Rows of men flattened the tall grass and wildflowers. The sun shone like a crystal in the pale sky, piercing the clouds with spears of light. Nathan crossed a meadow and took his place amidst formation. The men to Nathan's left and right had unfamiliar faces but they wore the uniforms that designated them his brothers.

Ahead of the horde of troops, scrawny recruits with black eyes rolled in a platform with a framework that bore a mechanism with a swinging axe. Its pieces were rickety and poorly assembled.

An officer with an oak leaf insignia on his collar and a sword at his hip approached the platform and clicked his heels like a toy.

"At ease, gentlemen. All of you are suffering from a condition called Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, also known as irritable heart, shell shock and combat exhaustion. The USMC wishes to extend an invitation to you to end your distress while helping us better understand the disease. Corporal Kent approach!"

"Yes, sir!" barked the tall E4 called Kent. He joined the officer at the platform and knelt under the mechanism, removing his cover. The boney, young recruits hopped up and crowned Kent with a metallic helmet that had a coin slot opening running down the length of its middle.

"Corporal Kent. Do you suffer from PTSD?" the major asked.

"Yes, sir!" he stated. They tightened the leather strap under his chin.

"Do you love your country?"

"Yes, sir!"

The officer held a notepad and wrote down everything Corporal Kent told him.

"How many laws have you broken since you've returned from active duty?"

"I engaged in sexual acts with a prostitute, I drank while taking a multitude of painkillers, and then I drove a motor vehicle, sir."

"Do you consent to participate in our study?"

"Yes, sir!"

The major tore off a slip from his notepad, tagging Kent's wrist. On his signal, one of the young recruits flipped a switch and an axe plummeted and swung like a pendulum, making a clean cut through the middle of the marine's head. The blood stuck like gum inside his shell. They removed the helmet and carried him away on a stretcher. Nathan watched in horror as different men went up, answered the same questions and had their skulls split.

"Corporal Stone!" the major shouted.

Nathan bristled. "There's no study. They're sweeping us under the rug," he whispered to the man next to him. "We have to get out of here."

"Go on up," the man next to him said. Nathan looked again and saw the yellow eyes of Logan Steiner. He checked if the other half of his body was still there. Threads and tendrils of gore hung from Steiner's side where he had been ripped apart.

"Corporal Stone!" a voice raged in his head as he woke up, catapulting into a strange reality where Tom Scarboro was the major. Nathan could feel the patting slaps on his face as his best friend shouted in his ear.

"Corporal Stone! AtteeeeeehTION!" Tom jumped up, laughing maniacally.

"I'll kill you," Nathan groaned. "How the hell did you get in here?"

"Yer momma let me in! Hey, did you hear? Alex is alive!"

Nathan sat upright in bed, rubbing the crust out of his eyes. "I know. I went to her parents' house last night and told them I found her."

"What? You went off on your own?"

"Tried it your way. Sometimes you just gotta point a gun at somebody's face."

"What? Are you kidding me?"

"I went to see Jacob. He told me where to find her."

"Where was she?"

"Holed up in some motel shooting heroin."

"Christ. With who?"

"I don't know. Alex is protecting them, whoever they are."

"If you see her again, you can show her this. Scare her straight." Tom handed him a cell phone. "Crime scene photographs from Hannah's overdose. Looks more like a rape homicide than anything."

She looked like an angel ravished in Hell, left naked and half submerged in wet sand. The shoreline had pulled her under. She had track marks on her arms--covered up by gloves--but still visible through the blue lace. She was bruised all over and the only thing on her were the gloves and the ribbons in her hair.

"How'd you get these?" Nathan asked.

"I went to the bureau to have lunch with my dad, snatched some pics while he was on the phone."

"Are you insane?"

"I had to see for myself. And now that I have, I have to figure out who did this to her. But it will have to wait. Carl and I are leaving for Hungary this weekend. He wants to travel around over there while I train with Alec Pistache."

"You're really going for it?"

"Yeah. I think so. I wanted to ask you, though. Can you look out for Lacey for me? It's not that I'm worried about her hooking up with someone, it's just... with all this shit going on in town, I don't want her getting caught up in something dangerous."

"I'll keep an eye on her." Nathan squinted at the photograph. There was a faint and heavily bruised tattoo on Hannah's left arm just below the track marks on her inner elbow. It was the Seal of Solomon.

"You see this?" Nathan asked.

"Yeah," Tom said, as if that were a no-brainer. "But you know what? We find the other girl from the beach, the one who was with our guy when Hannah died, we can ask her for more details."

"Alex is here!" Nathan's mother called from downstairs.

Alexandria. Her name alone could get Nathan through the thunder of rocket blasts in the night. In Afghanistan, he always had a half-written letter for Alexandria. The blood and the dust and the destruction were all worth it if he could get back to her. There was a time during the war that the mere thought of her could bring him out of the deepest, darkest shadows of the mind.

Nathan became uncomfortably aware of Tom's goony smile.

"You guys a thing now?"

"Hurry up and help me." Nathan scrambled to get his prosthesis on, fumbling with the sleeve.

"I called it senior year, remember?"

"She came home," Nathan whispered.

"Yeah. How do you think I knew she was alive," Tom said. "Last night, her dad called the police and said he knew where she was. They went and scooped her. My dad said she didn't want to go home. And because she's eighteen, they couldn't make her."

"Tie this," said Nathan, handing Tom his booted foot.

"I'd bet she looks like Botticelli's Venus when she's naked." Tom helped him get everything strapped and secured, but all the while wondering out loud about Alex's physique. "Or maybe she's more like one of Courbet's nudes. You know the one with the knee socks?"

"Keep it in your pants, college boy."

"Fuck you, man. Enjoy having the best sex of your life."

"Have fun in Budapest."

They came downstairs, and Nathan caught a few words of what his mother and Alex were talking about.

"And he would have wanted him to go to school," his mother said in a soft voice. "But once he decides to do something, there's no convincing him otherwise."

"He could still go to school," Alex said.

"Yes. And thank God for that." Nathan and Tom came into the kitchen where his mother and Alex were seated at the breakfast table. His bottle of Zoloft was on the countertop. Upon noticing him enter, his mother handed him a pill. He swallowed it dry.

The pills helped taper the violent nightmares and the hopelessness that hindered his physical therapy, but these things were replaced by hard blinks, chemical twitches and roaming dreams that had entered a new realm of the bizarre. He felt more like himself when he drank. The occasional one-on-one chat with Dr. Thrace didn't hurt either.

Alex hopped up and hugged Nathan. "I know you just wanted to help. I'm not angry. Actually, I came to thank you." She noticed Tom and waved. "Hi, Tom."

"Hey." Tom nodded awkwardly and then ducked his head as he headed to the door.

"How have you been?"

Tom paused, turning to answer her. "Good. Great. Just catching up with my buddy."

"That's wonderful." Alex blinked, looked at Nathan and then at Tom.

"So, why are you here Alex?"

"I wanted to talk to Nathan."

"Maybe thank him for his service?" Tom queried.

Nathan intercepted the question. "We're just hanging out."

"Cool. Well, bye." Tom fled.

Alex broke open a biscuit and offered half to Nathan. It had a filling of apple cinnamon paste and pine nuts. It surely didn't come from his kitchen.

"No thanks," he said. "Just woke up."

"Sure. Um. Where's your restroom?"

"Upstairs," he said. As Alex headed upstairs, Nathan collected the china and rinsed it off in the sink. His mother hopped up, donning rubber gloves and swatting at her son.

"No. Mom, let me. You look tired."

"No. You need to pay attention to your guest," she prattled.

Nathan went to find Alex. He creaked to the top of the stairs, and discovered her in his bedroom, staring at the drawings that were taped up on his walls. They were sketches done in charcoal of a dark silhouette wading out into an ocean filled with skulls bobbing in the waves. In some, the figure had demonic wings, in others, it wore a fedora.

"What is this?" Alex asked.

"Just some drawings. Last night you said something about the Night Man. What were you talking about?"

"I don't know. I was pretty messed up."

"There are things I need to ask, Alex."

"I know. But not here. Let's go on a walk. Ghost woods. You can show me where you and Tom used to play."

"Why do you want to go there?"

"I feel safe with you. Can I borrow some clothes?"

"Why did you wear a dress anyway?" He knew the answer already. Alex was the kind of girl who would wear a dress to a firefight.

"Please," she said. Nathan nodded and handed her a T-shirt and training sweats. Anxiety was crawling up the back of his neck and planting fearful scenarios in his head of him hiking with her and coming apart. But he had to do this. Maybe he could jog her memory and get her talking about why she had been there at the tree where she was nearly murdered as a child.

"Let's just keep the walk short. I have a lot of pain today."

"All right," she said and went bounding downstairs.

Nathan went to his room to grab a sweater and a Vicodin. He sifted through the drawer to his nightstand, looking for the bottle of pills. He couldn't find it. And he had to get moving. He was always misplacing things these days, becoming increasingly forgetful.

Nathan and Alex headed outside and found Tom mowing his lawn. He had the mower at the end of a trimmed lane of grass and stood talking to Lacey. She wore a sheer yellow dress and many rings and bracelets. A tall glass of lemonade dripping condensation down her fingers.

Tom lowered the throttle and the mower puttered to a halt. He waved. Alex approached them, treading softly on the lawn, careful not to damage her white shoes.

"Lacey, right?" she called.

Lacey swung her hair over her shoulder as she turned. She was much taller than Alex, especially in her heeled boots. Her dress looked like lingerie with its obscene lace trim around her thighs. She gave Alex an odd expression and her left eyebrow popped up. "Sorry. Have we met?"

Alex blushed. "I—maybe you don't remember me."

"Oh, wait," said Lacey. "You came into Calaveras, right?"

"Yeah," said Alex.

"I served you a... Oh, I normally remember people's orders."

"Shirley temple," Alex said. "I'm too young to drink."

"Right! And I said you were cute." Lacey smiled and held out her hand. "Nice to meet you. Officially."

Tom cleared his throat, wiping the sweat off his brow with the bottom of his shirt. "Alex. Since when do you hang out at Calaveras?"

"My brother took me to see a show. Some hardcore band. Pleased to meet you officially, Lacey," she said, smiling and bobbing her head.

"My," said Lacey, running her eyes over Alex from tip to toe. "What a perfect little doll you are."

"Pardon?" Alex said.

Lacey shifted her attention to Tom. "Here's your lemonade, darling." She handed him the glass, which he drained to the last drop.

"Cool boots," said Nathan.

Lacey kicked up the heel of her Victorian shoe. "Thanks, love."

"Is that a scorpion on your bracelet?" Nathan took Lacey's wrist in his hand and examined the bauble.

"Death stalker."

"Really? You know, if you crush a death stalker's tail into powder and smoke it, you'll trip for days," Nathan said.

"You speak from experience, marine?" asked Lacey, winking at Alex.

"No. Just something I heard. Anyway, we're going for a walk in Ghost Woods. We'll see ya," said Nathan, taking Alex's hand.

"Are you guys banging?" Lacey asked.

"We're just hanging out," Nathan said. Tom smiled with approval. "See ya."

"Make sure you check her ID, Nathan!" Lacey called after them. Nathan could hear Tom reprimanding his girlfriend as he and Alex took off.

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Music: Muse "Psycho"