The killers at the Green Moon Mall had been members of a satanic cult. And so were the cowboy trucker and the people gathered in this place, this night. Different people, different cult, same enemy. I’d known the truth hours earlier but had striven to repress it.
Denial couldn’t be maintained. The skulls of fourteen bighorn rams were positioned, mockingly, where in a Catholic church the fourteen stations of the cross would be. The red beads and the five human skulls insulted the rosary and its five joyful, five sorrowful, and five glorious mysteries.
The enemy was the same, but I was in a darker and far more desperate place now than I had been on that day in Pico Mundo.
The men in that cult nineteen months earlier had made a game of evil, committing murder primarily for the excitement of it, playing at satanic faith the way that boys might play at being vampires, with wax fangs and with capes made from blankets. The cultists in Pico Mundo never committed entirely to their faith, not intellectually or emotionally. When the confrontation came between me and them, they had their boldness and their viciousness, but they did not have any genuine power beyond that of other sociopaths. In the end, though deadly, they had been nothing more than thrill killers.
But the pilot of the ProStar+ and the congregation to which he belonged were true believers, so diligent and so passionate in the practice of their faith that they were rewarded with the ability to open doors to Elsewhere. They enjoyed the capacity to blind others to their actions, as the cowboy blinded the people in the supermarket to the fact that he had fired a pistol and threatened to kill innocent shoppers if I didn’t come with him quietly.
In this new and pending confrontation, these darksiders greatly outnumbered me. And although my paranormal gifts usually gave me an advantage, their gifts made them at least my equals.
My eyes had adjusted to the lighting, and now I saw that on the black-granite table at the front of the room lay what might have been a thick black book. I was loath to approach that altar, but I knew that I must do so.
Bound in black leather, the volume contained a thousand numbered pages, which must have been blank when it was bound. On the top of the first page someone had printed these words: This coven of the demon Meridian, founded to glorify his name, on the 7th day of October, in the year 1580, in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.
Each of the next 433 pages was dedicated to one year in the coven’s existence. The heading of the page featured the year, a name followed by the words high priest, and the location. Each page also contained a handwritten meditation on the beauty and the necessity of evil, apparently composed by the priest. As I paged through, I saw that some priests served decades, others a few years. I didn’t have time to examine the book carefully enough to determine when they had moved their little cult to America. On page 433 was the current year and the name of the high priest, Lyle Hetland; otherwise that page was blank, for he had not yet written his meditation.
Over four hundred years and numerous generations of madness and murder. They were not the first of their kind and would not be the last. Accounts of such groups dated back to the earliest fragments of written history. If the world survived long enough, accounts of the activities of their latest iterations would be reported on the Internet or by whatever medium might one day replace it. The human heart may choose truth or lies, light or darkness, and even if the world were to become a universally prosperous, totally materialist sphere where everyone claimed to be scientific rationalists, some would secretly worship evil—and commit it—even if none were left who believed in the existence of absolute good. Good people are from time to time exhausted by the relentless nature of the enemy and need some period of peace, but those who worship darkness thrive on the battle, on violence and hatred, and have no taste for peace.
I’d gone where I had to go, and I’d learned what I resisted learning. And now there was only one place left for me: the house, where the children were being held, where the killing would soon begin.
The rams’ skulls were only that to me, no matter what they might be to others here, and I turned my back on them.
Twenty-seven
OUTSIDE, THE NIGHT LAY AS STILL AS IF THE WORLD had lost its atmosphere. A wind must have been ripping along at a higher altitude, because the clouds continued to tatter, unravel, and disintegrate before my eyes.
I rounded the church and stood looking at the house, wondering if security would be any better there than at the entrance to this property. I didn’t think it would be.
They knew that their fellow citizens, in this brave new century, chose to be unaware of them, to consign their master and them to the realm of myth. No one would come looking for them because no one believed in their existence. Who arms himself and goes hunting for the frumious Bandersnatch or leads an expedition to the North Pole with the serious intention of interviewing Santa Claus?
In addition, the cult might have cast a simple spell upon this property, a spell to blind people to its existence, as the shoppers in the produce section of the supermarket had been unable to see the silencered pistol with which the cowboy shot the cantaloupe. No self-respecting modern person would believe in the effectiveness of such a spell, but it worked just the same without their belief.
The Dobermans might be the extent of their precautions. And perhaps those creatures had been trained to patrol and kill less for security than for the pleasure that their trainer took in corrupting three dogs. Dogs are innocent by nature, and people such as these prized nothing more than the corruption—and destruction—of the innocent.
If the rhinestone cowboy thought I might be alive, perhaps guards would have been posted. But he believed that he had killed me in the Elsewhere version of Shower 5. I, too, thought he had killed me. It had sure felt like death, but then everything since had felt like life.
At the front of the house, lights had glowed behind uncurtained windows on all three floors. Back here, the third-floor rooms were dark. Even on the lower levels, fewer people were evident here than had been on the lake side of the building. In fact, on the ground floor, I could see no one anywhere but in the kitchen.
Pistol ready, I crossed the lawn. I sensed that I didn’t have time for excessive stealth, but I stayed away from the house until I was past the kitchen windows, through which I could see four people toiling.
Jessie, Jasmine, Jordan …
I passed French doors with lights beyond, went to a solid door, hesitated, tried it, opened it. Beyond lay a lighted mudroom: pegs on which to hang coats, benches on which to sit to take off or put on boots.
The mudroom offered two interior doors. I heard voices beyond one of them and figured it opened into the kitchen. The other door presented me with a set of softly lighted back stairs, one flight leading up to a landing, another flight leading down, no sound of footsteps above or below.
I felt drawn to the basement both by psychic magnetism and logic. If you’ve kidnapped seventeen children and are holding them for a series of human sacrifices that would give an Aztec priest second thoughts, the basement seemed the best place to lock away the little ones.
I descended two flights to a door, listened at the crack along the jamb, and liked what I heard, which was exactly nothing. Beyond lay a wide corridor leading the length of the building. On both sides were more doors, none of them open.
None of the doors was marked, either, not even with the universal language of clever symbols that, the world over, identify men’s and women’s bathrooms, first-aid stations, mail drops, and many other things. Most likely no symbol sign exists that means kidnapped children here.
Twenty feet ahead of me, a man stepped into the corridor from a room on the left, pulling the door shut behind him. He was reading a sheet of paper that he held in his right hand, and he didn’t at first register my presence.
I had nowhere to hide, no cloak of invisibility, only the pistol that I held down at my side, muzzle toward the floor, and for some reason I didn’t at once bring it on target. The Judeo-Christian ethic
isn’t as easily cast off as we believe it is. Thou shalt not kill is a deeply programmed directive; if it were not, normal life would be virtually impossible, every trip to the 7-Eleven even more dangerous than it is now, and no one would survive a season as a judge on American Idol. Although self-defense allows an exception, we tend to hesitate nonetheless, especially when the guy we think will kill us appears to be unarmed.
He took two steps, laughed, became aware of me, and looked up from the item that he had been reading. He was florid-faced, with amusingly unruly white hair and sparkling blue eyes and a crooked smile that, as a package, made him one of those people who, upon first sight, you think you’d enjoy knowing.
If he found my two holsters, bulletproof vest, utility belt, and the weapon in my hand alarming, he concealed his concern quite well. Still smiling, he raised his right fist and said, “Contumax,” which was the word on the bronze door to their temple. He said it not as a challenge but as one member of a men’s club might have called out a greeting to another member, using a secret word that helped them tell the difference between themselves and the Odd Fellows or the Freemasons.
I was somewhat surprised to hear myself answer him with the word in the center of the temple floor: “Potestas.”
Evidently I pronounced it correctly and it was the right thing to say, because he didn’t frown with suspicion. “I’m Rob Burkett.”
“Scottie Ferguson,” I replied, not sure why I took the name of the lead character in Vertigo.
Rob appeared to be delighted with me, perhaps somewhat envious, when he indicated my weaponized appearance and said, “So you’re all dressed for the stage. Be hard as nails, man, make it memorable. Which have you been assigned, a little bitch or a little bastard?”
I popped him twice in the chest. The sound suppressor proved to be of high quality, producing only one whifff and then another, which echoed quietly along the corridor like a pair of heavily muffled kitten sneezes that couldn’t have been heard through a closed door.
Even an unsentimental head-collecting child-murdering fanatic with big-time hoodoo tricks and a friend in the hierarchy of Hell can make a serious mistake. But only one.
In this place infested with human cockroaches, one mistake would be the end of me, too. I dared not leave a corpse sprawled in plain sight, and not just because the state of Nevada had anti-littering laws. I cautiously opened the door through which Rob had stepped less than a minute earlier. A small office with one desk, a computer, two chairs, no people. I holstered the Glock, gripped the dead man by his wrists, dragged him out of the corridor.
In books and movies, at moments like this, the good guy—a title that I’m taking the liberty of attaching to myself—goes through the pockets and the wallet of the thug he had to kill, searching for and discovering clues that tell him who his enemies are. I already knew what these people were, and I didn’t care who. I tucked him into the knee space under the desk.
I’m not sure what I expected the office of a hardworking devil-worshipper to look like. Maybe a lamp with a shade made of human skin, a baby’s skull used as a pencil holder, wallpaper after a design by the Marquis de Sade, and a desk calendar with 365 pages featuring the wit and wisdom of Hitler. The reality included a poster headlined THE 12 RULES OF SUCCESSFUL MANAGEMENT and another poster made from a photo of a house cat cornered by a crocodile above the words SHIT HAPPENS. On the desk were a bank statement and spreadsheet. Stuck here and there, Post-its provided neatly printed reminders: SHERRY’S BIRTHDAY GIFT, the culinarily specific HOT SAUCE, GREEN AND RED, and an almost desperate PAPER CLIPS!
I snatched a box of Kleenex from beside the computer, returned to the corridor, and quickly wiped up the blood on the gray vinyl-tile floor. There wasn’t much of it. One of the rounds had stopped his heart.
When I picked up the sheet of paper that he had been reading, it proved to be a joke going around the Internet. It concerned two dogs, a famous newspaper, Valentine’s Day, and urination. I couldn’t imagine why he’d found it funny enough to laugh out loud.
In the office again, I dropped the tissues and the paper in the waste can. I drew the Glock that now held thirteen rounds, turned off the lights, and stood in the dark, taking slow, deep breaths.
There is a keen distinction between the words murder and kill. Because of envy or greed, jealousy or rage, ideology or sheer blind hatred, the murderer takes the precious life of another. To prevent the murderer from doing so or to deal justice, or to save myself, I may kill him. He murders, I kill. Funny, then, that killers tend to be the ones who have to overcome nausea in the immediate aftermath and who struggle with guilt in the long run, while the murderers go from slaughter to celebration without a hiccup.
I returned to the hallway, pulled the door shut behind me, and almost shot Mr. Hitchcock, which would have been regrettable even if he was a spirit who couldn’t be harmed. He stood farther along the corridor, waving at me as if I might be so preoccupied that I wouldn’t notice him.
As I approached the director, he turned to his left, giving me his famous profile, and walked through a door. I almost sang the tune from his old TV show: Dunt-da-da-da-da-dunt-da-da, dunt-da-da-da-da-dunt-da-da.
When I opened the door through which he had passed, I found him waiting for me in a room about twenty feet square. Deep sturdy metal shelving units lined all four walls from floor to ceiling. They were packed full of just two items: thousands of rolls of toilet paper and paper towels. It was such a strange hoard that I couldn’t help but marvel at it for a moment.
In that singular voice and precise diction, Mr. Hitchcock said, “They must have reason to believe the world will end by diarrhea.”
I don’t recall my reply. I know I said something, but my own words were forever knocked out of my memory by the sudden realization that he had talked.
Twenty-eight
THE DEAD DON’T TALK. I DON’T KNOW WHY. I’VE ALWAYS thought that they are denied speech because, if they possessed it, they would be likely to reveal something about death that the living are not meant to know.
Mr. Hitchcock had died thirty-two years earlier. There had never been any crazy rumors about him having faked his death, as there had been about Elvis. Besides, he chose to manifest as about fifty years of age, when he’d been in his prime as a filmmaker; but if this was the real Mr. Hitchcock, he would be far past the century mark, having been born in 1899.
I stared at him, aware that my mouth hung open but unable to close it.
“Mr. Thomas,” he said, “the hour is late, the clock is ticking, and this scenario requires James Stewart, not Tab Hunter.”
“Sir … you’re talking.”
“Your powers of observation are impressive. But they alone will not ensure the safety of seventeen children. There are things—”
“But the spirits of the lingering dead don’t talk.”
“I died, as you know. But I have never lingered in my entire existence, either before death or after. One always has too much to do to linger anywhere. Now there are things I need to tell you, Mr. Thomas, but the telling will be pointless if you are not prepared to listen.”
“Call me Odd, sir. Or Oddie. That would be cool. I mean, since I’m such a fan. Your work was brilliant.”
“Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Some of it was quite good, some just all right, some unfortunate. Where you may have serious complaints, I imagine they should be addressed to the producer with whom I had to work on occasion, Mr. David O. Selznick—wherever he may be. Now shall we get to the matter of the children?”
“Wait a minute,” I said, thunderstruck by a sudden realization. “You can’t just—We’ve got to— If you’re talking— I mean, then what are you, sir? Are you my … my guardian angel?”
“I am touched by your high opinion of me, Mr. Thomas.”
“Call me Odd.”
“That’s very kind of you. But angels, Mr. Thomas, are born angels and are never anything else, except of course when they disguise themselves, when visiting Earth, as
people or dogs, or whatever. I assure you that during my many years on Earth, I was not an angel pretending to be human, and I am not an angel now.”
“Then what are you?”
“The hierarchy of spirits and the assignment of various tasks and responsibilities after death are issues more complicated than Hollywood has portrayed them. No surprise there. But if you insist on my spelling out all of that, I assure you that by the time I finish, the children will be dead.”
He pushed out his lower lip, raised his eyebrows, and regarded me expectantly, as if to say, Shall we let them die, then, so your curiosity can be satisfied?
In defense of my temporary inability to focus on the children, I can only plead that I had recently fended off three attack dogs, toured a collection of severed heads, visited a satanic temple, just killed a man—killed, not murdered—was afraid that I would have to kill many more, had heard a spirit speak for the first time ever, and he was Alfred Hitchcock.
But his raised eyebrows and his pout of disapproval, subtle as they were, brought me to my senses, as I imagine that expression and others equally well-practiced had brought errant actors back to the script and to the intended tone of a production with little or no argument. I thought of him turning the same look on Gregory Peck or Rod Taylor—surely never on Cary Grant or James Stewart—and I couldn’t help but grin.
As soon as I saw his reaction to my delight, of course, I wiped the grin off my face. “Where are the children, sir?”
“They are under guard on the third floor, Mr. Thomas. Getting them down from there and out of this house will test your wits and courage.”
“But I thought they were here in the basement. Jessie, Jasmine, Jordan, and the others. When I thought about them, I was drawn down here to the basement.”