now?” She eyed the lawman, not liking his tone, the thumb tucked into the gun holster belt. His particular hunch. The way he never blinked.

          “Well if you haven’t fond anything then I suppose you can go.”

          He went stiff, then, relaxed and smiled broad once more. “Miss.” A terse hat tug, and he went out the door.

          Portia followed, as if afraid he would double back and do, well, exactly what she didn’t know but it required vigilance. She watched him get into his vehicle before looking left. The spicebush, its center mass caved in making it more like a bowl or the poorest example of Japanese bonsai. A quick glance upward; the window closed, whole, secure.

          Unlike her nerves, which shivered raw as the new day had gone stark cold. She bundled up the robe close to her neck, and went inside.

          Screen door locked. Main door as well. Portia put in yet another call to the vampire landlord only to hear an undying ringtone. Unsettled, she headed upstairs. In the bedroom she paused, drained, picked up the pyxis and made for the bathroom.

          Her bathroom had been remodeled in the early 40s, pinkish tiles, a bathtub closed in by sliding doors showcasing acid-etched seagulls. She turned on the shower knob and the hot water to maximum, set the pyxis on the counter after enjoying another scent from its bone interior to banish the demon stench. 

          “Heaven.”

          Pleased, she stepped into the shower, wetted her hair, and acquired Tone soap and a white washcloth. Humming came back into her world to match the mild allure of the perfume still tingling in her mind. Last night regressed. The body cleansed of impurities. 

          Portia wiped her eyes and reached for a bottle of Sunshine Harvest shampoo, applying a healthy amount of the liquid into the palm of her hand. She worked in the chemical, massaging her scalp, eyes closed. Time stopped. 

          On a whim she stretched an arm from the opened glass door and got the pyxis as its scent left her altogether. A pittance of this wonder would and she could smell it with every step. So went the theory. She fingered out just enough to coat the fingerprint and work it into the shampoo, and the entire bathroom steamed in Elysium.

          Portia inhaled over and over, relaxed, soul sedated. She watched water droplets freeze upon glossy skin and whole worlds poured from every one. The entire universe entered her home in the mist of a simple shower, coaxing her away from bad tidings.

          Freed from time, it was only the collapse of water from hypocaust hot to tepid doldrum that reminded her to rinse off and be done. Head under the spray, Portia ran her hands back through soaking locks, head up as if the showerhead was the Sun itself blessing her. Head down, hair over face, she turned off the knob and rang out her hair.

          “Ow!”

          She coughed. Gagged. Strands of hair adhered to her face as she hacked up a sudden bout of phlegm. Hands to face. Wet hair clung. Spread. Down the back and around the breasts, meeting the droplets and taking them on.

          Portia felt it, mucus, on the lips and pulled it away from her face.

          It fell in strands between the fingers, weighty. A sodden veil, sickening bluish hues, And the shape of a face behind it, attached to Portia’s hide.

          “Reek,” it said.

          Portia went to scream but managed only to gurgle aloud, fall back, head striking the back lip of the bathtub as a foot went up, kicking the glass door and slamming against the doorframe. 

          Feverish she tried to get up but her forearms had fat pulsating eggsac arms growing out themselves, new pulpy claw digits pushing down on her own fingers as a mass of water and hair and substances of unknown ilk condensed together from her wet, clean flesh to be another woman. Finer and uglier. Sweeter and harsher. A vile contrarian shoving her skull and very bones into the porcelain.

          She kicked and kicked, only the legs being free from the mass, until somehow she bucked like a horse and got up and over the tub wall, chin smacking into it. Blood drops tickling the fluffy white rug. Hands covered in otherworld birthing arms struggling, battling, against self not self to get up. Out. Away. At last Portia forced herself to a stand long enough to move but slipped right.

          Slippery fingers pushed on the tiles ahead but the new ones, monstrous, fell upon the knobs. Cold shower water blanched an exposed body as Portia gasp reeled tumbled up down fighting to pull It away turn off the knob break free run away live survive get!

          The sudden chill brought out the animal in her. Portia flipped backward and to the side, tumbling out of the bathtub, head hitting the rug while, all along, the same tortuous, wet words tumbled from a foreign mouth.

          “You. Reek.”

          Portia rolled from her back as her stomach churned, noting a sunflower blot of blood from the back of her head growing on the white rug right before her mouth went open again.

          Acidic bile struck the rug. A placental thing, vomit that writhed down and away to run its course behind Portia’s shivering, heaving body. She got up, fingers clamoring for the counter.

          But other digits slipped between hers, folding over, too many knuckles, cat’s claws into the flesh, soft sensual punctures that birthed harsh burns.

          “Reek ah,” It said.

          Portia, hunched over, could only look up ino the fully formed, soaked veil of her attacker, its body attractive in its newfound corpulence. The roving blue that sickened her vision. Hair curls of immaculate freshness. 

          But its breath. Stomach acid dandelion wine. Portia’s face muscles pulled into a mournful frown, unhinged, maligned. 

          It set its invisible face on the pyxis, and the free, jointless arm slithered to it. This brought Portia back to life and, now free to scream, she pulled herself away, snatching up the pyxis from the slow moving thing, moving back. 

          “Stay the hell away from me!” her voice damn near gone, throat tight. She slipped and fell on her behind in the hallway but got on her feet. She raced down the stairs, stubbing toes and breaking a nail on the rail. A laundry hamper by the couch offered her clothes. T-shirt. Bellbottoms. She threw them on, eyes on the stairs, out of breath. Keys purse out the door crying groaning hysterics.

          She was in the Ford Pinto and screeching it out of the driveway as Emma trotted alongside. 

          “Portia Portia what’s gotten into you, honey I heard the most terrible scream coming–”

          But Portia was gone and out, tires pig squealing doen Clinton Street as Emma looked from the sidewinding car to the passive, dull Federal building at ease in Delaware City.

          The only way Portia could keep her legs from trembling was to grip them tight to her body. She sat in the driver’s seat, shivering, rocking back and forth. Lip bitten ragged. Fingertips raw, reddened. Head swooning, chin swollen. She was dazed but too frightened to close swelled, well watered eyes. 

          Now the upper back began to ache as well as one foot and her hips. Heart knew not how to slow its bettering inside her ribs. T-shirt damp from tears and the hair remained wet so now the head had turned cold and the blood coagulated. She had caught a sniffle but could care less. Hope, like shower water, had evacuated every pore and made for nothing but more damp spots on ruined clothes.

          Nothing mattered but sobbing and staring out down Route One where the land had turned to grass and short shrubs, a closed mechanic shop labeled VALMAR AUTO contrasted with the town’s angled stone slab with its never read Latin motto ahead of a flagpole hosting the American banner forever at half mast.

          She couldn’t account for the drive the low gas reading or where she had driven or for how long before coming, inexorably, back to this forgetful hamlet. 

          The Sun, eager to escape this day bit into the horizon, bleeding hot pink and murderous blood orange to taint fading blue. Portia, despondent, turned her head slowly to the passenger seat.

          The pyxis rested there. Perfectly troublesome, like a curse tablet scrawled out by a benevolent god blessed with fragrant, divine madness. Her torn mind had managed the math during the madcap drive. It sourced her terror. She knew this now. How? Well, one break of stained glass sanity at a time.

          And then she wandered the quieting streets of Valmar, lost in its ancient, uneasy charm. She gave no note to its colonial structures or their vaunted dates of construction, the fountain, nor the lingering smell of pork and chicken fired from a hundred house ovens.

          Down the way she stumbled, stopping on occasion to cry some more, then jump up, breathless, on hearing some random din that agitated the remains of the day and her spirit.

          At the end of an alley, under cobblestones older than the flag, stood a familiar door without stenciling. It might have been a simple side door to a duplex home, all the rage nowadays. But Portia had been here, and in her angst, had returned just as night veiled this corner of the world.

          A mad palm rapped on the glass, neverending, until the knob turned and the door creaked open.

          “Miss Milton?” Devon said, aghast, eyeing her up and down then looking down the alley, suspicious. “You can catch your death out here.”

          “I need to come in,” she said, voice stern, eyes at the cobblestones. She moved up the two steps to the door but found Devon in the way.

          A cursory glance revealed to the man the pyxis in the woman’s hand. “Oh? Is it broken?”

          She shoved her way in, knocking Devon to the side, pacing the parlor, eyeing relics as if every single one might prove a threat. Finally, as he shut the door, her eyes roved over and up, to his.

          “What the hell is this!” she held up the Roman container, shaking it. 

          Devon drew into himself. “The pyxis, full of scented mirth, as you enjoyed on the first–”

          “Don’t lie to me! Since I bought this, this, abomination I’ve been sick and restless and…”

          “And?” Devon said, gaze softened. 

          “It’s doing something to me.”

          “As in an allergic reaction? Otherwise I’m not sure what you mean.”

          Portia charged him but stopped short of ramming chest to chest as Devon’s back pressed against the closed door. He saw the bloodshot, baggy eyes, runny nose, and an altogether different woman than the one he met before. 

          “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll try and help you out?”

          “Is this thing cursed?” she yelled, coughing after from soreness in the throat.

          “How so? There were actual curse tablets and such in antiquity. I can’t imagine someone befouling their own beauty products.”

          “It’s working!” she said. “It works. Too well.”

          Devon put out a hand. “Would you like me to–?”

           Portia moved away fast, gripping the pyxis tighter. “Just tell me how to take it off.”

          “I don’t understand. You believe the item is, unclean, yet you want to keep it and expect me to act as exorcist?” 

          “Who else can I go to? I bought it from you.”

          “Miss Milton, Despite my local upbringing I have not a single shred of religion in my entire being, much less a priesthood.”

          Portia paced, fevered, perspiring. Tears streaked her face. “There was a woman. An ugly, vicious, smelly woman who came into my house and attacked me!”

          “I’m so sorry. Have you contacted the police?”

          “I don’t want the fucking cops!” Portia kicked over the Quaker children’s’ chair, startling Devon. “I need my little baby clean. Whatever, I don’t know, blight got into it over the centuries I need it removed.”

          He put up his arms in peace and approached her slowly, “I will see what I can do, but I would need to study the pyxis in exquisite detail to find any, ah, abnormalities.”

          Devon got to within a few inches of Portia, making eye contact, offering an open hand of acceptance.

          She surrendered it.

          “Now please, have a seat while I work.” He took the pyxis to a slender old rolltop desk in the far corner, pulling out a magnifying glass and other assorted items. Portai turned the Quaker chair up and squeezed into it, elbows on thighs, head in her hands. 

          “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

          “Now don’t cry. We can figure this out together. It will be a simple solution. You’ll see.” He viewed the container through the lens, noting imperfections and infinitesimal scratches.

          “Has this happened before?”

          “Hmm?”

          “I said,” she wiped her eyes and nose, “has this ever happened before? Other people buying the pyxis and having, um, problems with smells and um…” but she couldn’t begin to describe the It thing. Didn’t want to, became sick at the thought.

          “A stench, is it? No. The perfume inside is, and has been, nothing but pleasurable.”

          “Are you sure? Nothing?”

          “Yes. Well, no. What I mean is, what there is lies in the boundary of mythology and speculation.”

          Portia looked over at him studying the container. “What do you mean?”

          “Fanciful tales, you know how it is. The pyxides in my possession do contain a rather morbid story attached to their creation. While in Capua thirteen years ago I found the first three in an old copper cosmetic box built by a Roman who marked the box under the name Gaganius Paetus. He followed a strange mystery cult hailing from an Greek isle called…Apharnitsos? Yes, which sank in the, fourth century AD? It was he who made the pyxides, supposedly thirteen in total, with fragrances of a supernatural quality.”

          “Like witchcraft?” Portia asked, sniffing, watching the pyxis turn in the man’s hand.

          He eyed her for a time. “Is not all chemistry witchery? At least, while it’s suspect.”

          Portia noticed the other pyxides lined up along the fireplace mantel. She approached them, hesitant, drawing in a breath of air that still kept that tinge of moldy, regrettable air. “You said he made twelve?”

          “More than twelve. At least thirteen.”

          “Looks like you found them all.” She picked one up, bone carved, tempted to open it and partake whatever Olympian bestowal it offered. Other than hold the thing, she couldn’t bear to open it.

          “Due diligence,” Devon said pridefully, repeating the words. “Over a decade of intensive investigation. But they are all mine and intact.”

          Portia studied this pyxis. It seemed identical except the lid handle was plain and instead of a cherubic child on the body, an image of a woman, side view, mouth agape as if emitting a scream. Portia’s arm hairs rose up in defiance. “What, um, what’s the myth?”

          “The cosmetic box contained a scroll, compressed and smeared over time. Devil of a time in the transliteration, I must say! But it told, from Paetus’s hand, I suppose, that he wed each fragrance with, and I quote, ‘the last breath of a woman killed by her husband’s lover’. Fanciful. Tragically untrue, of course. How would he acquire such animos to begin with? And how would, say, this killer mistress prove any pyxis did hold said expiration?”

          “That’s horrible.”

          “Mmm. Even worse came later, when Paetus stated the first buyer of his vaunted scents reported being harangued by a feminine lemur, a sort of malignant ghost which followed her all around the city.”

          “Ghost?” Portia twitched. “Nothing, solid?”

          Devon ceased the study and looked at Portia. “No. Why?”

          “…nothing.”

          Devon held the pyxis up, removed the lid. “Supposedly the lemur, the dead woman, became known as Ex Cloaca, ‘out from the sewer’ or ‘out from Cloacina, Roman goddess of sewers. Take your pick. Bodies were often dumped in the sewers, such as murdered wives, so perhaps it lends an air of truth to the tale. I guess the origin is technically one and the same but,” he sniffed the perfumed contents. “I say this vessel is divine and a medicinal for the mind. Or, not? God, it’s awful now!”

          “No!” Portia shoved the man aside and swiped the container from his hand.

“What did you do to ruin such an historic essence?”

“It’s not safe seal it now or else!” Portia aimed a demanding finger his way.

          “Really, Miss Milton!” Pushed out of the chair, Devon got on his feet hard and fast. “It’s just a perfume holder! Anything else is surely in your head now since you’ve turned to violence you can kindly get out of my home!”

          A simple thud shook a circular table across the parlor.

          “Did something fall?” Devon walked over, but Portia grabbed his arm.

          “Don’t!”

          “Unhand me! This is my place and I’ve had enough of this.” And onward he went, stopped only by–

“That’s strange.” Devon noticed it plain as day a growing pool of dense liquid emanating from behind his table, reaching out. Like a black, frothy bile. “Is there a leak? Oh God! It smells horrible!”

“We need to leave,” Portia whispered.

“For what reason?”

          “Eureka,” said a trembling, wistful voice from the other side of the table. The fluid began to take over the entire parlor.

          Devon felt the lump in his throat. “I don’t know how you got in here but–” he stopped having lost all ability to speak. What his eyes beheld defied book knowledge, streetwise, even strained imagination. 

          Lemur ghost monster veil woman surfaced, hands and arms over the table in one, fluid motion, more snake than human. Skin bloated and collapsed, rose and fell in tidal undulations and behind them, a covered head under lush curly locks in a rainbow arc. All of her dripped dank, fetid ultramarine teal gel foam. 

          She aimed a soaked talon at Devon. “Reek.”

          Devon’s nostrils flared. He couldn’t move, only mumble, “The wretched with the sweet. Thirteen like larvae across the land. Peaches perish but keep walking. Mother knew. All the old Valmar talk I scorned. I see now. Oh God! I see.”

          “Get away from her!” Portia said but her own terror rooted her bare feet into the carpet.

          He wanted to say its name, Ex Cloaca. But the thing bent a leg out, then the other one bent all the way right beyond its limitations in a pungent crack, bringing It right in front of him. One hand, stretched beyond radius and ulna, dug into his dress shirt. Suddenly the other hand was on it, as It used the tug to pull itself to his form, or the other way around.

          “You reek,” It said.

          Clawed hands pushed into the shirt, shoving fabric into a pool of gushing red epidermis. Then they tore sideways. Devon gasped. Body wanted to fall backward but the hands of the lemur clung inside. 

          Portia, behind Devon, let out a horrid scream after she discerned a sloppy sound and saw grayed, flimsy tissue and filth hit the carpet like wet, frayed rope.

          Portia slipped down, hand on the mantel, knocking over pyxides as her ears picked up astringent, obnoxious sniffing coming from Devon’s slumping form.

          “Ah!” cried the lemur, raising its now reddened veilhead up to the ceiling in what only the darkest of deities might consider elation. Through the veil a toothless mouth let out a gurgling sibilance.

          There was no end to this. Portia foresaw her death, here, alongside the poor wise fool Devon. Bodies rotting here until some neighbor chanced upon a cloying tang while outside hanging the wash or cutting grass. 

          Satisfied from its consumption, Ex Cloaca turned its attention to lowly Portia. She made out the creature had no discernible knees or elbows, simply bends in the proverbial road. Toes were mangled, frothy in spectral shades of maggot, toenails enraptured by fungus. 

          “Reek?” it said.

          Portia started to crawl but It took her by an ankle and yanked, spinning her round, hard on her back. Portia lost her breath as Ex Cloaca slithered over her body, rancid, dripping ages old waste on the bellbottoms and T-shirt. 

          Portia mumbled every sort of plea and curse to no avail as the parlor filled with stenches old and new and the veils of the lemur tickled her battered chin and assailed nose. Soiled feet locked down the legs. Its dank oils filling Portia’s pores. Claws crucified arms to carpet.

          “Eureka,” it driveled.

          You have to drive a considerable distance northwest out of Valmar to reach Merciful Choir, but the views of sassafras and Osage trees splitting small cornfields is said to ease the mind. Drivers often miss the turn into the place, what with it being outflanked by an overgrowth of honeysuckle bushes.

          Once inside the driveway curls into a full circle and an amicable Brother by the name of Winston Foster greets you. He leads visitors inside to place their name in the Visitor’s Book while Nurse Nancy Dennis asks who they’re here to see.

          Today’s visitation came in the form of a tall, well built man in uniform. Iron-jawed, tanned, a beefy black mustache over unseen lips. “Captain Erastus Sammons, State Police. No need to show me in, been here lots of times.” He placed a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it, grinned behind expensive sunglasses, and moved on down the hall.

          He walked tall and proud. No one mucked about with ‘Ol’ Ras’ without having the combined might of the Delaware judicial system come down on their small town heads. Not folk in historic Lewes or even the rough and tumble up in Wilmington. He had weathered it all, from the Cousins killing to the ‘68 riot and everything in between. Through it all, promotions and awards.

          The wretched with the sweet, he thought.

          Sammons made it down and to the left before knocking on a door listed as DR. F. GILLIS.

          The police captain knocked hard once, then cracked it open. He found Dr. Gillis, a portly man with more white hair on his jaw than on his head, sipping Pepsi from a plastic cup and reading a coffee-stained book.

          “Ras, you should wait until I give the all clear first.”
          “It’s all cleared out,” Sammons said, all business.

          Gillis lowered the book and put on a pair of Coke-bottle glasses. “Is it?”

          “You know it.”
          The doctor pouted. “You’ve said that before.”

          Sammons huffed, entered the small office awash in old photos of vintage automobiles and horse drawn carriages. He gripped the ends of a modest desk and leaned over the short physician.

          “When I say I got it done, it’s done. Now you gonna show me or what? Is it in?”

          Gillis ruffled as if he was a pruning heron out in the bush. But he rose from a sunken in leather chair long past its prime. “After you,” he said, pointing out to the hallway.

          “You didn’t have to give the container back to Barnes, you know. The retrieval was complete.”

          “Gotta follow the law. Old boy kept hounding us for his goods, even called the Feds. You want them in our backyard? Had to make it look squeaky clean. Besides, this way we get the best of both worlds. He’s gone. We got all his other trinkets under the yellow tape of police investigation for further study and a bona fide Marrow from the Old World for the collection. Did you get the box of pixies?”

          “Pyxides?”

          “Whatever.”

          “Yes. They are exemplary anomalies to say the least. However, your particular denomination needs to apply more subtlety in your labors. We need caution now more than ever. Cameras are going up near supermarkets. More people are moving in from out of state. All I’m saying is the Filth must be buried a little deeper to evade prying eyes and a brutal murder births a thousand journalists. Especially now that we’ve procured a Marrow from the bones of the Thirteen.”

          “Ha!” Sammons croaked. “You Sunshine Universal boys can step in and handle roping up all the old stuff then if you want. Gives me and the flock more time to drink beer and tend to the maggots.”

          “Hmph! Maggots. Such basic stock.”

          Sammons snorted and hitched up his trousers. “Good work. Got kids to feed.”

          They strode a short distance, entering a darkened room holding nothing more than a large, one-way mirror exposing onlookers in this room to another on the other side.

          “Keep your voice down,” Gillis advised, a hand up for emphasis.

          In that other room, cushioned in a faded magenta padding rested a sterile bed and metal railings. Nothing else, save for a woman sitting motionless on the bed, dressed plainly in loose white pants, her upper half constrained by a regulation straitjacket. No face visible, it being covered by a tangled veil of bright blonde hair.

          “Is it in?” Sammons whispered. He could exercise self control when it suited him.

          Gillis placed the caution hand in front of the captain’s face, waving it slow as if counting off. Then, he picked up a microphone resting on a ridge at the base of the mirror, and plugged its cord into a nearby socket. Tapping it gently, he applied the device to his lips.

          “Eureka!” he said.

          Picture a captive woman raising her head in a sharp, violent jerk up to a sterile padded ceiling. Portia Milton. Age thirty three. Parents Paul and Roberta Milton, deceased. Born in Delaware City, DE, June fifteenth, 1942. Previously a secretary, currently unemployed. 

          She didn’t view the ceiling. Neither did she speak, for eyes and mouth were imprisoned behind a veil of uncountable wet strands under the blonde. The nose, however, twitched and quivered across the air as Portia stood up, searching, scanning, moving closer to the mirror as two men on the other side observed, and softly, applauded.

          Portia’s damp nares touched the polished surface, squeaking across it, hunting for the scent of life, of guts inside fresh washed hide, urine in cologne, aging cells under deodorant. The wretched with the sweet. And once she sensed these disparate charms on the other side–

          Sniff!

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