Christopher Golden - Ararat

His expression was hard to read.

“I’d like that very much,” he said, but there was a stiffness in him that made her wonder if he might be just being polite.

“I’m not expecting anything,” Kim told him. “It’s just that I have nightmares. All the time, I have nightmares. And there isn’t anyone else who could understand.”

Charlie arrived back at the table and hiked himself up onto his seat just as the waiter arrived with waters for all three of them. The little boy thanked the waiter politely.

Walker reached across the table and took her hand, holding it there.

“I have those dreams, too. You’re not alone.”

Anyone overhearing him might have thought the words implied romance instead of dread. Charlie wrinkled his nose and rolled his eyes. The role of little gentleman that he played so well apparently did not extend to public displays of affection.

“We’re not kissing,” Kim told him, forcing herself to smile, her heart lightened by the presence of the boy. “Or is holding hands also on the list of forbidden activities?”

Charlie pursed his lips in contemplation and then sighed as he relented.

“I guess holding hands is okay.”

Walker laughed softly and held Kim’s hand a little tighter. She was grateful. The contact helped, the knowledge that he understood her nightmares. The job offer, to come to D.C. and work for the ambassador, had nothing to do with Walker or her experience on Mount Ararat, but she could not honestly say his presence here hadn’t played a role in her accepting it. Not because she loved him—she didn’t know him nearly well enough to even consider the idea of love. But ever since Ararat she had gone through periods of terror and paranoia during which she wondered if she might be insane… and then periods in which she feared that, in fact, she was entirely, terrifyingly sane.

“Thank you,” she said to father and son alike.

But when the waiter came to deliver their pizzas, she cast another glance at Walker’s eyes, searching for that telltale orange glimmer. Just in case.

Kim knew she would always be watching for it.

Always.

A light spring rain darkened the sky over East Meadow, Long Island. Meryam had met Adam’s father only once, at the launch party for their first book, when it seemed like investing their own money in a trip to New York just to celebrate the publication of the book made sense. In his late fifties, Mr. Holzer had been widowed for more than fifteen years, but had never remarried, despite a long love affair with a stock market analyst named Sylvia. Meryam had wondered if Adam’s father had never married Sylvia just so his son wouldn’t have to come to terms with having a stepmother.

She hoped Mr. Holzer would marry Sylvia now, after an appropriate period of mourning. Adam’s feelings weren’t an issue anymore.

Meryam stood just outside the black, wrought iron gates of the United Synagogue Cemetery. Rain pattered onto her umbrella, dripping down from its edges, and she tried to make herself small beneath it to avoid getting wet. She wore a long, black, fleece-lined coat and a thick gray scarf. That morning before leaving her hotel she had tied her hair back with a band, but it had broken and now her wild mane fell thick and unruly around her face.

Her heart ached as she peered through the gate at the cars that lined the narrow roads around the mausoleum, in the western corner of the cemetery. Meryam had worked with the Turkish authorities, connected them to Adam’s father so that Mr. Holzer could arrange for his remains to be returned home. If the aging Holzer had known of his son’s engagement, he never mentioned it.

Mr. Holzer had invited her to be here, but she had told him that she was not well enough to travel. A lie, on so many levels. Instead of joining the small gathering during the funeral service, and now inside the mausoleum, where they would be inserting Adam’s cremated remains into a wall niche, she had flown to New York in secret and rented a car for the drive to Long Island.

If she had accepted the invitation, she would have felt like an intruder. Or an impostor.

Cars growled past on the street behind her, splashing through puddles, but there were no other pedestrians. Only Meryam with her umbrella, watching through the gate as the mourners emerged and began to make their way back to their cars. From this distance she could not tell which of those dark figures might be Mr. Holzer and Sylvia.

She wished that she could cry.

In a moment, she would walk away. She didn’t want them to see her, to know that she had come all this way but had been unwilling to join them inside.

Not unwilling, she told herself. Unable .

Even if she’d wanted to, she wouldn’t have been able to walk through those gates. Not any more than she’d been able to enter the synagogue where the funeral had taken place. If she wanted to mourn Adam, she had no choice but to stand in the rain, though she didn’t worry about pneumonia. Meryam didn’t worry about illness at all now.

The first cars began to move slowly along the road toward the gates and she forced herself to turn and walk back along the sidewalk toward her car. As she did, she slipped her hand into her pocket—just the way she had that night when Hakan had carried her down off the mountain—and just as she had that night, she felt the sharp edges and smooth surface of a bitumen shard.

Meryam had no idea who had slipped it into her pocket. The demon could have compelled any of them to do it, possessing someone for a moment and sliding the charm inside her jacket with her none the wiser. A safeguard, to give it one last opportunity to find its way off the mountain… find its way into the new world. It had chosen her because it had something to offer her.

Life .

For as long as she complied with its wishes, it would make her well again. Make her whole. It had eradicated the cancer that had been killing her, and taken its place. A different sort of cancer.

A painful grin split her features but she fought against it, forced it away. The demon might not let her cry, but she refused to allow it to make her smile. Not today.

Had it been just for herself, Meryam would never have taken the demon’s bargain. Death would have been so much better than this.

But she hadn’t done it for herself.

Numb, she put a hand over her belly and felt the roundness there, four months along and a little bigger every day. If her baby was a boy, she would name him Adam, and pray that he took after his father.

Sometimes, though…

Sometimes she let herself consider the possibility that the thing growing inside her might not be a baby at all. And then she would scream, just for a moment or two until it became irritated and seized control from within, silencing her. It didn’t like her to scream like that.

Bad for the baby, the demon would whisper inside her mind. And the baby needs to be strong.

Meryam wondered how much it would hurt to give birth to something with horns.

Thanks, as always, to the people who create the environment that allows me to do my work, including my agent, Howard Morhaim, my manager, Peter Donaldson, and my very excellent editor, Michael Homler, and to Lauren Jablonski and the whole team at St. Martin’s Press. Gratitude forever to Connie and the formidable young people we are proud to call our children. Special thanks as well to Dana Cameron, Eric Simonson (of International Mountain Guides), and Leila Vardizeh, for their knowledge, kindness, and expertise.

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Wildwood Road, The Boys Are Back in Town, The Ferryman, and Of Saints and Shadows . He has collaborated on books, comics, video games and scripts with other writers, including Mike Mignola, Amber Benson, and Charlaine Harris. He has also written novels for teens and young adults, and, as an editor, he has worked on several short story anthologies. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family.