Dead Echo

  *

  Tomas sat nude in his armchair, relishing that long ago, lost time. The Brumfield’s had been a revelation. He’d believed himself reborn after the Fire; he’d just never known as what. After the Brumfields there had been no question. He’d stayed with them for two years, the longest of any child they’d sponsored, they told him many times. And whether or not it was true mattered little. Here was experience, purpose. The Dark Lord had saved him from the Fire; there were many discussions about that. He liked the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing bit; this couple, a pillar in the community, and no one really knew anything about them. The use of the children took on a whole new meaning. Not that Tomas minded being used. From early on he’d known that as a fact of life; people would try to get whatever they could out of you. They’d use you until you were empty, and then you’d be discarded. The trick (and this is one of the things the Brumfield’s reiterated to exhaustion) was to be the one pulling the levers. Selfishness was the natural way. All you had to do was study any piece or parcel of nature and that’s what you’d see. Most people were simply blind to the facts, satisfied like bleating sheep; he should not be.

  He also found out the Brumfields were not the only ones.

  There was a League of sorts. The Brumfield’s called it a cabal. According to their information, people from all over the world were involved in this organization. From all walks of life. Even though Aleister Crowley had made the idea of devil worship somewhat faddish in the late 60s, the group, as a whole, had turned away from the limelight upon his demise. They had to, really. There were far too many aspects of their…(and they were touchy about going too far into detail with him) organization that would not withstand public scrutiny. Of course, every idea has its fanatics and theirs was no exception. However, the ones who infrequently made the news and ‘weird files’ slot in the Prime Time hours were merely the fluff. According to William, these very fanatics were allowed to continue because they took attention away from the ‘devout.’ “But,” he had laughed one night as they sat, the three of them in the cellar, one to a couch, “they were lucky that they weren’t rubbed out of existence just on principle.” It was a mysterious statement, one Tomas never had time to inquire about; the sessions before the altar would have won him over easily enough anyway, and he could have cared less about a bunch of “dim-witted assholes,” as William liked to call the whole blanket-bunch. However, there did come a time when their teaching was done, when he’d let them take him to the very extent of their perversions.

  That was when the Brumfields sent him to California.

  For the next two years (one of those patches of gray that Donald Brown had alluded to in the Confidence Room) he lived right outside Los Angeles in a palatial estate owned by some European artist he never even met. The home had a permanent staff and the stuff of dreams passed through the arched entrance in the drive: rock and movie stars, politicians and statesmen, even religious figures. He’d been shocked at the faces, at the casual attitudes of these very public figures who walked the marbled halls, admired the paintings and frescoes on the walls and patios, mixed drinks in the fully-stocked bar, and ate at a table that would have served the Queen of England well, though she was never in attendance. Because this house had a cellar too, more formally, probably, a basement, much bigger than the one the Brumfields possessed. Only this basement contained a torture chamber. It had everything from an Iron Maiden to breaking racks and they weren’t for show either. One night Tomas had watched a woman (a vagrant some Collection Group had scraped out from underneath an interstate overpass) slowly pulled to pieces as a crowd of twenty-five hardcores had watched two others turn the wheels. What had fascinated him that night, as he watched from underneath the folds of his coal black tunic with blood red sash, was the ease with which the gears meshed as the nude woman was slowly pulled apart, her left arm first, squeezing away from the socket with a taffy-like pull of skin while she howled like some common dying animal. The amount of blood had been amazing. She, like the other sacrifices, was later spirited away in a truck sent in the back alley entrance, arranged and paid for by unnamed sponsor. A price had to be paid. Every time.

  For every circumstance.

  He looked down, pulled from the memory, smirked at his cock. He considered it his Rod of Destruction, had even written the phrase down in a notebook he had lying around somewhere in his bedroom. It would bring doom. He stood up and walked over to the curtains. Reached up with his right hand and pulled a wedge he could look through. It was a very dark night. Across his front yard he saw the shade of a raccoon slide from one edge to the next, off into the ditch and out of sight. He couldn’t see her house but he knew where it was.

  He smiled savagely into the night.