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Show 289 past that first sentence. The next night it was a male voice again. "Our manic season covered three fists of the cloth," it said, and not another word followed, for all his twisting around in an effort to fine-tune. Nothing more for several nights, and then it happened again late on a Sunday night following a freak late-season snowstorm, on account of which they had turned up the heat in their bedroom when they had come home from sacrament meeting so that the air was thick and sybaritic. Lorin was nearly asleep, lying with his clothes on on top of the bed, and suddenly got a heavy dose. "Actually as many as a new bride," it said. It had said something before that but he hadn't caught it in time. "And very lovely things. In fact they are too lovely for the space of an hour." Lorin opened one eye and watched the back of Sorenson's neck for a while as Sorenson, wearing only his garments, sat on the table reading his Bible. It felt very private. Lorin closed the eye and listened for more, but no more came. But much later the same night-he was undressed and in bed by then-he awoke to hear "As she grew older, the roses in her cheek coalesced into the pimples on her chin." It went on for several weeks, well past the discussion of angels and into the chemical properties of spirit matter. It was rarely more than a sentence or two, and usually only a phrase or part of a phrase. It was not the same voice every time, but neither was it, as he had thought at first, an indeterminate and constantly-changing assortment of voices. He seemed to recognize the same three or four voices recurring in no particular sequence, with possibly a fifth, and at least two of them seemed to be female, and one of these, he was startled to realize one night, sounded very much like his mother. There was a touch of something familiar about one of the male voices too, but he couldn't place it. It was not his |