Incubi - Edward Lee.wps (36 page)

"What...is...this?" Faye asked, the impossibility of what she saw stretching her words like tallow.

Jack glanced at the slip of paper. "Those are the directions I told you about, the directions to the rich guy's house."

"Rich guy," Faye repeated.

"Yeah, the rich guy. I already told you, the guy who invited Veronica to his estate for some kind of retreat. I copied them down when I broke into Ginny's apartment."

"You broke into Ginny's apartment?" Craig asked, incredulous.

"Don't ask," Jack said.

But Faye was tugging on his sleeve, urgent to the point of almost tearing his shirt. "Jack, Jack, listen to me!"

"Are you all right, Faye?"

"Shut up and listen!" She pointed to the world Jack had written above the directions. The word was Khoronos. "What's that? Why did you write that?"

Now Jack looked totally cruxed. "That's his name."

"Whose name?"

"The rich guy," he close to yelled. "I already told you."

"You never told me his name!"

"So what?"

"The rich guy's name is Khoronos?"

"Yes! Big deal! What's the matter with you?"

Her eyes leveled on him. "Like those other names, Jack. Fraus. Faux. They weren't names, they were words. Khoronos isn't a name either. It's a Greek word."

Jack tapped out a Camel. "What are you talking about?"

She paused to catch her breath. He didn't understand. "Let me ask you something... Do you have any reason to believe that Veronica's disappearance might have something to do with the Triangle case?"

Jack looked at her absurdly. "That's ridiculous. They're totally unrelated."

Then Faye Rowland enlightened him. "Khoronos is Greek for aorista."

| |

Logic was not a thing one generally considered during times of anguish too easily usurped by emotion and, of course, poor judgment. In other words, Jack Cordesman began to act before he began to think. Foot to the floor, he smoked and fumbled with maps as he drove, drifting in and out of his lane. Ginny's directions were not difficult, yet he found difficulty in applying them to the county map grid. He felt something fighting against him.

Upon Fay's revelation at the bar, Jack was up and out. Impossible, he thought. Completely impossible. But he was not daunted by such formalities as common sense. She'd dragged at his shirt in the parking lot, yelled at him, tried to reason with him, but for naught. "You can't go there by yourself!" she'd shouted.

"Why not?"

"Those people are killers!"

"If they are, I'll deal with them," he'd stated very flatly.

"Let the police handle it!"

"I am the police. Besides, they wouldn't believe any of it, anyway. Noyle? Olsher? No way."

"Take some people with you, then! Someone to back you up!"

"No."

"At least let me go with you!"

"No," he'd said, and gotten into the car, closed the door, and driven away. He saw her shrink in the rearview as he pulled off. She watched after him, standing in the middle of the street. She looked very sad just then. She looked crushed.

I'm a prick, he thought now. I'm a cold, inconsiderate fucker. Now that he had a fair idea where he was headed, wisps of logic did indeed resurface. First, this could very well be a mistake and a tremendous overreaction. The odds were astronomical. Perhaps he'd written the name down wrong. Perhaps Ginny had. Second, even if it wasn't a mistake, Faye was right. Jack should have backup, or he should've at least tried to get some, not that his credibility these days was particularly convincing among his superiors. He was going off half cocked and then some.

The unmarked's tires hummed over the blacktop. The car devoured as much road as he could give it. He passed trucks and semi-rigs heading for the interstate; the long open fields to left and right blurred by. It was a pretty night, starry and warm. The moon followed him like a watcher.

What am I going to do when I get there? This was a sound inquiry. What did he think he was going to do? Bust down Khoronos' door? Infiltrate his estate like some black-bag commando?

Was he the knight in shining armor traveling through hell and high water to rescue the damsel in distress? Or am I about to make a prime ass of myself?

And suppose these guys were killers? Killers generally had weapons. All Jack had was his Smith Model 49, a five-shot J-frame peashooter, and he had no extra rounds. In the trunk was a parkerized Remington 870 with a folding stock which he hated (because it kicked worse than a pissed-off mule) and an old Webley revolver (which kicked worse) that he only kept around because it was fun to take to the range. The shotgun would be difficult to maneuver in close quarters, and the Webley, though it chambered a big .455 load, was an antique. Big, clunky, and about thirty years overdue for a major breakdown.

He could only vaguely adjudicate the directions. At this pace, sixty-five, seventy miles per hour, he'd probably be there in ninety minutes. Khoronos was rich, eccentric, and obviously protective of his privacy. Jack envisioned a fortress rather than an estate. High fences, security windows, steel-frame doors. Jack could pick your average lock, but he couldn't touch tubulars (as were found on most alarm systems) and he couldn't do a pin-wired keyway. What if Khoronos had dogs, or guards? What if he had video? They'd be waiting for him, and they'd be ready.

But then the darkness crept back, a thousand years' worth. Khoronos, he decrypted. Aorista.

What if Faye was right?

They could be killing Veronica right now.

The ritual that never ends. At least if he died, he would do so at the hands of history, not some crack dealer or street scum.

He thought of Shanna Barrington, the black-stitched Y of her autopsy-section. He saw Rebecca Black lying crucified upon the blood-sodden bed, and the clean white walls blaring red satanic art. He thought of the sad poem Susan Lynn had written, the poem which had turned out to be her own epitaph.

He thought of the last time he'd made love to Veronica. He thought of the scent of her hair, the taste of her sex. He thought of the way she felt, so lovely and intense, so wet for him. He remembered what she'd said to him as he came in her, her voice a tiny plea, impoverished out of the desperation to communicate that which reduced all the words in language to utter inferiority.

Her plea was this: I love you.

Her love for him was gone now, he knew that, but he could never forget how beautiful things had been in the past, how important he'd once been to her.

And now these aorists, these madmen, might be killing her.

They won't kill her, he thought. His long hair blew in the window drag. Not if I kill them first.

His eyes trained on the endless ribbon of road, his hands firmly gripped the wheel. He lit a Camel.

He grinned maniacally.

He may even have laughed aloud when he whispered:

"If they so much as touch her, I'm gonna kill everything that moves."

| |

Aorista, Father! I am the aorist! Once more the great beautiful black bird descended, higher into the depths than ever. It felt sublime and bright in the magnificent, chaotic darkness, a black aura singing into the whisper of providence. It heard...glorious things. Portents and validities far beyond the total of all the knowledge of the world. These were the Father's whispers.

The bird sailed effortless over the chasms, each earthwork like a channel of steaming blood bubbling red as lava, and the thick smoke of baking fat the sweetest attar to the pitlike nostrils of its beak. Below, the ushers travailed, dividing twitching faces with stubby, nimble fingers, sloughing hot skin off the backs of the beautiful, unreeling entrails from plundered bellies in scarlet bliss. Aorista! thought the bird. Aorista!

Now it perched and watched, flexing its sleek black wings. Such honor to sit here, in the lap of truth. You have honored me, drifted the whisper. So behold now all that awaits.

Yes! Aorista!

Only then, in the darkled vision, did the great bird realize the place of its perch: the very shoulder of the Father.

Go.

and so it did, soaring back through the apsis of the tenebrae, past the castellated crests of onyx and ebon.

Back

Aorist, Father!

back

Father of the Earth!

and back, over the darkness of a thousand endless truths.

Baalzephon!

Back to the gift that lay warm in wait.

Hail!

Back to the blessed error of the world.

«« »»

Veronica sensed the descent of motion. Her head bobbed with each step down. She was being carried to some low place.

When she opened her eyes she saw darkness tinted by dancing candlelight. A cloaked figure stepped away. Her carrier, too, wore the same garb; they looked like monks. Veronica tried to move, yet her limbs did not answer the command of her brain. She felt sluggish, drugged.

Her vision seemed to lag before her; she was naked in the arms of the sack-clothed monk. Where was she? And what was that, below her on the floor?

I'm not dead, she realized. And she remembered. The savaged body in the kiosk. Gilles and Marzen attacking her. She remembered the German's big hand squeezing the consciousness out of her like water out of a sponge. They were madmen, all of them, but they hadn't killed her.

Instead, they'd saved her for something.

What? What are they going to do with me?

And what had Gilles said earlier? Something about offerings?

Her cloaked bearer stopped. The flickering candlelight blurred her vision. All she could see were smears, suggestions of solid shapes submerged in dark. She squinted, tried to blink away the myopic tatters. What stood before her looked like a primitive chancel, a risen stone altar laid across stone plinths, and sided by iron candelabra. A crude red triangle had been drawn on the wall, where a cross might hang. On the center of the altar were a small jar and what appeared to be a black...

Knife, she realized in drugged terror. It's a knife.

Her carrier stopped beside the second cloaked figure. The candles sizzled slightly. They were black and crudely fashioned, releasing an oily fetor to the damp air. Veronica felt drenched in her own sweat, tremoring.

Then another figure entered the chancel.

Veronica stared.

The third figure faced the altar, murmuring something like an incantation. He's praying, she thought. It reminded her of her childhood. Church. The minister standing with his back to the congregation as he spoke the offertory and raised the sacraments. But this figure was no minister, and it was not bread and wine that he raised.

It was the black knife.

It's Khoronos, Veronica realized.

"Pater terrae," he whispered, though the whisper rang like a metal bell in the dank, underground church. "Accept these meager gifts so that we may remain worthy in your sight."

"World without end," incarnated the two others.

"To you we give our faith forever."

"Accept our gifts. Sanctify us and keep us safe..."

Khoronos turned, his hooded faced diced by candlelight. His hands clasped the earthen jar to his chest.

"Welcome, Veronica," he whispered very softly.

His cassock came unsashed.

Veronica screamed.

No penis could be seen between Khoronos' legs. There was only a severed stump peeking out above the testicles.

«« »»

"What should I do?"

Craig was starting to get addled. He poured two Windex shooters for a pair of dolts with glasses, then came back to her. "How can I tell you what to do if you don't tell me what's going on?"

"You'd never believe me," Faye muttered.

"Whatever he's off doing, don't worry about it."

How could she not worry? Jack was alone, against uncertain odds. "I'll call his partner, Randy."

"Jack can take care of himself," Craig said. He had three taps running and was mixing drinks at the same time, somehow without spilling a drop. "That's your problem, Faye. You never have faith in anyone."

The statement slapped her in her face. "How the hell do you know!" she objected loudly enough to turn a few heads.

"I'm a barkeep, Faye. Barkeeps know everything." He grinned, lit a Marlboro. "How can you expect to have faith in people when you don't even have faith in yourself?"

Faye stared through the brazen comment. But was he right? Why couldn't she just leave things be? Jack had to know what he was doing better than she did.

Craig was jockeying; the bar was full now, standing room only. Lots of rowdy regulars, and lots of couples. A row of girls sat up at the bar, to fawn over Craig, and right next to Faye was a guy in a white shirt writing something on a bar napkin. Suddenly he looked at her. Faye recognized the shattered look in his eyes. It was the same look she'd seen in Jack's eyes the first night she met him. It was the same look she'd seen in her own for a year. Broken pieces. "My girlfriend broke up with me tonight," the guy drunkenly lamented. "I was going to marry her."

"Sorry to hear it," Faye offered.

The broken pieces glimmered. "I still love her," he said.

Eventually two friends took him out of the bar; he was clearly too drunk to drive. But he left the napkin he'd been writing on. Faye glanced at it. It's a poem, she realized.

It read: My gut feels empty, my heart is black. I'd do anything to have you back. So shall it be you've cut the tether, but my love for you goes on forever.

Faye could reckon this, despite the bad verse. For a year, her heart felt black, her gut felt like a bottomless pit of loss. Did Jack feel the same way now? Was that why he'd rushed to find Veronica? Or had she really been tricked by murderers?