1.
Wade and Algernon sat across from one another, the older man checking information on his computer, and the younger reading from a notepad.
“October 12, 2011, the thing at the Carver place,” Wade said, “eight o'clock, or thereabouts, to...midnight, you want to say?”
“I'm going to leave the 'to' blank. No need to get too specific about it, especially when we don't know. No witnesses of her leaving, no records of a cab. So we assume she was taken from there.”
Wade made a note in pencil on the pad.
“Have we looked into red light cameras for the time?”
Algernon shook his head.
“Useless. All those guests leaving the Carver House? We couldn't figure anything useful, looking into that. Better to go to everyone's house and ask them directly.”
Wade crossed something out on his pad, putting three thick lines through the idea.
“Bigger question,” Wade said, “why was she there to being with?”
“No idea,” Algernon said.
“Well, if there's a reason for her to be there, that might be important, right? The lack of evidence points to this being carefully thought-out, doesn't it?”
Algernon stroked his hairless chin.
“Yeah. I've gotten a list of her coworkers, but haven't really had the time to check for any real leads in that department.”
“Shouldn't we?” Wade asked.
“We should,” Algernon relied, “I'll get to finding that out. You run to the convenience store, get me another memory stick for my phone and a pack of cigarettes.”
Wade left the office, and headed out the back door of the bar, into the alleyway. He turned and stalked to the street, heading for the convenience store.
One of the pay phones rang, the one on the right end of the trio. He stepped in, made his purchases, and exited through the other door, and headed back for the office.
The one on the right end rang, and he walked past it.
The one in the middle rang, but he paid it no mind.
The one on the right rang, and he glanced at it.
He walked back and forth, and the phone closest to him rang, every time, in perfect synch with one another. He reached over, and touched the plastic handle of the closest pay phone.
It rang.
Tentatively, he wrapped his fingers around the headset, and raised it to his ear.
“Hello?” he asked.
There was a sound like the connection hiss of a modem, but the cacophony seemed to collapse in on itself. Through the waterfall of electric noise, he heard a woman speak, a French accent lightly warping her words.
2.
Not a third that walks beside me,
But five or six or more.
Whether at dusk or daybreak
Or at blinding noon, a retinue
Of shadows that no door
Excludes.--One like a kind of scrawl,
Hands scrawled trembling and blue,
A harelipped and hunchbacked dwarf
With a smile like a grapefruit rind,
Who jabbers the way I do
When the brain is empty and tired
And the guests no longer care:
A clown, who shudders and suddenly
Is a man with a mouth of cotton
Trapped in a dentist's chair.
Not a third that walks beside me,
But five or six or more:
One with his face gone rotten,
Most hideous of all,
Whose crutches shriek on the sidewalk
As a fingernail on a slate
Tears open some splintered door
Of childhood. Down the hall
We enter a thousand rooms
That pour the hours back,
That silhouette the walls
With shadows ripped from war,
Accusing and rigid, black
As the streets we are discolored by.
The crutches fall to the floor.
Not a third that walks beside me,
But five or six, or more
Than fingers or brain can bear--
A monster strung with guts,
A coward covered with hair,
Matted and down to his knees,
Murderers, liars, thieves,
Moving in darkened rows
Through daylight and evening air
Until the eyelids close,
Snapped like the blades of a knife,
And your dream of their death begins.
Possessors and possessed,
They keep the bedside wake
As a doctor or a wife
Might wait the darkness through
Until the pale daybreak--
Protectors of your life.
“Are you him?” she asked.
“Who is 'him?'” Wade replied.
“The measurer who changes the results by measuring,” she said, “the philosopher—or is it 'seer?'—who summons up demons to referee games of particles and equations.”
“What do you mean?” Wade asked, then commanded: “make sense!”
The woman laughed, and said something in French, before continuing.
“You can blame everything on yourself. How do you intend to make restitution?”
“For what? What have I done wrong?”
“Everything.”
“Me?” Wade asked, “I am personally responsible for everything that's ever gone wrong? A little harsh, isn't it?”
Though he couldn't see the woman, he could hear her smiling.
“Humanity is a virus,” she whispered, “a terrible mistake, a sea of meat that thinks it's a collection of indivisible, atomic things. Tell me, Mr. Larkin, how are you not that girl you saw get eaten? How are you not that thing you saw eating her?”
“Because I'm me. I'm no one else.”
“Are you? Because it seems to me that you've been trying to be someone else the whole time you've been here. Trying to discard what you were and assume the identity of a dead man. When will you learn? Remember? No...learn...remember you are the number nine.”
As Wade wound up and slammed the headset down with a satisfying crack! He could hear her voice:
“Now, hang up.”
Something about the whole experience made him feel ill. He put a hand to his stomach as he walked back toward the office.
As he moved, the world moved, too, seeming to shift slightly every time he blinked. One moment a cat would be black, the next, calico. What he had at first thought was a little boy turned out to be a little girl. The sun danced through the sky, stopping when he turned to regard it through slit eyes.
Ducking into Unreal City, he rolled the mouth of the paper bag shut, and bounced it off his knee. Mari stood behind the counter, humming happily as she scrubbed a glass with a dish towel.
“Mornin'” she said.
“Is it?” he asked, unblinking.
“I didn't say 'good' morning,” she pointed out.
“I know,” he said, walking to the bar, “Is it still morning?”
She checked the wall clock, which said “11:00,” then looked back at him.
“It is. That clock's seventeen minutes fast.”
He nodded, not wanting to explain how the sun had just been in the northern sky, rotating around a point that had looked completely empty.
Going up the stairs, to Algernon's office, he dropped the bag on Algernon's desk and sat down heavily in the chair.
“What happened?”
“You ever have one of those days where a French woman calls you to tell you that everything you worked for is a lie, and that the human race is a virus?”
Algernon shrugged.
“I imagine that I'd probably be completely drunk by the time my day gets that bad. Why do you ask?”
“Just coming up with a contingency plan.”
“I'm going to make some phone calls, today. If I go anywhere, I'll let you know.”
Wade nodded.
“There was something I wanted to ask you, though?”
“What?”
“Did you know that your walls were covered with screaming demon faces?”
Wade blinked, and it came out as a long, slow, confused action.
“What.”
“The wood grain around your room, it's got all these little faces in mid-scream in it.”
“I think you're imagining things. You feeling alright?”
“Right as rain. Now, I'm going to get to those calls.”
“In that case, I need to do some research. If you need me, I'll be at the library.”
3.
“Oh, that's interesting,” Victor said in a voice that indicated the opposite.
“What?” Maxwell asked.
They were in the stacks in the laboratory, going through Charles Carver's notes. Almost half a century of research culminated in the contents of this room, binders full of notes and diagrams.
“Grandfather Charles' notes on 'The Intentional Property of Electricity.' Doubtless one of the great, lost works of physics.”
Maxwell cocked his heads to the side, and stroked his chin.
“You could always publish it. It would certainly be a major achievement if it got out.”
“I'm not going to rob some dead man's intellectual grave,” Victor replied, and Maxwell shrugged.
“Your decision, Master Carver.”
Victor smirked, and opened another file. For a moment, he read, his eyes sliding over the words on the page, as if entranced.
“Maxwell?” he asked.
“Yes, sir?”
“I want you to go check on our patient, report anything strange back to me at once.”
Maxwell nodded, and Victor kept reading.
The suited man left the archives, and walked into the concrete hallways of Victor Carver's new playground, the old home-away-from-home of his great grandfather. A genius, by all accounts, though Maxwell had never met him.
The windowless hallways of the complex were lit a deep, dark blue by shaded fluorescents, giving the rooms the appearance of being shrouded in a sort of transparent darkness.
Every ten feet, there was a doorway with a slotted viewing port, allowing someone to look inside. Victor had unlocked some, left some untouched. But eleven doors, Victor had ordered Maxwell to permanently lock, welding them shut and adding a new padlock to them.
He hadn't asked what was inside any of them. He trusted that Victor knew what he was doing.
The operating room had a bed in it, on which slept a young woman. To her temples, and about her head, serving to monitor her brainwaves.
She was still asleep, still stuck in that bardo that he only vaguely remembered, where everything was melting and running together, and it was impossible to keep anything straight. You were just a strange loop, a bit of bright nothing wrapped around a spark of something else, a bit of consciousness that couldn't tell self from other.
He watched for a moment, before he returned to Victor, to report that there was nothing to report, that her condition was simply the condition that conditions happened to be at this point, so far as he could recall.
Of course, he missed the huge spikes in her brain waves that came before and after his check, almost like the oscillating sound waves of a ringing bell.
4.
The Consolation of Philosophy held no solace for him, after he looked at the index.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections did nothing but muddy the waters for him.
He had walked into the library in the way he'd been taught to enter places he had no real right to go: he walked in with a slight swagger, and a disinterested look on his face. Uncle Georges had taught him that the easiest way to get anything done was to wear a suit and act like you were exactly where you were supposed to be.
“Einstein said that all the elements of the universe have conspired to bring things into their present form. Who are we to argue with Einstein? Wade, my boy, we are exactly where we need to be.”
Wade had looked through the philosophy section after he examined the mythology section. VCU had no theology section, having collapsed it into one shelf under the heading of “Philosophy – Religious” in their catalog.
Near the window, a young man stood with his hand in his pocket and a bluetooth headset in his ear, partially covered by hair. He was telling a story in a low mutter.
“You see...he went to Florida, and rented a sailboat. Wanted to sail across the Gulf of Mexico. What?”
In a shelf of reference books dedicated to folkloric topics, he uncovered an ancient paperback book entitled “The Pseudo-Jacobean commentary on the Lemegeton.”
After using a dictionary—and then an encyclopedia—to find out what the title meant, he grabbed the book and sat at a table to read it.
“Yeah. Like a Cuban,” the storyteller said.
He flipped through the book, learning in the introduction that it had supposedly been written by King Solomon.
“So, he spends a month by himself, sailing across the gulf of Mexico, catching fish to supplement the canned goods he'd brought with him.”
It was a compilation of the demonic lords that King Solomon had subdued and bound to his ring, to obey his every command.
“Partway through, the coastguard searched the boat, looking for contraband and immigrants. They gutted the boat and found nothing. What? Yeah. They did that. Fucking pigs.”
The lord of Demons, Asmodeus, had been commissioned to build Solomon's temple, and had been converted to devout Judaism. He kept to the commandments and did not work on the sabbath.
“So, after a month, a whole goddamn month out there in a little dinghy—yeah. Like a Cuban—he finally hits land, and he goes ashore in Belize.”
Asmodeus was not the greatest of the demons in power, merely the highest ranking after Sammael, the First of the Fallen. The greatest power was that of a so-called “President of Hell.”
“Not twenty minutes after landing, he gets picked up by the cops. Again. What? No, they didn't tell him he couldn't park there. It was because he was staggering around like a drunkard. The idiot simply forgot how to walk on dry land.”
Paimon.
The symbol beneath the name was familiar: the amalgamation of loops and bars that the Novs had painted up all over University Hill.
A shiver ran down his spine.
“Wade?” a voice asked from behind him.
Turning, he saw Theia standing there, her hands in the pockets of her coat.
“Hey, Theia,” he said, turning his body and resting an arm on the back of his sea, “come and join me. Just doing some reading.”
He flipped the book over.
“Never even heard of the thing this is a commentary on, but fascinating as hell.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, then pointed out, “you're not a student.”
“What? When's the last time a library carded?”
She put a hand to her face, and rubbed her forehead.
“First, that's not the point, and second, you realize that's a really dumb thing to say, right?”
He flashed a smile.
“What are you doing here?” she repeated, her shoulders squared, and her arms crossed.
“Am I agitating you?” he asked.
“What?”
“If you want me to leave, just say so.”
She sighed, seeming to deflate a bit, looking him over with a serious expression on her face.
“That's not really the point,” she said, “it's just...”
“The hospital thing, right?”
Her eyes widened.
“You...uh...”
“I turned into a monster. I didn't choose to, and I didn't really control it. It was more like the mental equivalent—I would imagine—of riding a horse that knows what it wants to do, and screw all if he's going to listen to you.”
The storyteller looked over at them, cupped his hand over his mouth, and began to mutter something low and confused-sounding.
“That made no sense,” Theia noted.
“Good. We're in the same boat,” he replied.
She sat for a moment, looking at the book he was reading.
“Let me see that book,” she said.
He handed it to her, and she flipped it over, looked over what was written, and flipped the page.
There was something drawn in the margins: a pencil sketch of a human figure with a head that looked like a knight's helm: a beak-like face covered in vertical vents that spat smoke. Its limbs terminated in long, sharp points.
“Cincinatus had a class that looked at this. He had to write a paper using Campbell and one other source, and he looked at the 'Key of Solomon.' This is his drawing.”
Wade looked at it again.
“And it looks exactly like that thing you turned into.”
5.
Mari's pupils contracted as she came to.
She stood outside, with the sunset painting the sky purples, blues, and greens. A gust of wind caught her off guard and she fell back, landing heavily on a park bench.
Her head throbbed.
“What?” she asked, putting both hands to her forehead, and looking down.
She could hear screaming from beneath her feet. Sounds of agony. She could feel the sidewalk tense, see the grass and trees writhing in agony, thrashing as the wind played over them. To anyone else, it was a chance movement of air, to her, it was a sign of such significance that she almost wept.
There was a river of blood beneath her feet. A great heart of dead flesh pumped the septic sludge through the city, feeding the viral things that infested it.
She choked back a sob, and folded up on herself.
In her minds eye, she saw a scene such as she never saw before, a vision of the past.
The Old Gaol loomed up against the waning crescent moon. It had been emptying for years. An inhuman shriek sliced through the air, and she saw blood drip from one of the windows.
To her left, she saw a car pull up. A black Bentley. Two people got out of the back, a short man with ruddy skin and black hair. A familiar face.
A Carver.
The woman with him was tall and blond, with wide, sharp cheekbones.
Both of them carried strange weapons, identical in make and model: rifle-like weapons made from silvery steel. The barrels were wide, encircling a prong that crackled with blue light.
“Samir, stay with Alexander,” the Carver said, “If we don't come back, get him out of here.”
“Sir...” a voice, probably that of a boy no older than sixteen, came from the car.
“Do you understand?”
“I...yes.”
“Good.”
As the woman and Carver walked toward the Old Gaol, other windows began to bleed.
Mari's vision followed them as they walked into the building.
“My father had an apartment in the basement. I think that's where it is.”
The blonde nodded, and followed the Carver. When they entered the exercise yard, though, they discovered no reason to go any further, their quarry was there.
It was dressed in strips of cloth, like an old hospital gown that had been burnt and rotted. Its skin was gray, and had hardened to the point where it would crack as it moved. From the cracks dripped a dead white substance that hung in strands, like tar the color of liquid paper.
The thing was undoubtedly not a person, but looked enough like one that she could tell it was male. At least guessing from what hung below its waist.
The worst thing, though, was its head: A cartoonishly over-sized mouth, filled with broken and jagged teeth. Its eyes were blank, and it had no hair on its head. The nose had rotted off its face, leaving it with a skull-like visage.
“Hasan. We've come for you,” the Carver said.
The thing turned toward them, and lunged forward. The two fired, bracing their weapons on their hips. Each fired a bolt of blue-white light that crackled and filled the air with the smell of ozone.
Twin balls of lightning flew towards where it was; his missed, hers hit, burning its flesh, and filling the air with the smell of rot.
His bolt struck a stone wall, and the worked rock began to char and actually to combust, flames springing from the black spot on the wall.
It wasn't even slowed down: the beast lunged, and tackled the Carver. It struck down, but he blocked with his left arm; long strips of flesh were ripped from his bone. He dropped the gun, and drew a knife from a sheath at his side, and drove it into the monster's neck.
The blonde raised her weapon, and fired, burning a hole through its chest.
The burning body of the monster collapsed on top of the man beneath it. The woman watched with hard eyes for a moment, before her expression turning to fear—the thing was still moving, but the Carver wasn't.
She dragged him from beneath the thing, and hoisted him up, trying to lean him on her shoulder and walk out. It didn't work, though, he was too heavy and too short for her to properly help him.
“Ilyena,” he wheezed, “you know how it goes. Leave me.”
“Are you certain?” she asked. Behind him, the fire had spread to other stones. It began to pool around the monster's writhing body.
“I am,” the Carver said, “Go.”
She kissed him once, and left him.
6.
It was night, and the moon was full. Dozens of men in black slouched, swaggered, and sneered through the night, drawing into knots, and sizing each other up. A dry charge built up in the air, as the Hashshishin began sizing one another up, tensing, fingering switchblades.
She could smell the ozone.
Something crackled, and she saw them draw knives, snapping blades open.
Something shrieked, and bodies began falling. They stopped being people, and started to be undifferentiated meat and blood.
In the middle of the group, something crawled its way up, the blood clinging to its body.
The monster stood there, but it had changed: Its hands were adorned with tearing claws, but its face was less monstrous. It wore a man's face, bearing a handsome grin. But in that mouth were a hundred needle-like teeth, and in those eyes was no spark of awareness, no sign of mind.
The moon blinked once, then twice.
A dark skinned man with sharp features stood a distance away. A turban was wrapped around his head, and a neatly trimmed goatee ringed his mouth.
He held a weapon, not unlike a rifle, but bearing as much resemblance to the lightning guns carried by the Carver and the woman—Ilyena?—in Mari's previous vision.
“I know you,” the turbaned man said.
The monstrous thing crouched in front of Mari. Its fingers were easily ten inches in length, including the claws. It grinned like an idiot.
“You killed my foster parents, and the older Mr. Carver.”
It cocked its head to the side, and sniffed the air, but there was no fear to smell.
“No matter. Ashtaroth will make short work of you.”
The turbaned man raised the gun, and fired twice; two balls of lightning shot out, speeding forward. The first struck the beast, and dropped it, charring its skin, and causing it to curl up into a fetal position.
The second struck Mari in the chest, and caused her to fall, she dropped like a stone, and could smell her own cooked flesh.
Her head lolled to the side, and she saw the dead beast. It shook. It shuddered.
It cracked.
Its back opened up, and a dark-skinned human arm reached out. A woman's hand reached for he moon, and she began to pull herself out.
“Impossible!” the turbaned man—Samir? The boy from the last vision—said, his eyes widening. The woman stood up silhouetted against the blue-black night sky.
She was lit again, and again, and again. When Samir was satisfied, he turned and left.
But still the woman moved.