by Muriel Gray
Josh ignored that for the moment. He wanted to distract Pace.
“What’s she doin’ way up here if she could buy the White House for weekends?”
“She’s got places all over the world. I don’t rightly know, but I reckon it’s something about where she first discovered the philosophic truth that ties her to makin’ the stuff here. I know they had to start again when they came from Scotland to here. Had to make a new furnace. Everythin’.”
“Don’t you hate when that happens?”
Josh felt the corner of the strip of parchment with his forefinger, and started to tease it from the gum wrapper.
Pace sighed deeply and rubbed his eyes. “The thing. The demon called to you. It’s got itself a name.”
Josh swallowed, staring ahead but listening.
“Asmodeanus.”
“How’d you know? You see a name sewed into its jockey shorts?”
“It’s been called before.”
The sadness in Pace’s voice made Josh mildly ashamed of his forced flippancy. He adjusted his tone. “By you?”
“I can’t call them. Only she can do that. Only she can write the runes and make the incantations. I just deliver the mail.”
“So she can’t get it back.”
Pace looked momentarily and incongruously delighted at Josh’s understanding. “Right.”
Pace looked at his feet. “Two government guys. Don’t rightly know if they were just IRS or somethin’ bigger. But she must’ve done something that attracted attention. Came sniffin’ around lookin’ for God knows what. She didn’t say why they had to disappear. Just when.”
“How’d they die?”
Pace looked back up at Josh, and there was thunder in his face. “Like there’s no God.”
Josh’s jaw twitched, and he shifted in his chair. “Why you puttin’ yourself at risk here? Why aren’t you as far away from me as you can get?”
“I ain’t finished talkin’.”
“Then get on with it. There’s a meter runnin’.”
“For us both. Josh.”
Josh looked at him questioningly, expecting an expansion of that remark. But none came.
Pace ignored him and cleared his throat. The lecturer preparing.
“There’s a part of alchemy that was good. Godly even. True Philosophers ain’t a spit away from priests.” Pace shook his head at that for a reason unclear to Josh. “You know a pile of modern knowledge came from alchemic mistakes? Yeah? Puffers, they used to call them, on account of them always blowing bellows into their useless furnaces. Greedy amateurs who didn’t know nothin’. Their mistakes discovered all kind of stuff. But just like them puffers maybe found useful chemical reactions without meanin’ to, the true alchemists discovered stuff without meanin’ to neither. Dark stuff. Powers that were behind what they did but not really part of it.”
“Like Mr. Hot Ass?”
“Asmodeanus ain’t nothin’ but a foot soldier. Comes when he’s called. Goes when he’s done. I reckon she got a whole army that stick about long as they please, and some of them are generals.”
“Then why aren’t we lookin’ at Nelly McFarlane, Master of the World?”
Pace exhaled, whether out of exasperation with his ignorant audience or merely with a release of tension, it was unclear. “Maybe we will. But there’s a price. It’s high. And when she stops bein’ able to pay it, I guess even she don’t know what’ll happen.”
“What price?”
Josh waited to hear the answer. His mouth was dry and his temples throbbed. He didn’t want to hear it, but his heart knew he’d been part of it, and he had to know. John Pace spoke the word softly.
“Sacrifice.”
Blackened blood. A tiny foot. A sticky terry-cloth suit. He closed his eyes against the memory. Pace continued.
“Every seven years…” he paused, took a breath “… you got to sacrifice your own child.”
Josh opened his eyes and looked around quickly. “But that baby… it was Alice Nevin’s.”
Pace shook his head. “She grew it. Sure. But it was the councillor’s egg. Got too old to have ‘em natural.”
“How?” croaked Josh, though he knew.
“IVF. All she needed was sperm and a womb. She got one from that big dull jerk Jim, and Alice Nevin provided the other.”
Josh spoke through his teeth. “And then I killed it.”
Pace shook his head. “She did. Believe it.”
Josh remembered Alice Nevin’s house. The big expensive house with a fancy car in the drive and catalogue toys on the lawn. And then he remembered what he thought had been the baby’s father, the babbling nonsense he had shouted after Josh on the day of the baby’s death.
“Alice Nevin said ‘sorry’ to me after the death. Why’d she do that, Pace?”
The sheriff mashed his chin and nodded. “Yeah. I saw her. I reckon she was apologizin’ to the whole world for stoppin’ her man Bobby Hendry doin’ the only thing he could have done to save that baby girl.”
Josh was looking at him, trying to race ahead, to figure a way through this nightmare maze. Pace got there first.
“Has to been done just right, you see. Got to be the seventh child. Baby got to be seven days old on the first of May. Got to be a girl.”
A pause again while he fixed Josh with that weary stare. “An’ it got to be a virgin.”
Josh turned his head away. “For fuck’s sake.”
“Now you listen real good to this. She was on to Hendry. Knew he might try and save the kid by doin’ what no decent man would even want to have a bad dream about. But he knew about McFarlane’s first husband. How he’d done the same just to let his baby girl live. Knew the rules. Hendry was a dumb son of a bitch, but he had balls. Didn’t blow his brains out till the thing got so close he smelt the sulphur on its breath. Found the runes in his paperback novel and even tried to pass ‘em back to her. I know ‘cos he told me.” He swallowed. “Wish to God he hadn’t. She knows he did.”
Josh ignored his lament. “Jim McFarlane’s her second husband?”
Pace nodded once. “Samuel was her first. Fathered seven of her kids. Saved the seventh and had his throat cut open in return. That was when she discovered that Hell don’t seem to mind the modern miracle of surrogacy. Her power was down to near zero for a year while she got some poor hick kid to grow her a new one.”
Pace looked dreamy again.
“That would’ve been the time to take her out. God forgive me, I did nothin’.”
Josh felt a slight rocking movement from Jezebel again. Tiny this time, but enough to make him cock his head and raise a finger.
“You feel that?”
Pace looked dolefully back. “What?”
Josh’s nerves were in tatters. He pushed aside the gut feeling to fetch his tyre billy from behind the seat and go check the trailer. He wanted to hear more.
“Never mind.”
He sat and looked ahead, absorbing the information as best he could. Pace waited, almost as though he were expecting something from him.
“What happened to the girl he saved?”
Pace nodded, like he’d been asked how his mother was. “Griffin McFarlane’s just fine.”
If he hadn’t been sitting down Josh would have fallen. He felt as though fluid were draining from his spine, his legs heavier than flesh should ever be. From a mouth in which the saliva had turned to acid, he whispered to John Pace: “Griffin is Nelly McFarlane’s daughter?”
“That much’s for sure.”
Josh shook his head and leaned forward, elbows on the passenger dash, hands linking at the back of his neck. “Jesus. Jesus.”
Pace sat quietly, waiting for his companion to compose himself. When Josh spoke, it was almost to himself, his racing mind trying to sort and file the mess of information he’d just been given. He spoke quickly and quietly, directing his words at a windshield that reflected his dark silhouette.
“I know her. You know? Picked her up outside town. Jesus. N
o fuckin’ wonder she wanted outta here. How’d she bear it so long? She must hate that old sow like she was the devil.”
Josh sat up suddenly. Pace was still watching him.
“Shit. You have to keep her away.”
He leaned towards Pace, a desperate plea in his eyes.
“McFarlane knows she told me about the runes. Listen, man, she’s dead for sure if she comes back here.”
“Josh.”
“No, listen. You have to…”
“Josh.”
Josh stopped speaking and waited.
Pace let him settle, then spoke with the first edge of malice he’d used since they’d started to speak. “That little bitch you care so much about is only in danger if you get to her before dawn.”
Josh stared. “What you sayin’?”
“Think I’d be sittin’ here if I’d passed them runes?”
Josh swallowed, processing the implications, and when he spoke it was in a barely audible whisper.
“Griffin?”
“She ain’t no daddy’s girl. This is one who wants to be just like Mama.”
“No. Not true. Can’t be true.”
Josh was shaking his head. Pace was nodding his.
“I guess the councillor stopped trustin’ me after… well, let’s say I reckon I’ve been fallin’ from grace a little. And Griffin was real keen to cast her first runes. She already got the minor powers of the Philosopher, and her bein’ the seventh child, she told me she reckons she’s goin’ to be even more powerful than Mom. She can make gold like we make toast. Bores her, far as I can tell. More interested in the visitors from the dark places in McFarlane’s lab, but she just ain’t quite so in control yet of those… things. But it’ll come. This is the beginning.”
Josh’s mouth was open. He stared for a minute, then let out a barking laugh. “I fucked her, Pace.”
Pace looked emotionless. “No. She fucked you.”
Josh clenched his fists. He thought of that betrayal of Elizabeth, and the memory of her voice on the phone came back like a waft of sweet air in a foetid tunnel. “I’ll find her.”
Pace nodded, then licked dry lips before speaking. “Saw a note on the desk to my deputy from some highway patrollers. Deputy must’ve been gettin’ worried. See, he dropped her off at that restaurant you was in. Reckon since the dumb ass-wipe carried out that chore he thinks the whole thing’s his responsibility, like he’s scared of what the councillor might do if her little girl don’t get back safe. Anyway, the guy he’s been sneakily askin’ to look out for her said she been hitchin’ back here pretty close by. Reckon she’s still on the interstate.”
“Change seats.”
Josh got up to move back into the driver’s chair. Pace put out a hand and held his arm.
“I ain’t goin’ with you.”
It was the voice of self-sacrificing bravado. It made Josh sick. He looked into Pace’s old and worn face and wondered if the man genuinely expected him to have admiration or sympathy for a murderer. The decent part of Josh Spiller tried. It failed.
“I don’t want you with me. I want you to get the fuck out of my truck.”
Pace let go his arm and his face crumpled. He nodded once, then put a hand on the handle. “You find her, she got to take them back willingly and unknowingly. You know that?”
“I’ll find her. I don’t give a shit if she got as far as Florida, I’ll find her. And when I do, and she don’t take them, then I’m gonna hang on around her bitchin’ neck until the dawn comes and we can watch it rise together. I go, she’s comin’ with me.”
“Yeah.” There was no attempt in Pace’s voice at humouring the impossible hope. He opened the door and moved his big body to leave.
“Pace?”
The sheriff looked back.
“What are the runes written on?”
The man lowered his brow and his eyes glinted with something Josh couldn’t read.
“Amy Nevin’s skin.”
He stepped down and closed the door quietly behind him.
She looked at her watch. One and three quarter hours to go. There was a decision to be made. Was it safer to stay put, knowing that even though he was close, he might as well be a million miles away if he didn’t know she was here? After all, he would be dealt with in town. That was a certainty. Or should she try and get on the move again? Griffin thought for a second, frowning at her reflection in the washroom mirror.
Instinct told her she should move, the same instinct that was telling her the truck driver was not being truthful. What was confusing her was what exactly he wanted from her.
If he’d wanted to jump her, he could have done so a hundred times before now. Of course he would have gotten the elegant blade of the stiletto she had concealed up the sleeve of her long-sleeved T-shirt somewhere in his thick neck for the privilege. But at least that would have explained his behaviour. What bothered her was that he was no slow-witted dork, and despite his act with the porn mag, no lecherous pervert either. She’d watched his eyes beneath his filthy and ludicrous cap, and they were not the eyes of a fool. He was up to something, and Griffin wanted to know what.
She smoothed down the sides of her baggy sweatshirt before catching herself in the mirror. She smiled. A habit picked up from Mom.
Mom. She smiled a little wider. If this came off well, Nelly was going to be proud. Although there had been something other than parental pride in her mother’s eyes when Griffin first transmuted mercury that had stayed with her, she shrugged the memory away. One day, and Nelly knew it, Griffin would be the more powerful. The shadows would come to her call and the black sea that was Nelly’s to command would come under her younger and more vigorous sceptre. Not for her to wait seven years, worn by childbirth, tied to some ridiculous man just for the raw material for her work. No. She had taken an easier, more modern route. That made her smile turn coquettish, and she lifted her chin and absently admired her bone structure.
The revving of a diesel engine from outside broke into her thoughts. She knew he wasn’t going anywhere. The guy kept turning the engine on to keep his batteries charged, he said. Time to go and check him out. She would walk the long way around his hideous truck and give it the once-over. Maybe there’d be something. Maybe not. It was something to do while she waited to make her next move. And looking at her watch again, Griffin McFarlane decided she’d make that move pretty soon.
Pace watched with a doom-laden heart as the truck roared away. Then his heavy heart quickened its beat as he saw the impossibly sprightly figure that had been clinging to the back of the tractor unit jump nimbly down from the moving rig into the darkened street.
Nelly McFarlane smoothed the grey coveralls that Pace had often seen her wear in the garden, thinking even then that they lent her the unpleasant air of a slaughterhouse worker. Now, as she walked slowly towards him in the street, the effect was increased significantly. Jezebel thundered to the corner, turned and disappeared from view, her rumble still audible, its driver unaware of the passenger he’d just shed.
McFarlane waited until she stood directly in front of him before speaking. “You’re not running, John.”
Pace stayed silent.
“You should.”
“Do any good?”
She laughed. Merrily and youthfully. “No good whatsoever. But I like it.”
“Then I’m glad I ain’t runnin’.”
Her smile metamorphosed into a leer, laden with malice and a naked desire for violence that was almost sexual. “What interests me, John, is why you thought you could oppose me and have any hope of living.”
John Pace shifted his gaze from her malevolent face for a moment, flicking his eyes to the sheriff’s office only yards away. The blinds were still. Either Archie Cameron wasn’t interested in his chief’s death, or more likely, he wasn’t there.
Nelly followed his gaze. “Out on business, John. Along with the rest of your deputies. There’s a truck to dissuade from reaching the interstate. Remember?”
&n
bsp; Pace’s heart sunk further, but he smiled, noticing that his widening grin diminished hers in an exact inverse proportion.
“You gonna die someday, Nelly. Just like me, just like the rest of us. And what then? Huh? Think you’ll sleep sweet? Or will them filthy things you got lickin’ at your old ass come callin’ for some back payment?”
Something flashed in her right hand as she twitched in response. A scalpel. Pace almost laughed with relief. She was going to do it herself. Conventionally. He thanked God that it would be cold steel. Nothing worse. Nothing slower.
McFarlane growled. “Death is only the booby prize for lowly, crawling, pant-shitting nobodies like you, John. The Philosophers cheat it as easily as you scratch your shrivelled balls.”
Pace shifted his weight on legs that had turned to liquid with his concealed fear.
“Yeah? So where are they now, then? Huh? Your great Philosopher ancestors? Your mama called lately? Your grandpappy come home for Thanksgiving? They lie to you, Nelly. Them things that tell you what you want to hear. You gonna die and it gonna be a lot worse for you than me.”
McFarlane took a step towards him, brandishing the scalpel in front of her face. “You idiotic little shit. You think life has only one form?”
Pace kept his phoney smile and promoted it to a small, empty laugh. “They tell you otherwise? Them whisperin’ things? Ho. Good one. Real good.”
She lowered her head, a big cat sizing up its prey. Pace lost the smile, fixed her narrowed eyes with his own and spoke quietly, from the heart. “You gonna burn, Nelly.”
If there was a pause it wasn’t one he would recall with the last few sentient moments of his life. Before he could even raise his hands against it, the blade entered his throat deeply just above the Adam’s apple and sliced through his vocal chords, turning the scream he would have summoned into a wet gurgle. She pulled it free and let him slump to his knees. With her left hand she grasped his thin hair, pulled his head back and grunted as she made a series of sweeping horizontal incisions that all but severed his head. Her fury was such that she kept slicing until the thick white of his spinal column resisted the scalpel, the blood pushed by Pace’s still-beating heart pumping over her hand and arm in hot waves.