“But will we make it out with our sanity intact? is the question,” Norma said.
“All I know,” Lana said, “is that I’m taking up alcoholism when this thing is over.”
“Make it a double,” Dale said.
The exodus from the cathedral was a chaotic flood of frightened demons; many of them, in their haste to be away from the failing building—and even and even more urgently from the creatures inside—were running through the shallows of the lake, so as to avoid the crowded beach. It was only a matter of time before their plunging through the water drew the attention of the Quo’oto.
The beast surfaced suddenly, in a great explosion of foaming water, and seemingly dislocating its lower jaw so that it protruded much farther than the upper, it easily scooped up twenty demons in one pass. Then it threw back its head, tossing its catch down its black throat, and plunged into the lake again only to surface less than a minute later to do the same thing farther down the beach, closer to the front door.
Its appearance did little to dissuade many of the crowd from running out into the water almost immediately, preferring to risk being taken by the beast than to be anywhere near the cathedral. Their frenzy was understandable. The roof was beginning to collapse now, churning up dust that was illuminated by a flickering blue light from within.
There was one piece of good news for the Harrowers: the newly constructed bridge that had been placed across the lake by the army of the Unconsumed made crossing back to the beach easier than having to fight for a boat. It wasn’t an elaborate structure, but with the Quo’oto busy digesting the remaining demons Harry and company crossed the body of water and reached the safety of the beach without incident. They ran at speed, Caz carrying Norma all the way. When they finally touched ground, it was not far from the demon encampment from which they had originally launched their boats.
“We have to go to the village,” Harry said. “The old lady will be there.”
“You all stay here, look after Norma,” said Dale. “I’ll go. It isn’t far.”
“I’ll go with you,” Caz said.
Harry, Lana, and Norma found a place up off the beach under the shelter of what looked to have been a small copse in better days, now reduced to little more than a few desiccated, leafless trees.
“We’ll wait here for you,” said Harry.
“And if you don’t come back in an hour or so I’m going to come looking for you,” Lana said. “I don’t trust that old woman.”
Caz and Dale headed toward the camp while Harry did his best to make Norma comfortable on the uneven ground.
“What are you thinking, Harry?” Lana asked.
“Ha!” Norma barked. “There’s a can of worms.”
Harry’s heart warmed. Norma was back in his arms—bruised but alive—and hearing her familiar maternal tone again made him feel like things just might work in his favor for once. He turned to Lana and spoke.
“Going through that,” Harry said, gesturing toward the compromised structure, “makes me feel a little used up inside. But everything’s going to be all right, right?” The cathedral’s demolition continued, though it had slowed now that its walls were, in several places, little more than heaps of rubble.
“I don’t think that’s how life works,” said Lana. “But at least it’s something you can depend on from the moment we enter this fucked-up world. I think babies cry when they’re born because they’re born with the knowledge of all the terrible shit that’s gonna happen to them. That’s why I never had kids. Every life is a death sentence. We just forget it later in life, like dreams we lose the second we wake up. Whether we worry about it or not, the shit’s still going to fly. The important thing is we’re here. At least for now.”
“Reassuring,” Harry said.
“All the more reason we get out of here as fast as we can.” Lana looked along the beach. “I lost sight of the boys. Hopefully they’re getting some help from that old bitch.”
“There you are, witness.”
The Hell Priest appeared suddenly. He walked off the bridge and made his way over to them, the condition of his body so ragged and his face so utterly devoid of its former symmetry and elegance that unless he had spoken Harry would have passed him by unnoticed. Now they stood face-to-face as the crowd turned past them, on up the beach and away into the darkness. D’Amour realized then that his tattoos hadn’t let off any alarms in hours. Maybe he’d burned them out. Whatever the case, they’d betrayed him. He crossed in front of Norma to protect her. Lana shot up, readying herself for a fight.
“Jesus Christ,” Harry said. “You look like hell.”
“My witness … my faithful, unerring witness.”
“It’s gonna make a hell of a book, Pinhead.”
“It is a shame that you will not see it to its end now. You live in the dark, D’Amour. And that is where you will remain,” the Hell Priest replied. And so saying, he raised his left hand to his face, whispering an indecipherable incantation. His words ignited in the cage of his blackened fingers.
“Still more tricks?” Harry said. “They’ve done wonders for you so far.”
He moved to the right of the demon and took two, perhaps three steps down the beach to better position himself for a fight, but the Hell Priest had other plans, and against his will Harry felt himself once more lose control of his body.
“Fucker!” Harry shouted.
“Harry?” Norma called out.
“No!” Lana screamed as she advanced.
“Away, cunt,” the Priest said to her. “Or I’ll see to it that your punishment far outweighs your crimes.”
“Norma. Lana. Let it go,” Harry said. “This is between me and Pinfuck.”
Harry’s eyes began to prick.
“Christ. What are you doing?” His heart quickened, not beating but hammering. And with each hammer blow the pricking worsened, as though invisible hands were steadily pressing white-hot needles into his eyes. He tried to blink, but his lids refused to close. The Hell Priest had turned to watch him, Harry’s eyes catching a gleam of the cold blue light that Lucifer was emanating. As the pain increased, darkness crept in from around the edge of Harry’s sight.
“Look your last, witness.”
Though the Priest still had magic, the strength of his workings had clearly left him, and the working on Harry’s body was nowhere near the paralyzing thrall the Priest had held over him in the cathedral. Harry fought the magic and reached out, making contact with the Hell Priest’s cold, wet body. His fingers found something to hook themselves under, though whether it was torn flesh or a portion of the Hell Priest’s stolen vestments Harry neither knew nor cared.
“What more do you want from me?” D’Amour said. “What am I to you? I need my eyes. I’m a detective.”
“You should have thought about that before you turned your back on your duties.”
The darkness encroached at ever-greater speed, and Harry could now no longer take in the Hell Priest’s face in a single glance but needed to scan it through the iris that was closing his vision down. He could see nothing in the demon’s face that suggested there was any reprieve to be had. There was only the cold light reflected off the Fallen One in his eyes. The rest, what had once been a kind of perfection, was ruin.
This has been your life, said some cold, steady voice in him, apparently immune to the terror that had confounded the rest of his thoughts. You have wandered among evil things, seized by a sickly intoxication that allured you to play the role of hero, while all the time you’ve been indulging an addiction. This wretched clarity was more than he could bear. Why now, of all times, did his brain choose to make such a damning judgment? It became a loop that now receded behind the ever-darkening terror.
And then every last pin drop of sight was gone.
13
The noise of the demons’ chaotic departure became more ragged after a time as what had been a solid flow eventually diminished. The wounded came now, many gasping for breath as they did their b
est to climb the beach, often moaning with pain, some even weeping quietly. It was one such demon’s whimpering that woke Harry. All track of time was lost as he lay there on the stones, the side of his face stinging from the wounds he’d sustained wherever and whenever he’d landed.
“Hello?” Harry said. “Lana! Norma! Anyone?”
“Harry!” Harry heard Lana’s muted voice calling out to him. “You’re awake. Oh Jesus—” Her voice was followed by the sound of her approaching footsteps.
“Lana! Is that you?”
“What do you mean? I’m right here.”
She was at his side now, touching his face. Harry’s eyes were open but could see nothing.
“Fuck. I … I think the fucker blinded me.”
“Thank God you’re awake.” Harry heard pain in Lana’s voice. “Harry. It’s horrible—”
“Hey. Don’t worry. Not my first time being blinded by a demon.”
“No,” Lana said, close to weeping. “Not that.”
Harry stopped dead. “Lana?”
“He…”
“No!” Harry said. “Lana! Tell me Norma’s okay.” Lana had given in. Harry could hear her crying now. “Lana! For fuck’s sake! Tell me what’s happening!”
“She’s still alive, but Christ, she’s a mess. I tried to stop him once he knocked you unconscious, but … I couldn’t move, Harry. He’d thrown some fucking words in my face and I was down. All I could do was watch while he…”
“What?”
“He fucking violated her, Harry. Right in front of me. And made me watch. I couldn’t even close my eyes.”
“I’m gonna fucking kill him. I swear, I’ll rip out his fucking heart. Where is she?”
“I’ll take you.” Lana put her hand beneath Harry’s elbow.
Harry talked as they walked, some to break the silence in the air, mostly to drown out the noise in his head.
“Something had to give sooner or later,” he said. “The number of times I should have been the one in the body bag, but somehow always unharmed. A few broken bones. Never anything serious. Norma used to say I had an angel looking out for me. She said she’d see it sometimes when I came to visit her. But I guess it had other business today.”
“Easy now,” said Lana.
“I got it,” Harry said, climbing the slope of the beach, all the while loose stones were sliding away beneath his boots.
“Slowly—”
“How much further?”
“Two, three strides, then it starts to level off again.”
“Can you see Norma?”
“Yeah. She’s lying where I left her.”
“How is she?”
“She’s still breathing. I knew she wouldn’t let go till you came back. Thank God you woke. It’s just a few more steps.”
“Norma! Norma! It’s Harry!”
The old lady murmured something.
“Lie still,” Harry heard Lana instruct her, but Norma had fashioned a life of creating her own laws and she wasn’t about to start taking orders now.
“What did he do, Harry? Tell me. No lies. Just tell me. What did he do?”
Harry heard the pain in her voice. It hit him like a blow to the gut. “I always wondered what the world looked like through your eyes,” he said to her. “Now I know.”
“Oh … child…”
Lana took her hand off Harry’s elbow and stepped back to allow Harry to settle down into a cross-legged position. Norma immediately reached up and found his face as easily as she would have if she’d been sighted. She stroked his unshaven cheek.
“So you’re not hurting?”
“No. But you are, aren’t you? Lana told me the fucking—”
“Don’t waste your breath, Harry. There’s other stuff we need to talk about. Just you and me. Lana, would you give us a moment?”
“Absolutely,” Lana said. “I will be waiting nearby. Just yell if—”
“They’ll hear me in Detroit if there’s a problem,” Harry said.
At that, he heard the fading sounds of her feet crunching on the stones as she left Harry and Norma to share their last words together.
“She might be your soul mate, Harry.”
“Come on, Norma. We both know I don’t get one of those.”
“People are complicated. Of course a lot of the time they’re putting on faces, at least when they’re alive. But once they’re dead, you know, they stop all that nonsense. So you’ll get to see the truth. And it’s so much richer and stranger than you’d ever guess from having looked at their masks.”
She was no longer speaking in the raw, hesitant fashion she had been using when Harry first got to her. Now she talked in an urgent whisper.
“I’ve left all the instructions with a man named George Embessan.”
“What instructions?”
“For what happens once I’m gone. Which will be very soon.”
“Norma, you’re not going—”
“Yes, I am, Harry, and you do neither of us any favors by wasting time with platitudes. My body’s meat, pure and simple. All Pinhead did was hasten me toward my exit, for which I am not ungrateful, to be honest. I need to die awhile. Get my appetite for life back before I choose new parents, and set back into the game with all that I’ve learned hidden away at the back of my soul. It’s going to be quite a life next time ’round, knowing all that I know.”
“I wish I could be with you.”
“You will be. You will.”
“No doubt?”
“Would I lie to you?” she said with genuine indignation. “We’ll be together. Different faces, same souls. So don’t grieve. Just take up where I fell off.”
“You mean … helping the dead find their way?”
“Damn right. What else are you gonna do with your time?”
Harry allowed a short, disbelieving laugh to escape his throat. “You knew it’d be me.”
“No. I didn’t, actually. That’s a complete revelation.”
“I can’t help the dead, Norma. I know nothing about them.”
“You knew enough to get down into Hell and save my sorry soul.”
“And that ended great for all of us.”
“You think this is a fuckup?”
“Of course it is,” Harry said. “You’re dying.”
“Harry, Harry,” she soothed him, stroking his face. “Listen to me. Things are never the way they seem. You did what you thought you should because you’re a good man. You came down into Hell to find me. Into Hell, Harry. There aren’t many people who’d drive to Jersey for their own mothers, never mind venturing into the abyss for some old, blind, half-crazy woman.”
“You’re not—”
“Listen to me. It wasn’t about me in the end. It was never about me. I was just the bait.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either, if it’s any comfort. But think about it. Think of how things have changed down here, in this place itself, obviously, and within you, I’d be willing to wager. All because you chose to come looking for me.”
“So somebody set all this up. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Not at all. That’s magical thinking.”
“But you said you were bait. And that means there had to be a fisherman, doesn’t it?”
Norma took a long moment to think this through before she replied.
“We’re all in it together, Harry. We’re all pieces of the fisherman. I know that sounds like a bullshit answer, but you’ll see, when you start to work with the dead. Everyone’s complicit: the most innocent little kiddies; babies who live a day, an hour—they still have a hand in things, even their own deaths. I know that’s very hard for you to get your head around right now, but take it from someone that’s spent a lot of time with death.”
She paused, and Harry heard her make a half-suppressed grunt of pain as she shifted her bruised body.
“I’m still going to kill him,” he said.
“I’m fine, Harry,” she said, “You don?
??t need to worry about me. Or him. He’s just one of the Lost and Afraid. Everyone is so fucked-up.” She laughed lightly. “It isn’t really funny,” she went on, the laughter subsiding. “The World-Soul is sick, Harry, crazy-sick. And if we don’t each do our part and try to get to the root of its pain and burn it out, then everything is for nothing.”
“So what do I do?”
“I can’t answer all your questions, Harry,” Norma said, her reply tinged with an unsettling remoteness. “They’re not all going to get answered. You need … you need to accept that.”
“How about we split the difference? I’ll acknowledge it, but I won’t accept it.”
Norma reached out and gripped Harry’s arm, seizing it with accuracy and a strength that astonished him.
“I’m … hap … I’m happy … just us.…”
“You really are happy?” Harry said. He tried to keep the doubt from his voice but knowingly failed.
“Of … course…”Norma replied. With each syllable her voice grew weaker.
“I’m gonna miss you so goddamn much, Norma.”
“I … love…” She didn’t have the strength to finish. She trailed off as the breath that had carried her words ceased with a barely audible click in her throat. He didn’t need to speak her name and have his call go unanswered to know that she’d taken her leave.
He reached out tentatively in hope of finding her face so as to close her eyes. To his surprise his fingers found her cheek with the same uncanny accuracy he’d seen her demonstrate; the image of what he was doing appeared in his mind’s eye, fixed like a painting: Attempting to Close the Eyes of a Blind Woman After Death.
It was easier than he’d wanted it to be. Her eyelids obeyed the slightest touch of his fingertips and closed forever.
BOOK FOUR
Fallout
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls.
—E. H. Chapin
1
Lucifer, once the Most Beloved Angel in that incandescent dimension that mortal men called Heaven, exiled from its glories and its powers by his Creator, thrown into a place of rock and darkness where, in defiance of his Creator’s torments, he’d made a second Heaven or at least attempted to, which mortal men had come to call Hell, stood amid the wreckage of his cathedral and planned for the second time his farewell to life. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes this time as he had the first. There’d be no cathedral to serve as a place of pilgrimage for those who wished to meditate on the injustice and tragedy of his story. Nor would the underworld be populated with the bastard children of the damned and their tormentors, the latter rebels like himself, thrown down from Heaven for conspiring with him to rule from its Throne.