Watching the night, Ricky could sense evil. Jesus, what a place, thought Ricky, who at thirty-four would rather have spent a Saturday night in February in his nude bar in Vegas, allowing one of the new dancers to ride his bone. Or, better yet, in bed at home in Las Vegas, humping Laura.

A tall, gangly man with jet black hair, a nose that had been flattened from numerous fights in high school, and dull gray eyes that signaled vacant thought, Ricky sat and smoked and drank coffee, waiting for Laura. He wore a dark green sweater, faded blue levis and black cowboy boots. Sweat dotted his brow.

Now, at nearly midnight, he sat alone in the twenty-four hour diner that had been at these crossroads for as long as he could remember. He stared at the cup of black, luke-warm coffee in front of him and glanced at the two Hispanic waitresses, both overweight, sitting at a table on the other side of the room and consuming rhubarb pie. The one with red hair wore a huge crucifix and had only one eye.

The restaurant, now named Red Dingo, sat right in the middle of Nevada, the great empty, surrounded by barren mountains and lying between Caliente and Ely. As a child, driving from Boise to Las Vegas with his mother, father, he had stopped at this restaurant when it was still called Flip’s Oasis, when the casino next door was vibrant with activity and when this restaurant served the best chocolate milkshake in the world.

Now, twenty bleak years later, he sat at a table in the same restaurant, listening to the wind shriek, smoking a cigarette, shaking from the cold, drinking bitter coffee. A furniture-mover with two semesters of community college under his belt, Ricky Kurtz needed Laura, who should have been there hours ago, Ricky told himself. Ricky wondered: How long does it take Laura to collect money in the late afternoon and drive up to this shit-hole? Two hours tops, Ricky thought to himself. Maybe two and a half.

He looked hopefully in the direction of the waitresses, felt his intestines rumble, saw the red-headed one look up and grin his way, and motioned that he wanted more coffee.

His coffee warmed, Ricky lit up another cigarette, began sucking the life out of it, and glanced at the clock on the side wall. 12:15 am. Jesus what is keeping her? Ricky asked himself. To relieve anxiety, he thought of Laura. Laura Jean Reynolds was the blond bombshell he had fallen in love with three years ago as he had sat on a stool, watching the black girl on the stage above him gyrate to the music. Wearing his black Spider Man T-shirt, Ricky had barely noticed the dancer, who even rubbed her nipples in his face, when he had seen a tall blonde walking towards him, her eyes directly on him. Something right out of Penthouse, Ricky inwardly commented and then remembered he had actually seen this girl, recalled her spread in the magazine the year before, even recalled praying to God one night that he be allowed once in his life to touch such a beautiful woman.

The blonde had glided up to him, put her arm around his shoulders, her lips an inch from his face. Ricky noticed that this woman wore no lipstick; she didn’t need to; Ricky liked that.

"Mind if I sit with you, Spider Man?" she had purred, running her tongue over her lips and brushing her breasts again him. Ricky had gazed into her blue eyes, glanced at her breasts and nipples, visible through a flimsy black net top, and said sure. "Be my guest," Ricky had said, aroused. As Laura sat next to him and moved her stool close to his, she moved her a hand between his legs, grabbed his manhood through his pants, and began the massage.

Thus had begun the only romance of Ricky’s life. Hours later, Laura had asked him to drive her home. Ricky had obliged, and he had stayed a week with this woman, who had an M. A. in English literature. This girl is something else, Ricky thought to himself: during the day, she taught part-time at the local university; at night, she prowled the back street bars looking for kicks; she fucked like a mink. Not your typical bimbo, Ricky often thought.

He had lived with Laura since that meeting in the nude bar and once, a year ago, had taken her to Boise to see his parents, now die-hard Pentecostals. Jeff and Ruth Kurtz had coldly greeted their son and his girl on the porch of their century old southern Idaho farmhouse, located forty miles west of Twin Falls, and had demanded that evening over a quiet dinner that Ricky and Laura sleep in different beds. After three days the wizened Idaho Pentecostals had asked their son to take his girl out of their house. "Sin ain’t allowed here," his mother had told him point black over dinner at a local diner. At that point, Ricky knew his mother and father had heard Laura’s squeals of delight the night before as the two had held each other in bed. Thinking his parents were asleep, Ricky had sneaked into the next room, climbed into bed with Laura, who had been waiting for him. "Amen," his father had snorted as he sat next to his wife, chewing his steak slowly, and glaring hatefully at Ricky and his girl. Ricky and Laura had left that evening.

The experience with Ricky’s parents only drew Ricky and Laura closer together. Since then, after returning to Vegas, they had decided to make a go of it in southern Nevada and began investing what cash they could find in deal after deal, their most profitable venture being a nude bar located in the center of Las Vegas. While one of the most popular places in town, the bar didn’t pay the bills, and so recently, they had worked out a plan that allow them to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. Ricky thought of the plan as he sat alone in the desert in the middle of Nevada, wondering too if the waitress with the crucifix ever went to church, wondered if anyone bothered with church any more.

Sipping coffee, he recalled that the plan had come upon Laura like a revelation. They had just finished screwing one month ago to the very day and, wrapped in each other’s arms, were watching the Jay Leno show on TV when Laura, her head on his chest and her hand clasped around his manhood, had calmly told Ricky that she had a plan to make them rich.

"Wanna make money, Spider Man?" Laura had said.

"Sure," had been Ricky’s reply. "What you got in mind?"

"You’re gonna like this, sugar plum," Laura had laughed.

"Out with it, then, sweetie pie," Ricky had said.

"Well, Sugar Plum, we can knock off Rupert Grange," Laura had stated. "Kidnap his daughter, take his money, and then put the old fucker out of his misery and head for Peru. We’ll be gone before anyone knew what hit."

Ricky had paused for several minutes before risking a response. He thought he was hearing things. "You mean the Rupert Grange?" Ricky had finally asked, wondering if Laura was thinking about one of the richest men in southern Nevada. They had seen a story about Rupert Grange on the evening news less than an hour ago.

"Yup," Laura had yawned, squeezing him gently.

"Why kill the old bastard? Let’s just take his money and run."

"We kill the old bastard, Spider Man, because he’s got it coming."

"Oh," said Ricky, trying very hard to think of an intelligent response.

Laura add, "And I know just the guys can help us. Two guys who used to work for Grange."

"Two guys...?"

"Former boy friends, dick head. Real studs. Like you. You’ll like ‘em."

Ricky’s head was spinning. Laura was talking about two former boyfriends.

"Think about it," she said, stifling a yawn.

Before Ricky could say anything, Laura was asleep.

Ricky couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Kidnapping his daughter and murdering Rupert Grange would be risky, thought Ricky, whose worst crime had been to steal a loaf of bread from the corner grocery store when he was eleven. Ricky couldn’t figure out how he had gotten messed up with a woman whose ambition was to get rich at the expense of murdering another person. For an instant, he wondered if he were going to Hell.

He remembered what Laura had told him about Grange. Worth approximately fifty million dollars, Grange had taken Laura on as a mistress years before, and since then Laura had stayed in contact, making the point to spend at least one night a month with the old man, hoping Grange would cut her a share of the money when he died.

But Grange, a tall man cut like a knife and now sixty-eight, seemed intent on living forever, jogged daily, kept a mistress, went on long hikes in the mountains just west of the city and took long trips out of the city. In fact, at the point of Ricky’s conversation with Laura, the old man had just returned from New Zealand, where he had apparently bought a snake farm and cut another land deal that would replace forests with concrete and net him several million dollars.

Two weeks after her revelation, over coffee and toast, Laura had assured him that the time was ripe, so several days later, two of Laura’s former boy friends--Luke and Jeff, dark swarthy sociopathic fags with cold steel blue eyes and thin gray lips--had waited in their primer gray Ford pickup in the parking lot of Lucky’s supermarket one night and had kidnapped the old man’s twenty-seven year old daughter Meslissa, the apple of the old man’s eye as she was walking from the store to her car.

Sucking on his cigarette in the diner, Ricky recalled the headlines of ten days ago: Grange Daughter Missing. Melissa Grange’s disappearance, in fact, became the topic on one of the documentary-style cops shows. And today, at 6 PM in a hidden valley just north of the city the old man was to meet Laura and her two gay sociopathic friends alone in a canyon just north of town and, in exchange for his daughter, hand over one million dollars. Then, one of the fags was going to tell the old man and his daughter to kneel with his back turned and put a bullet right into both of them. As he smoked and drank his coffee, Ricky tried to imagine the old man’s execution but could only see in his mind’s eye Laura kneeling down in some desert canyon to receive a bullet behind the ear.

Listening to the wind and staring into the black Nevada night, Ricky could feel the cold iron claws of an anxiety attack tearing at his head and stomach. He’d felt much the same earlier in the day. "I don’t like the way this feels," Ricky had muttered to Laura this morning as he sat hunched over a breakfast of oatmeal and toast. "It’ll be a fucking mercy killing, sweetie," Laura had assured him. "A piece of cake," had said Laura, opening her mouth wide and shoving in piece of toast covered with blueberry jam. That had been just this morning.

It had been one hour later that they got word that Grange had agreed to the deal, and Laura had calmly reminded Ricky--still trying to concentrate on eating his oatmeal-- that the job would be like driving the car to the bank. "Killing the old fart and his daughter will be as easy as slicing meat for a ham sandwich," Laura had commented as she walked out the door that morning, briefcase in hand, prepared to lecture her students that morning on Milton’s Paradise Lost. Upon receiving the money from the wealthy old man, Laura’s friends would keep half, and Laura and Ricky were to take the rest.

Now, wind howling, Ricky checked his watch, slurped his coffee, and stared out the dirty window. It was getting on towards three and there was no sign of Laura. Ricky felt his stomach tense and go hard, like it had done when he had gone in shock years ago following a car accident. Again, he sensed that something was waiting outside to consume him.

According to the plan, Laura had agreed to meet Ricky at Red Dingo’s at ten o’clock earlier that night. Then Laura and Rick would drive to Salt Lake City, board a plane for Lima, where they knew they were destined to begin life over again as one of the slightly wealthy.

Now, Ricky wondered if everything had gone all right with the exchange, if Rupert Grange had met Laura, his daughter, and the men at the rendezvous. Peering through the dirty window and looking for the full moon, he assured himself that everything was fine, that Laura surely had gotten a late start, but fear grew in his gut like a cancer.

It was an hour later, after six more cups of the bitter coffee, that Laura’s black Mercedes pulled into the far end of the parking lot, stopping in the circle of light cast by the huge "Eat Here" sign that hung suspended over Red Dingo’s. The driver--Ricky could barely make out a silhouette-- turned off the lights. Though the darkness and wind, Ricky watched the car, felt deeply chilled, waited for the door to open, looked for Laura to step out and walk towards him.

After fifteen minutes, the night growing darker, Ricky could no longer make out a silhouette behind the wheel. Surely, Ricky told himself, Laura would have gotten out by now. Nonetheless, stomach in knots, Ricky watched, never touching his coffee, as fifteen minutes stretched into a half hour, then into an hour. At one point, he saw the inside lights of the Mercedes flicker on, then off, then on, then off. He couldn’t be sure of what he’d just seen, and then figured that someone had either gotten out of the car or turned the inside light on. Ricky felt his whole body grow cold, a corpse in a deep freeze.

Minutes later, finding strength, Ricky nervously pushed himself away from the table, stood, muttered to no one in particular that he would be right back, and walked to the door. His legs felt numb; he felt delirious. As he opened the door and stepped outside, he glanced at the car, perched on the edge of darkness, and began a slow mechanical walk through the icy wind.

When Ricky reached the car, buffeted by wind, the world went pitch black, and suddenly he was walking through a dark sandy soup. He struggled to move to the Mercedes, groping for something like a child locked in a dark closet, the car now just visible three feet in front of him.

Staggered by wind, sand lashing his face, he peered in through the front windshield. It was so dark inside that he could make out nothing. What in the hell is going on? Ricky wondered; You just don’t leave a car like this in the middle of the fucking desert. Car can’t drive itself. "Laura!!" he bellowed through the windshield. "You in there? You in there, honey?" He banged with his fist on the windshield.

Sick with panic, Ricky circled the car, crazily, circled it time and again, thinking, finally deciding to brave a look in the back seat. In the dim light, he opened the back door behind the passenger seat, leaned in to look, and could see that Laura’s back seat was cluttered with books: Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow were three titles he recognized.

Just then, the wind died, the air cleared, and the moon blazed over the Nevada desert. Ricky continued to stare into the back seat and finally at the floor between the front and back seat, knew something was not right.

Then Ricky’s blood froze and a gigantic lump formed in his throat as he looked at the old army blanket Laura usually kept in the trunk. He noticed that the contours of the blanket suggested that it was covering something large. He saw large dark stains on the blanket.

Ricky breathed deeply, ran his hands through his dirty disheveled hair, and reached out and grabbed the edge of the blanket. His hands shook and he knew he was going to retch. Slowly, pulling the blanket in his direction, he first saw the head, then the body, then the legs.

Completely nude, arms at her sides, Laura looked peaceful, like a child at rest, and Ricky was tempted to shake the body awake when saw he the small burnt hole just above her left eye. But something else is wrong, Ricky thought. His eyes running the length of her body again and again, Ricky finally noted that Laura’s hands and feet were missing, arms and legs now bloody stumps, and he wondered, crazily, if he should get sick, asked himself what kind of person would do this. He felt waves of burning ice flow around him and through him, suddenly knew the irrefutable existence of evil, wished he were a boy drinking a chocolate milkshake in a restaurant long buried in the past, then vomited onto the books in the back seat as his attention was pulled back to the mutilated corpse of the woman he had loved.

Trembling, Ricky hung over the seat, looking at the corpse of the woman he had planned to spend the rest of his life with, felt overwhelmed by the thickly metallic smell of blood. Suddenly, furious winds again rocked the car, and he began wondering if he were dreaming, wondering when the dream would end, assuring himself that what he had seen could not be real.

He had no thought of what to do next and stepping out of and moving away from the car, he stood and felt the deep burning freeze grip his body. It was like being struck in the kidneys by something invisible. Ricky knew intuitively that something wicked was coming his way. He knew instantly that he was being watched. Someone or something was watching him, getting ready to prey on him.

Ricky stood in the dark cold wind and for fifteen minutes scanned the parking lot and adjacent desert. He could see no one in the parking lot, illuminated by the sign, the moon and the light inside the restaurant. When he turned his gaze again to the desert, which stretched into the darkness, he saw nothing, continued to stare, still seeing nothing, and began to relax slightly.

It was then that, involuntarily, he froze, his head still but eyes darting nervously, looking for movement in the desert, some shape that he knew had to be there. He stood and waited, the ice cold wind blasting against him, felt the night go completely dark, and then he saw it.

Out of the corner of his right eye, something moved, a swaying in the darkness. It was as if the darkness were assuming a shape. He detected movement, a flash, something off to his right, and slowly moved his head in that direction. Glaring into the dark, he could just see, a hundred, maybe one hundred feet away, a dark tall shape gliding just over the desert floor.

Light-headed, nauseous, he knew the shape was moving towards him, and then Ricky saw the one shape became two and then three. It was like something out of a nightmare, and he wondered if he were standing on the edge of the abyss Laura always talked about. Heart thudding in his chest, he momentarily thought of Laura’s nude body stuffed between the seats of the Mercedes, looked at the three, almost ethereal shapes approaching him, wondered if he had the strength or courage to run toward the restaurant.

Searching his mind for a solution, he heard through the wind the sound of someone whistling a favorite hymn from his childhood, "Bringing in the Sheaves." It was a high-pitched voice that sang the hymn, but Ricky could not identify the voice. How, Ricky wondered, could anyone whistle in this wind?

Before turning to run, he saw the figures enter the light cast by the restaurant sign, instantly recognized Jeff and Luke, saw between them a tall fierce-looking emaciated old man that could only be Rupert Grange. Grange appeared to be carrying a long, sharp object, perhaps a scythe. Ricky couldn’t be sure.

"Hey, there, spider," said a low booming voice. It had to come from one of the men, but he couldn’t decide which one.

"Hey, little spider," boomed the voice again, temporarily drowning the wind and thought. Ricky now knew the voice came from the old man in the middle. He had never met Rupert Grange.

"Come here, little spider, come here, come here, come here," said the voice. Listening to the voice, Ricky felt like an insect dangling helplessly over an infinite and eternal pit of darkness. He remembered, suddenly, having read Jonathan Edward’s sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in his American literature class at college.

Turning, weeping silently, Ricky found he couldn’t sprint, and running in the cold windy darkness began moving in slow motion. Somehow, his feet were stuck in the sand. As hard as he tried to go faster, he couldn’t and knew that he was caught in some nightmare’s web; no matter how hard he tried he could barely move.

As he struggled forward, winds whipping around him, he opened his mouth and tried to scream. No sound came out. He could feel the men moving behind him, remembered his father’s advising him to stay away from the darkness, realized that the men’s walk was faster than his run, a prickly chill coursing through his body, felt the back of his neck seized by a huge hand, felt the hand squeeze him and heard bone and gristle crackle, and felt an explosion of pain in his skull and a ripping of the flesh off his back.

It was in the midst of the explosion that he saw Laura standing in a canyon somewhere, flames dancing around her, her arms outstretched as she were ready to receive him. Falling toward the ground, paralyzed, he couldn’t decide if he had been hit hard from behind by a hard metal object or a bullet or if his neck were broken.