In an instant, or so it seemed to Jeff, he was riding in the middle seat of a transporter truck along a dusty inland road. Although he could see straight ahead, none of his muscles or other senses seemed to work. Helpless, he watched as the unseen driver to his left steered the vehicle onto a farm track and towards a large bare-earth enclosure.
Soon after they stopped, the driver's hands disappeared from the wheel and re-appeared, attached to a burly black-haired man on the other side of the front screen. Another man, this time a little grey-haired but still powerfully built, entered his field of vision from the right. Jeff fancied that the second man had been riding in the cab with him.
Still unable to move his head, Jeff watched as a denim-clad cowboy walked up to the pair. He tried without success to lip-read the few words that they exchanged. Soon after all three men walked towards the truck and out of his view.
The right cab-door opened. Jeff heard its clunk and suddenly became aware of the radio playing in the cab and the fainter sounds of cattle lowing and horses stamping. He found that he could now move his head. The face of the grey-haired man peered up at him and spoke in an unexpectedly high-pitched and feminine voice.
"So my unbelieving young friend, you are finally back in the land of the living," cackled a voice he recognised as Madame Illusia, despite the masculine disguise. "You didn't pay a fee last night. But there are other ways to find payment."
In Jeff's next conscious moment he was sitting in the front row of a crowd of about 200 people around a circular livestock ring. He was used to this time shift now. The two truck-drivers, who were clearly Stephan and the old lady, sat on either side of him.
An auction was in progress. Animal after animal was led into the ring, first of all walking a circuit with a stockman, then being restrained as the auctioneer directed the frantic bidding around the amphitheatre-like room. Gap-toothed rustics and white-haired old men competed for the auctioneer's eye with a whole series of odd movements - fingers pointed, eyebrows raised, cigarettes lifted - that Jeff found difficult to follow. After each sale was made, the newly-bought livestock were dragged off through a set of double doors on the other side of the ring. And still the animals came, first a bull, then some curly-horned sheep, a cockerel, a hefty jackass, another couple of bulls, a jackass, a llama (Jeff didn't know anyone farmed those around here) another jackass...
Wait... Jeff realised that the donkey he had just seen had white rings around its eyes, exactly like the donkey that John had become yesterday. That lumbering jackass that came in earlier must have been Seth, he was sure of it, and these young males in a group were none other that Seth's young teen friends. Now he remembered Stephan's words about coming to market the day after the show. He looked to see who had bought all the boys-turned-jackasses and realised that Seth, John and Walker had gone to a pencil-thin but bald old coot while Seth's friends had been snapped up as a group of five by a corpulent straw-hatted man.
They were at the end of the auction. The other customers made for the exits and the tents selling beer and bourbon. But Jeff's two companios waited until the ring was empty. Finally the black-haired gay he took to be Stephan suggested where they might go next. For the first time, a shadow of a smirk passed over the older man's features.