Her hands are bound above, draped over a shower head.

Her feet, also bound, barely touch the tub beneath her. She has to stand on tippy-toes. She has no traction, only the ability to wriggle like a worm on a hook.

Frankie stands in the doorway, too tall for it. He stoops to fit himself in.

Hairless relaxes on the toilet. Streaks of dried blood – the mascara of a weepy girl – mar his cheeks. In his lap rests Miriam's diary. Gently, he shuts it.

Harriet flaps the electrical tape she's just yanked from Miriam's mouth in front of Miriam's face – a strange taunt – and backs away.

"I have read this book," Hairless says, tapping the notebook against his leg.

"Fuck you," Miriam mutters.

Hairless shakes his head as Harriet squeezes her hand into a black glove. "Such a boring refrain from you. Fuck this, fuck that, fuck me, fuck you. Such a crass little girl. Harriet, I see the ghost of a bruise around this girl's eye. Please, will you wake the dead?"

Harriet steps up onto the rim of the tub and pops Miriam in the eye with the gloved fist. Miriam's head rocks backward.

"There we go, yes," Hairless says. "That will remind you to be polite when you are in such esteemed company. Now, speaking of the dead. You have an intimate connection with the dead, do you not?"

"The dying," Miriam croaks. "Not so much the dead."

"Yes, and we're all dying, aren't we?"

"We are. Well put."

"Thank you. See? That is the politeness I was hoping you might offer. Good." Hairless holds up the book and gestures with it. "I believe what you write in this book is true. I do not think it the fantasy of a deranged girl, deranged as you may be. May I tell you of my oma, my grandmother?"

"Go for it. I'm not going anywhere."

Hairless smiles. A fond remembrance flashes in his eyes.

INTERLUDE

The Witch Woman

My grandmother, Milba, was a witch woman.

Even as a little girl picking cranberries out in the bog, she could see things. Her visions did not happen unbidden, but by her studying the world around her. She would touch things, things of nature, things of the bog, and those things would show her what was coming.

If she found the bones of a snake, she could handle them, let them roll around in her small fingers and watch how the bog water ran off them, and therein she might see what would happen to her father later that day when he went to market, or how her sister might suffer a splinter under the nail of her toe.

She could smash the berries in her palms and read the red guts. They might tell her what weather was coming. By running her hands up the bark of a tree, she might learn what birds nested there, and by breaking the neck of a rabbit kit, she might learn where the rest of the rabbits had their warren.