The Charlie Parker Collection 1

  It was only when I cleared the garage that I saw him. Two tree trunks had been bound together to form an X, supported in turn by a second pair of trunks that kept the cross at an angle of sixty degrees to the ground. He was naked, and his arms and legs had been bound to the wood with wire. There was a lot of bruising to his face and his upper body, and swellings on his arms, chest, and legs that looked like the result of bites. Blood had flowed from the wounds to his limbs and torso and pooled on the ground below him. The rain washed over his pale body, dripped from the soft flesh on his arms and glistened on his bare skull and white, hairless face. A patch of skin was missing from his stomach. I moved closer to him and checked his pulse, his skin still warm to the touch. The Golem was dead.

  I was about to leave him when gravel crunched to my right and the mute appeared. There was mud on her boots and her loose denim jeans, and she wore a yellow windbreaker, which hung open over a dark sweater. She held a gun in her right hand, pointing to the ground. There was no time for me to hide, even if I wanted to.

  She stopped short when she saw me, her mouth opened soundlessly, and she raised her arm and fired. I dived left. Beside me, the Golem’s body shuddered slightly as the bullet struck his shoulder, close to where my head had been. I knelt, sighted, and squeezed the trigger. My first shot took her in the neck, the second in the chest. She twisted, her legs wrapped themselves around each other, and she fell, loosing off two shots into the air as she hit the ground. I ran to her, keeping the gun trained on her body, and kicked her Beretta away from her right hand. Her left leg was trembling uncontrollably. She looked up at me, the scars on her neck now obscured by the blood flowing from her wound. Something rattled in her throat, her mouth opened and closed twice, and then she died.

  In the outbuilding to my right, a shape distorted the flow of green light for an instant. A thin shadow passed across the glass and I knew instinctively that Mr. Pudd was waiting inside for me. He could not have failed to have heard the shots, yet he hadn’t responded. Behind me the door of the lighthouse remained securely closed, but when I looked to the top of the building, the light that had been burning was now burning no longer. In the darkness it seemed to me that something was watching me closely. Pudd would have to be dealt with first, I thought; I did not want him at my back.

  Quickly, my hands brushing the wet grass, I ran to the door of the outbuilding. There was a small glass panel at about face level, criss-crossed with wire, and I stayed low as I passed beneath it. A bolt had been pulled across midway down the door, and a lock hung open beneath it. Stepping to one side, I eased my foot against the crack and pushed the door open.

  Three shots sounded and the door frame exploded in showers of splinters and flaking paint. I jammed my gun into the gap and fired five times in an arcing pattern, then threw myself into the room. I could still hear glass falling as I sprinted to the far left wall, but no more shots came. Working quickly, I ejected the magazine from the Smith & Wesson and replaced it with a full clip, scanning the room while my hands worked at the gun.

  The stench was incredible, a powerful smell of decay and defecation. There were no lights on the ceiling or on the walls, and the single skylight had been draped with folds of thick cotton to prevent direct sunlight from falling on the room. Instead, the only illumination came from small shielded bulbs set below the metal shelves that ran in five rows across the width of the room. The shelves had four levels, and the green tint to the light came from plants that grew in pots alongside the glass cases that rested on each shelf. Every case or cage on the shelves had a thermometer and a humidity gauge, and dimmer switches had been placed in series with the lightbulbs to reduce the intensity of their radiant heat. Aluminum foil had been used to partially shield the bulbs, protecting the spiders and insects in the terrariums from direct light, while the use of foliage further softened the glare. The bulbs were not powerful enough to penetrate to the farthest corners of the room, where thick pools of darkness lay. Somewhere among them, Pudd waited, his form hidden by the shadows and the greenery.

  A sound came from close to where my hand rested on the ground, a soft tapping on the stone floor. I looked to my left and saw, resting in a small arc of green light, a dark, semicircular shape, its body perhaps an inch and a half long and its spiny legs, it seemed, at least as long again. Instinctively, I yanked my hand away. The spider tensed, then raised its first pair of legs and exposed a set of reddish jaws.

  Suddenly, and with surprising speed, it moved toward me, its legs almost a blur and the rhythm of the tapping increasing. I backed away, but it kept coming as I lashed out with my foot and felt it connect with something soft. I kicked again with the toe of my boot and the spider tumbled away into the far recesses of the room, where some empty glass cases lay piled untidily upon one another.

  In my panic, I had moved almost to the aisle between the first and second lines of shelves. To my right, shards of glass caught the light and the remains of a case shattered by my 10-millimeter bullets lay in pieces on the second level. A square of card, heat-sealed in plastic, was among the glass fragments on the floor. In ornate black script were written the words Phoneutria nigriventer and then, in English below, Brazilian wandering spider. I glanced back toward the shadows into which the aggressive brown spider had bounced, and shuddered.

  From far to my right came the sound of something brushing against the leaves of a plant, and the shadows on the ceiling rearranged themselves briefly. Pudd now knew where I was. The sounds of my frantic kicks at the spider had alerted him. I found that my left hand was trembling, so I used it to double-grip my gun. If I couldn’t see it shaking, then I could convince myself that I wasn’t afraid. Slowly, I moved to the second row of shelves, took a deep breath, and glanced into the aisle.

  It was empty. Beside my left eye, a shape shifted in a case. It was small, maybe just over an inch in total, with a broad red stripe running along its abdomen. White spherical egg sacs, almost as big as the spider herself, hung suspended in the web that surrounded her. Latrodectus hasselti, read the card: Red-back spider. Starting a family too, I thought. How sweet. Shame Pop probably wouldn’t be alive to see the birth.

  Two more cases lay shattered beside each other in the third row. Amid the sharp edges, a long green shape stood motionless. The mantid’s huge eyes seemed to stare right at me as its jaws worked busily on the remains of the occupant of the adjoining case. Small brown legs moved weakly as the huge insect chomped away. I didn’t feel sorry for whatever the mantid was consuming. As far as I was concerned, the sooner it finished its appetizer and got busy with some of the main courses wandering the floor, the better.

  My skin was crawling, and I had to fight the urge to brush at my hair and neck, so I was partly distracted as I stepped into the next aisle. I looked to my left and saw Mr. Pudd standing at the far end, his gun raised. I threw myself forward and the bullet hit the fuse box beside the door. Sparks flew and the lights died as I rolled on the floor and came to rest against the far wall, the gun raised before me, my left hand now supporting myself on the ground for only as long as it took me to realize that something soft was crawling across it. I lifted it quickly and shook it, but not before I felt a sharp bite, like twin needles being inserted beneath my skin. I rose quickly, my lips drawn back from my teeth in disgust, and examined my hand in the dim light that filtered through the windows. Just below the knuckle of my middle finger, a small red lump was already beginning to form.

  In a pair of large plastic aquariums to my right, thousands of small bodies moved. From the first aquarium came the chirping of crickets. The second contained oatmeal and bran flakes across which tiny mealworms crawled, speckled with some small black beetles that had already grown to their mature stage. To my left, arrayed along the wall in a long, multilayered display cabinet, were what looked like row upon row of plastic cups. I leaned down and made out a small black-and-red shape at the base of each cup, the remains of crickets and fruit flies lying in the ugly web beside the spider. The sm
ell was particularly strong here, so strong that I started to gag.

  This was Mr. Pudd’s black widow farm.

  My ears rang from the sound of the shots and there were spots before my eyes from the muzzle flare as I returned my attention to the room itself. A long shadow trailed along the ceiling, heading away from me. Through the leaves I caught a glimpse of what might have been Pudd’s tan shirt, and I fired. There was a grunt of pain and the sound of glass breaking as the empty cases in that corner tumbled to the ground. I heard the glass grinding beneath his feet as he stepped over them. He was now at the far wall, close to where I had started, and I knew then what I had to do.

  The shelves were not bolted to the cement floor. Instead, they rested on tripod legs, the weight of the frame and the cases it supported insurance enough against any casual impact. Ignoring the spreading pain in my hand and the possibility that the spider responsible might still be close by, I lowered myself to the ground, braced my back against the wall beside the racks of widows, and pushed at the shelf with the soles of my feet. For a moment I thought that it might just move across the floor, but then the top row tilted and the heavy frame fell slowly away from me, impacting loudly on the next shelf and creating a domino effect; two, three, four shelves fell, accompanied by the sounds of breaking glass and grinding metal, and then their combined weight collapsed on the final shelf, and I heard a sound that might have been a man’s voice before it was lost in the final tumultous roar of metal and glass.

  By then I was already on my feet, using the frames of the fallen shelves to keep off the floor. I was conscious of movement all around me as predatory, multilegged things began to crawl and fight, hunt and die. I reached the door and pushed it open, the feel of the sea breeze and the cold rain beautiful after the stale, rotten smell of the insects and spiders. The door slammed behind me and I jammed the bolt home, then stepped back. My hand was throbbing now and the swelling had increased in size, but it didn’t feel too bad. Still, it would need a shot, and the sooner the better.

  From inside the bug house, I heard sounds of movement. I raised my gun and aimed. A face appeared at the glass screen, and the door shook as Mr. Pudd hurled his body against it. His eyes were huge, one of them already filling with blood, and a muscle in his cheek was spasming. Tiny brown spiders, each only a fraction of an inch in length, crawled across his face and lost themselves in his hair as a large black spider with thin, skeletal legs pursued them relentlessly. Then Pudd’s mouth opened and two legs appeared at each corner, pushing his lips apart, and I glimpsed palps moving inside and a cluster of dark eyes as the spider emerged from his mouth. I turned away for an instant and when I looked back, Pudd was gone.

  A low thudding sound came from behind me, and the door to the lighthouse slammed softly against its frame. I was soaked through and starting to feel the cold desperately, but I wiped the rain from my eyes and made my way toward the lighthouse.

  The floor inside the door was flagged with stone and an iron staircase wound up to the top of the structure. There were no levels between where I stood and the open platform at the top of the lighthouse, through which a small panel allowed access to the exposed gallery.

  At my feet, a trapdoor stood open. It was made of heavy oak bound with iron, and below it a flight of stone steps led into a patch of bright yellow light.

  I had found the entrance to the honeycomb world.

  I took each step slowly, my gun aimed below me. The final step led into a concrete bunker, furnished with armchairs and an old couch. A small dining table stood in the far corner, on a worn Persian rug. To my right was a narrow galley-style kitchen, separated from the main room by a pair of saloon doors. Wire-rimmed lights hung from the ceiling. A set of shelves in one corner lay empty, a box filled with books and newspapers on the floor beside it. There was a smell of wax polish in the air. The tabletop gleamed, as did the shelves and the breakfast counter.

  But it was the walls that drew the eye; every available space, every inch from corner to corner, ceiling to floor, had been illustrated. There were Kohnlike impressions of death upon a dark horse; images of war victims inspired by Dix and Goerg; cities crumbling in a fury of reds and yellows as in Meidner’s apocalyptic landscapes. They overlapped one another, blurring at the edges into greens and blues where the pigments had mixed. Images taken from one artist recurred in the work of another, at once out of context yet still part of the greater vision. One of Goerg’s demons fell upon the crowds fleeing Meidner’s destruction; Kohn’s horse wandered among Dix’s battlefield corpses.

  No wonder his kids were screwed up.

  The next room was similarly decorated, although this time the images were medieval in origin and much more ornate. This room was larger than its neighbor, with two double beds on a linoleum floor, the beds separated by a slatted wood divider. There were books and magazines on rough shelves, two closets, and a small shower and toilet in one corner, separated from the main room by sliding glass doors. The only light came from a single bedside lamp standing on a table. Close by where I stood were two cardboard boxes filled with women’s clothing and an open suitcase containing some men’s suits and jackets. All of the clothes looked at least two decades out of date. The sheets had been removed from the beds and tied in two bundles. A vacuum cleaner stood in one corner, its dust bag removed and lying beside it. It seemed that all traces of the bunker’s occupants were in the process of being removed.

  A doorway stood half open at the entrance to the third room. I paused as a sound came from inside, a noise like the jangling of chains. I smelled blood on the air. I could sense no movement close to the doorway. Again the sound of metal on metal rang out. I pushed the door open with my foot and drew back against the wall, waiting for the shots. None came. I waited for a few seconds longer before glancing inside.

  A butcher’s block supported by four thick legs stood in the center of the stone floor. There was old, dried blood at its edges. Beyond it, against the far wall, was a stainless steel table with a sink attachment and a drainage pipe leading from the drain to a sealed metal container below. There were surgical implements on the table, some recently used. I saw a bone saw, and two scalpels with blood on their blades. A cleaver hung from a hook on the stone wall behind. The whole room stank of meat.

  It was only when I entered that I saw Angel. He was naked and attached to a metal rail above an iron tub, his arms held over the rail by a pair of handcuffs. He half stood, half knelt in the tub, its sides stained brown with old blood. His body was twisted toward me, and his mouth had been taped shut. His torso was streaked with blood and sweat, and his eyes were half-open. They closed briefly as I moved to him, and he made a small sound from behind the tape. There was bruising on his face, and a long wound to his right leg; it looked like a knife slash. It had been left to bleed.

  I was about to reach around his back to support him before releasing him when the mewling sound rose in pitch. I stepped back and turned his body slightly. A patch of skin, easily a foot square, had been cut from his back, and the exposed flesh pulsed redly. Blood had pooled and dried around his feet. As I stared at the wound, Angel’s legs began to shake and he started to sob. I found the keys to the cuffs hanging on a hook, then gripped him around the waist and released him, the full weight of him falling into my arms as I eased him from the tub and knelt him on the floor. I pulled the tape from his mouth as gently as I could, then took a plastic beaker from a shelf and filled it from the sink, the water sending the blood spiraling down into the drain. Angel took the cup and drank deeply, water spilling down his chin and onto his chest.

  ‘Get me my pants,’ were his first words.

  ‘Who did this, Angel?’

  ‘Get. Me. My. Damn. Pants. Please.’

  His clothes lay in a pile by the tub. I found his chinos, then helped him ease into them as he sat on the floor, supporting himself as best he could on his weakened arms as he kept his back away from the wall.

  ‘The old man,’ he said as we hauled the
pants up to his waist. Immediately, they stuck to the wound in his leg and a red stain spread across them. Every time he moved, his face creased with pain and he had to grit his teeth to keep from howling. ‘There was gunfire from outside, and when I looked around he was disappearing up those stairs. He left the oven open. I might need what’s inside.’

  He pointed behind me, to where a steel box with a temperature dial at the top stood against the wall. A thin sheet of what might have been paper hung within, assuming paper could bleed. I turned off the dryer, then flipped the door closed with my foot.

  ‘You meet the other two?’

  I nodded.

  ‘They’re his kids, Bird.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What a fuckin’ family.’ He nearly smiled. ‘You kill them?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The woman’s dead. I fed Mr. Pudd to his pets.’

  I left Angel and walked over to where a staircase led up from a small doorway at the back of the room. To the left of the first step was a room with another bed and a crucifix hanging from the ceiling. The walls here were covered with shelving, the weight of their books causing them to sag. Some had already been removed in preparation for flight, but many still remained; the arrival of Angel must have caused Faulkner to rearrange his priorities. I doubted that he had been allowed many live subjects on which to practise before. There was a workbench against one wall, inks, pens, knives, and nibs arrayed carefully in a metal carrying case on top of it. In an alcove opposite the bedroom, a generator hummed.