Everville

  Now, an hour after that conversation, he was climbing, the trees so dense he was almost blind as Norma, and after all the pursuits and losses of recent times—Dusseldorf’s death, the massacre of the Zyem Carasophia, the events in the Badlands, and the murder of Maria Nazareno—it was a relief that things were coming to an end.

  He thought of the portrait Ted had made—D’Amour in Wyckoff Street, with that black snake crushed under a hero’s heel. How simple that seemed. How blissfully simple. The demon writhes. The demon withers. The demon is gone.

  It had never been that way, except in stories, and despite what the child at the crossroads had said (leaves on the story tree), Harry had no expectation of a happy ending.

  * * *

  III

  Despite his hectoring and cajoling, only four members of the band had turned up at Larry Glodoski’s house: Bill Waits, Steve Alstead, Denny Gips, and Chas Reidlinger. Larry broke out the scotch, and laid out his interpretation of events.

  “What we’ve got here is some kind of mind manipulation,” he said. “Maybe chemical, maybe something put in the water—”

  “Least it’s not in the scotch,” Bill said.

  “This is serious,” Larry said. “We’ve got a catastrophe on our hands, gentlemen.”

  “What did everyone see?” Gips asked the room.

  “Women,” said Alstead.

  “And light,” Reidlinger added.

  “That’s what they wanted us to see,” Larry said.

  “Who’s they?” Waits wondered. “I mean, we got over the Red Menace, we got over UFOs. So what the hell is it? Don’t get me wrong, Larry, I’m not saying you’re crazy, ’cause I saw some shit too. I’d just like to know what we’re up against.”

  “We’re not going to find out sitting here,” Alstead replied. “We have to go look for ourselves.”

  “And what are we going to defend ourselves with?” Waits wanted to know. “Trumpets and drumsticks?”

  At this juncture, Bosley Cowhick appeared at Glodoski’s front door, wanting to be included in the ranks. He’d heard about the gathering from his sister, who was a close friend of Alstead’s wife Rebecca. None of the five were at ease with Bosley’s brand of glassy-eyed fervor, but with their ranks so woefully thin it was impossible to say no. And to be fair, Bosley did his best to restrain his apocalyptic talk, limiting it to a few remarks about how they were all in danger of losing the town to forces, terrible forces, and he was willing to die in its defense.

  Which remark brought them back to the business of the guns. It was not a difficult problem to solve. Gips’s brother-in-law up on Coleman Street had been fixated on what he called “killing sticks” since he’d first got his tongue around the words, and when the six-man posse turned up on his doorstep a little before ten, practically requisitioning the damn things, he was pathetically happy to oblige. Glodoski felt it only polite to invite the brother-in-law along on the venture. The man declined. He was sick, he said, and would only slow things down. But if they needed more guns, they knew where to come.

  Then it was off to Hamrick’s Bar (this at Bill Waits’s suggestion) to toast the venture with a scotch. Reidlinger was against it. Couldn’t they just get on with doing whatever they were going to do (there was still debate as to what that might be), then they could all go home and sleep? He was out-voted. The posse headed down to Hamrick’s, and even Bosley was talked into a shot of brandy.

  “People just don’t care,” Bosley remarked, staring around the bar. It was about as full as the fire department would allow, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

  “Thing is, Bosley,” Bill Waits said, “nobody’s quite sure what they saw. I bet if you asked people what happened this afternoon, they’d all say something different.”

  “That’s the way the Devil works, Mr. Waits,” Bosley replied, without a trace of self-importance. “He wants us to argue among ourselves. And while we’re arguing, he gets on with his work.”

  “And what work would that be?” Bill said. “Exactly?”

  “Leave it alone, Bill,” Chas said. “Let’s just get out there and—”

  “No,” Bosley said, his words a little slurred. “It’s a legitimate question.”

  “And what’s the answer, Bosley?”

  “It’s the same work the Devil’s been doing since the beginning of time.” While Bosley talked, Alstead put a second brandy into the man’s hand, and Bosley, barely aware that he was doing so, drank it in one, then went on, “He wants to take us from God.”

  “I left a long time ago,” Waits said. He wasn’t joking.

  “I’m sure God misses you,” Bosley replied, with equal sincerity.

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment, saying nothing.

  “Hey, Bosley, give it a rest,” Alstead said. “You’re creepin’ me out. And have another brandy.”

  * * *

  IV

  The bullet in Buddenbaum’s brain had done nothing to subdue his fury.

  “They are the most ungrateful, hypocritical, petty, paltry, witless, chicken-brained sons of bitches it’s ever been my misfortune to work for,” he raged, his hand clamped to his healing head. ‘Oh, lay on another show for us, Owen. A nice assassination. A little crime passionelle. Something with children. Something with Christians.’ He turned to Seth, who had been standing at the window overlooking the crossroads listening to this tirade for the better part of thirty minutes. “And did I ever say no?” He paused, waiting for an answer.

  “Probably not,” Seth said.

  “Damn right! Nothing was too much trouble for them. They wanted to see a president die? No problem. They fancied a massacre or two? It could be arranged. There was nothing they asked for I didn’t supply. Nothing!”

  He strode to the window now, casually fingering the wound. “But the moment I fumble—just a little, tiny mistake—then they’re sniffing after that cunt Bombeck, and it’s, ‘See you later, Owen. We’ll take her off and talk about the fucking story tree.’ ”

  He stared at Seth, who stared back.

  “You’ve got a question on your face,” Buddenbaum said.

  “And you’ve got blood on yours,” Seth said.

  “Has something changed between us?”

  “Yes,” Seth said simply. “The fact is, every hour, every minute, I think something different about you.”

  “So how would you have it between us?”

  Seth pondered a moment. “I wish we could start again,” he said. “I wish you were just coming up to me under the stars and I was telling you about the angels.” Another pause. “I wish I still had the angels.”

  “I took them away from you; is that what you’re saying?”

  “I let you do it,” Seth replied.

  “The question—”

  “Huh?”

  “You had a question on your face.”

  “Yeah . . . I was just wondering about the story tree, that’s all.”

  “There is no tree, if that’s what you’re asking,” Buddenbaum said. Seth looked disappointed. “It’s just a phrase some lousy poet came up with.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Owen’s voice had lost its venom now. He leaned back against the wall beside the window from which he’d fallen two days before. “What does it mean?” he said. “Well . . . it means that stories are seeds. Stories are blossoms. Stories are fruit, picked and pressed and eaten. Then we shit out the seeds—”

  “Back into the ground?”

  “Back into the ground.”

  “On and on.”

  Buddenbaum sighed. “On and on,” he said. “With or without us.”

  “You don’t mean us,” Seth said softly. There was no accusation in this, just a melancholy statement of fact. Buddenbaum started to speak, but Seth cut him off short. “I was down there, Owen,” he said, nodding at the street. “You were going to go without me, wherever it was.”

  “I got distracted,” Owen said, “that’s all. I’ve waited so long for th
is; I couldn’t afford to let it slip.”

  “It slipped anyway,” Seth reminded him.

  “It won’t happen again,” Owen replied tersely. “By God it won’t.”

  “How will you prevent it?”

  “I need your help, Seth,” Buddenbaum said. “And I promise—”

  “Don’t promise me anything,” Seth said. “It’s better that way.”

  Buddenbaum sighed. “It’s taken us so little time to grow apart,” he said to Seth. “It’s as though we’ve had half a lifetime together in forty-eight hours.”

  Seth gazed out of the window. “What do you want me to do?” he said.

  “Find Tesla Bombeck, and make peace with her. Tell her I need to see her. Say whatever you have to say to bring her here. No, not here . . . ” He thought of Rita, hair piled high. “There’s a little cafe I went to. I don’t remember the name. It had a blue sign—”

  “The Nook.”

  “That’s it. Bring her there. And tell her to keep the avatars out of earshot, huh?”

  “How will she do that?”

  “She’ll find a way.”

  “Okay. And you want me to bring her to the Nook?”

  “If she’ll come.”

  “And what if she won’t?”

  “Then it will all have been for nothing,” Owen said. “And I’ll be wishing I had your angels to listen for.”

  * * *

  V

  When Harry emerged from the trees the night had become completely still. There was not a murmur in the air, nor in the grass, nor in the cracks of the rocks. Once he’d climbed far enough to be able to see over the tops of the trees, he looked back down at Everville half-expecting that some order to evacuate had gone out, and he would see the town deserted. But no. The lights still burned; there was still traffic in the streets. It was simply that the mist that covered the door at the top of the slope soaked up every sound, leaving the area so hushed he could hear his own heart, beating in his head.

  “This is where it happened,” Coker Ammiano said to Erwin as they followed D’Amour across the slope towards the mist.

  “The hangings?”

  “No. The great battle between the families of Summa Summamentis and Ezso Aetherium. A very terrible day brought about by a child.”

  “You were there?”

  “Oh yes. I was there. And I married the child, a little later. Her name was Maeve O’Connell, and she was the most miraculous woman I ever encountered.”

  “How so?”

  “Everville was her dream, passed down to her by her father, Harmon O’Connell.”

  “Harmon as in Heights?”

  “The same.”

  “Did you know him too?”

  “No. He was dead before I met her. She was wandering here alone, and she came where she was not welcome. It was a simple mistake.”

  “And just by coming here she caused a slaughter?”

  “By coming here and speaking.”

  “Speaking?”

  “There was a wedding, you see, being celebrated up there”—he pointed towards the mist—“and it was the belief in the world from which the families came that silence was sacred, because it preceded the beginning. Love was made in silence. And anyone who broke such a silence was counted the enemy.”

  “So why didn’t they just kill the girl?”

  “Because the families were old enemies, and each thought the child was an agent of the other. As soon as she spoke, they massacred each other.”

  “Right here?”

  “Right here,” Coker said. “If we wanted to, I’m sure we could sink into the earth and find their bones.”

  “I’ll stay where I can see the sky,” Erwin said.

  “It is very beautiful tonight,” Coker said, throwing back his head to study the stars. “Sometimes it seems I’ve been alone for a hundred lifetimes, and sometimes—tonight, for instance—it’s as if we only parted glances a few hours ago.” He let out a strange sound, and when Erwin looked at him he saw that tears were spilling down his cheeks. “Hers were the last eyes I saw. I felt them on me, as I was dying. And I tried to hold on to life, just a while. Tried to keep looking at her, to comfort her the way she was comforting me. . . . ” He had to stop for a moment to recover himself. “But the life went out of me before it went out of her. And when I came into this”—he opened his hands in front of him—“this life after death, her body had been taken, and so had my son’s.”

  “No wonder you hated Dolan so much.”

  “Oh, I hated him. But he was human. He couldn’t help himself.”

  “Were your people so perfect then?” Erwin said.

  “There’s no difference between my people and yours,” Coker replied. “Give or take a wing or a tail. We’re all the same in our hearts. All sad and cruel.” He paused, wiping the tears away, and as he did, glanced up the slope. “I think our friend D’Amour is having a problem,” he said.

  In the last few minutes, during their tearful exchange, Erwin and Coker had dropped maybe fifty yards behind D’Amour, who was within a few strides of the mist. Plainly he had sensed the enemy, because he now fell to the ground behind a boulder, and lay still. Moments later, the problem Coker had spoken of emerged from the mist in the form of not one but four individuals, each of them of competitive ugliness: one a sliver, one obese; one bovine, one bilious.

  The thinnest of them was also the most eager, and came down the slope twenty yards (passing by the place where D’Amour lay) sniffing the air.

  “I think maybe it’s us they’re after,” Coker said.

  “What the hell are they?”

  “Creatures of Quiddity,” Coker replied.

  “Appalling.”

  “I’m sure they’d say the same about you,” Coker remarked. The thin creature was heading on down the incline, and it did indeed seem that he was closing on the ghosts.

  “What do we do?” Erwin said. The closer the creature got the more distressing he appeared to be.

  “He can’t do us any harm,” Coker said. “But if they see D’Amour—”

  The rake-thin creature seemed to be staring right at Erwin, which he found deeply disquieting. “It sees me,” Erwin said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “It does, I tell you!”

  “Well you were carping about being invisible on the way up. You can’t have it—Damn!”

  “What?”

  “They’ve found him.”

  Erwin looked past the thin man, and saw perhaps the most brutal of the creatures catching hold of D’Amour and dragging him to his feet. “This is our fault,” Coker said. “I’m damn sure it’s us they came looking for.”

  Erwin was not so certain, but there was no doubt that D’Amour was in serious trouble. One of the quartet had disarmed him, another was beating him about the face. As for the creature that had come down the slope, it had turned from Erwin and Coker, and was making its way back to join its companions, who were now dragging their prisoner into the mist.

  “What do we do?” Erwin said.

  “We follow,” Coker said. “And if they kill him we apologize.”

  * * *

  Last time Harry had climbed the Heights, Voight’s tattoos had allowed him to reach the very threshold undetected. But the trick hadn’t worked this time. He didn’t know why, and in truth it didn’t matter. He was in the hands of his enemies—Gamaliel the stick-insect, Bartho the crucified, Mutep the runt, and Swanky the obese. There was nothing to be done about it.

  He didn’t attempt to resist them, in part because he knew it would only invite violence, and in part because after all he’d come up the slope to see what the Devil looked like and they were taking him to the door through which it would come, so why resist?

  And there was a third reason. These creatures were cousins of the demon that had taken Father Hess’s life. He didn’t understand the genealogy of it, but he knew by their chatter and their frenzy and their stench that they were somehow connected. Perhaps then, in the final minu
tes before the Iad’s arrival, he might learn from one or other of these horrors what the message from Lazy Susan meant.

  “I am you and you are love—”

  Even at the end, was love what made the world go round?

  FIVE

  I

  It wasn’t dark in the belly of the Iad Uroboros, nor was it light. There was only an absence—of light and dark, of height and depth, of sound and texture—that might have passed for oblivion itself had Joe not been able to list all that it lacked. The oblivion, he was sure, would be a thoughtless condition.

  So what was this place, and he in it? Was he a ghost of some kind, haunting the Iad’s head? Or a soul, trapped in the flesh of the beast, until it puked him up or perished? He felt no threat to his existence here, but he suspected his hold on who he was would quickly become slippery. It would only be a matter of time before his thoughts lost coherence, and he forgot himself completely.

  That prospect had seemed attractive enough when he’d been standing by the pool in the temple. He’d lived his life and was ready to give it up. But now, as he floated (if a thing without substance could be said to float) in the emptiness, he wondered if perhaps his presence here had been planned or predicted by the Zehrapushu. He remembered how hungrily the first ’shu he’d encountered, on the shore outside Liverpool, had studied him. Had it, or the mind of which it was part, been sizing him up for some role in events to come, peering beyond the flesh of him to see if he’d be worth a damn in the belly of the Iad?

  If so—if there was indeed a purpose in his being here—then it was his duty to the ’shu, whose gaze was without question one of the most wonderful experiences of his travels, to preserve whatever part of him remained—his memory, his spirit, his soul—and not succumb to forgetfulness.

  Name yourself, he thought. At least remember that. He had no mouth, of course, nor tongue nor lips nor lungs. All he could do was think: I am Joe Flicker. I am Joe Flicker.

  Doing so had an instant effect. The featureless state convulsed, and forms began to become available to his soul’s senses.