by Paul Neuhaus
I woke up with the sun and snuck out of bed. It occurred to me that I’d love a shower, but then it also occurred to me all of my clothes’d burned up with the trailer—for real this time. I threw on my dirty outfit from the day before and grabbed Hope. Elijah’s bedroom door was still closed so I tip-toed past it and went down the stairs. I was going to raid the pantry to see if I could find a Powerbar or some other on-the-go-snack, but I was surprised to find Calesius and Keri sitting at the island. Keri looked incredibly pale, but she’d tousled her hair and cut off the Flock of Seagulls point in the front. An undeniably good sign. “Dora!” she said, apparently surprised to see me. Turns out she didn’t remember much from the day before.
“Gods, look at you. Are you okay? Are you feeling any more like yourself?”
The girl had a piece of dry toast and a glass of water in front of her. “I think so,” she replied. “I mean it’s all a blur. Cal tells me I came to your house and stole from you. I don’t remember doing it, but I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be stupid. You were drugged. Speaking of which…” I looked back and forth between the girl and Olympus’ former stable boy.
Keri smiled. “I took a massive, massive shit when I woke up. It didn’t smell right at all.”
Cal grinned too. “It was mostly lotus, I’d wager.”
“Well, this is a great thing to wake up to,” I said. “Truthfully. I need to run some errands. Make some inquiries. Do me a favor…” I turned and spoke mostly to Cal. “Stay inside. At least for today. I’ll try not to be gone long and, hopefully, I’ll come up with some ideas about what we should do next. If there’s anything we can do next.”
The Wiener girl looked at Cal and then turned to me. “Can we come with you?”
I laughed. “Are you out of your goddam mind? Your father would roast me alive. No, you gotta stay here. I don’t think I’ll be into anything too serious, anyway.” I went to the cupboard, grabbed a couple of individually wrapped goodies for the road and said my goodbyes. After I said my goodbyes, I remembered something. “Say,” I said. “You not only took my pinecone, you took my Gene Simmons replica bass guitar. Do you know what happened to it?”
Keri looked at me blankly. “Hand to God, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
My shoulders drooped. “I figured. Don’t worry about it.”
Before we walked out, Hope said, “I’m super-glad you’re doing better, Keri.”
Keri smiled at my jug. “Me too. Thanks, Hope.”
I snuck by Jack on the couch, and I exited the house. Since it was day, there was no sign of the Arae. I went from the house to the Firebird without incident. I had two stops I wanted to make, the first of which was nearby in Santa Monica.
As I drove, I marveled again at the changed landscape. It was as though someone had picked up the whole of Los Angeles and dropped it again in ancient Greece. The sight begged a question: Why? What did swapping the modern world with the ancient really do for Nicos Nephus and the Church of Reciprocity? As near as I could figure, the alteration was nothing but cosmetic. Was it meant as a show of power? If so, so what? Maybe the transformation was a prerequisite for something more heinous down the road. I shook my head to banish thoughts of things I couldn’t predict or control.
After about fifteen minutes on the road, I parked on the street across from T-money’s Pawn. I wasn’t sure if I’d wasted my time coming, but there was only one way to find out. I opened the door and looked inside. Fortunately, Tiresias was there. “Oh,” I said. “Thank gods you’re here. I was afraid you’d run off with the others to free Pegasus.”
The ancient seer sighed. “No. It was agreed a blind man’s not much good on a horse heist. I’m worried though… I haven’t heard from them.”
I sighed too. Getting the update reminded me that I should probably be looking into it; making sure the bronies didn’t wind up dead. I decided to change the subject. “Did you realize the world changed yesterday, Ty?”
He nodded. “It’s like they always say: If one sense shuts down, the others heighten to compensate. I smelled the change. We’re back in the days of our youth, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. Listen, there’s something I wanna ask you about. I got ahold of Medea’s diary…”
“Medea’s diary?! Where’d you get that?”
“Long story.”
“I’m sure.”
“Anyway, it runs from about World War 2 to shortly before her death. There’re some pretty detailed entries on her plans to release the Titans. In one of them, she mentions something called ‘The Hierophant’. Supposedly, it’s in Medusa’s possession. I figured if anybody’d know what it was, it’d be you.”
He shook his head. “‘The Hierophant’? Never heard of it. This is an object? An object Medusa owns?”
“That’s what it says in the diary.”
“I don’t know. Sounds like you should’ve gone straight to Medusa.”
“I thought about it, but I wanted to see if I could go in with some inside dope. As you know, Medusa’s crazier than a shit-house rat.”
“I’ve got nothing off the top of my head. Hold on, though.”
I started to say something, but he was already gone. He went through the beaded curtain into the backroom and was gone for a while. He reemerged finally carrying an absolutely huge book. The thing gave off a cloud of dust when he dropped it on the glass countertop. I moved forward so the counter was between he and I. On closer inspection, the book wasn’t nearly as old as I expected it to be. It was in braille so that meant it couldn’t be any older than, say, eighteen hundreds. “What’s this?” I said.
“It’s one volume from the Codex Sacramentum—the super-rare braille translation.”
“What’s a Codex…” I fumbled over the second word and gave up.
“Sacramentum. It’s a collection of books complied by late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century European occultists. Nobody knows for sure who the authors were, but names like Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Algernon Blackwood, and Aleister Crowley are all in the mix.”
“Crowley is the only one I recognize. Because of Led Zeppelin.”
“Think of the books as a sort of magical encyclopedia. If your hierophant is a thing, chances are good it’s in this book.”
“Okay. But I gotta ask… Why do you have this?”
The old man smiled. “A lot of people have pawnshops to make a living. I do that, but I also have an ulterior motive. I use the shop to spark new interests. You wouldn’t believe the kooky people who come through here. You wouldn’t believe all the crazy stuff that passes through my hands. A neighborhood guy—also blind—sold me the Codex in the late nineteen sixties. Then, according to rumor, he was torn apart in front of ten witnesses by invisible monsters. I don’t know anything about that, but I did find the books interesting as hell. It was a gateway for me into a whole area I would’ve never heard of otherwise. I fell into researching it, picked up the tarot, etcetera. On another occasion, much more recently, someone came in with the entire first season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on DVD. The rest is history.”
I crinkled my nose. “The books’re kind of cool, I guess. I’m not so sure about the DVDs.”
“To each his own,” Ty replied.
“Sure. Fine. Get to feeling your book already.”
He felt the pages in front of him, flipped back a few, felt those too, flipped back a few more. It was neat watching a guy look blankly ahead and read with his fingertips. After a few more flips, he said, “Ah ha.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Hold on,” Ty replied. “It’s complicated…”
I sighed. “Of course, it is.”
“The hierophant is a statue. A clay statue of a man with a crown with a sun inset into his forehead. Only the statue isn’t really the hierophant.”
“You lost me…”
“The hierophant is an entity. An entity that lives inside the statue.”
From her place on my back, Hope c
ooed. A creature living inside a clay vessel was definitely a concept she could get her head around. “What does it do?” I said.
“What does it do? It doesn’t say here, but I’m guessing you talk to it. You talk to it the same way you talk to Hope.”
“Does it have any kind of special power?”
“If it does have any special powers, the compilers of the Codex seemed to have missed them. For the compilers, just the thought of being able to talk to a guy inside a statue was apparently enough. The entry is brief. They say what it is then then give a little history. Origins in ancient Greece (duh), known to’ve been in private collections in Cairo, Rotterdam, and Leningrad. Suspected to be in the United States somewhere. There’s nothing here to discount the idea that Medusa may have it.”
“Okay, well, that’s a start. I wonder why Medusa has it. And why Medea apparently wanted it.”
“I’d say there’s only one person who can answer that question.”
I sighed a heavy sigh. “I know. It was never in doubt I needed to go over there. I guess I was just steeling myself.” I smiled. “You wanna come?”
“Oh, hell no. I’ve heard the stories. I’m gonna take a pass, if you don’t mind.”
“I hear you. Try and let me know if you get any news about Petey and Chad and Pegasus.”
He said he had Elijah’s number and would call him if he heard anything. I left him to it and went outside to the Pontiac.
The drive over to Bel Air was quiet. There were still very few cars on the road. People hadn’t quite acclimated to the change yet, and I’m sure they were still glued to their media of choice. For myself, I didn’t bother with the radio. I was sure the jokers on the AM station didn’t have any new info, but that wouldn’t stop them from pontificating. I parked on the street opposite Medusa’s mansion. The same house she’d owned since her silver screen glory days. In recent decades, she’d become a total recluse. And the rumors of her eccentricities were true. Amanda Venables and I had gotten in to speak with her. She was still beautiful, but she was more than a little batty. Fortunately, she still wore big wigs to hide her snake hair and contacts to inhibit her ability to turn people to stone. I wasn’t especially looking forward to seeing her again, but it needed to be done.
The house was on a little hill so there was an ornate, Grecian staircase leading up to it from the sidewalk. I climbed the steps, walked the palm-lined path to the door and rang the bell. After a moment, Max, Medusa’s butler opened up. When he saw me, he immediately tried to slam the entry shut. I jammed my foot in and immediately regretted it. The door was heavy. “C’mon, Max, cut me a break. I need to talk to the old lady. It’s important.”
Max was a persnickety German. I’d say he didn’t like me, but I don’t think he liked anyone. “The… old lady is indisposed. She’s not taking visitors.”
“This isn’t a social call. It’s business. It has to do with the way the world changed yesterday. It has to do with Medea.”
The butler’s expression remained flat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about and madam is, as I told you, indisposed. Now, kindly leave.” He tried to push the door shut, but my foot was still in it. It hurt like a motherfucker. Inside of a couple of days, I’d been kicked in the pussy and had my tootsies smashed in a door. I was kind of over it.
I raised my voice. “Tell Medusa I need to ask her about the hierophant!”
Max blinked at me. Twice. “You might as well be speaking Swahili to me right now.”
Then I heard a voice from behind the door. “Oh, Max, for crissakes, let the woman in. Nothing is worth all this drama.”
Max threw the door wide, revealing his employer. “Come in, won’t you?” he said with affected hospitality.
I smirked as I stepped past him. Medusa was in the foyer wearing a bathrobe. Behind her was a mousy woman with the biggest false eyelashes I’ve ever seen. She was carrying an apparatus I didn’t recognize. “Come in,” the lady of the house said. “I was just having my asshole bleached. You never know when you’re gonna have unexpected visitors at the back gate. This is Mar’sha, my bleacher.”
I nodded to the woman with the funky contraption.
“Same time next week?” Medusa said.
Mar’sha nodded and took her leave past Max. As I watched her go, I wondered what kind of asshole you’d have to have to need weekly bleachings. I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to that particular science, but I did ponder the Medusa’s diet. The butler shut the door and waited for instructions from his employer. “You and your friend had whiskey when you were here, am I right?” Medusa said.
“Just water for me,” I replied. “I’m trying to cut down.”
“Well, I’m certainly not. A water for our guest, Max and a Cuba Libre for me. Don’t spare the mint.”
The butler started to walk away, but Medusa drew him back. “Actually, make mine a Cuba Libre without the cola. Just straight rum.” The priggish Prussian started to walk away again, and she stopped him one more time. “On second thought, hold the mint too. Just bring me rum. In a tall glass.”
With that, my host led me back to the same sitting room we’d used when Amanda and I’d come to see her the month before. As I walked through the house, I was amused again by the stuffed monkeys. The one holding his pecker was always a surprise and a delight. I took a seat with my back to the door and Medusa sat down opposite me. “Now then…” she said. “Did I hear you say ‘hierophant’ while you were standing outside my door?”
“You did.”
“Good. Otherwise I’d have been cross with you. Very few topics are weighty enough to interrupt one of my bleachings. The hierophant happens to be one of them.”
“With all due respect to your asshole, the hierophant is the most important thing in my world right now. He’s the only lead I have in a mystery I want to solve.”
“What mystery is that?” Medusa said, crossing her long legs.
“You know what happened with Medea, right?”
Medusa said, “Yes, some little birds told me.”
“I know you don’t leave the house much, but you did notice that the world has changed around us, right?”
The gorgon sighed. “Yes, yes. It’s so bloody… nostalgic. What will it do to the property values is what I want to know? I worked long and hard to build a life in this city; to own this home. Now, suddenly, it’s like I’m living in the middle of Oregon.” She said the word ‘Oregon’ as though it was something terribly distasteful. I gotta say, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of that state myself.
“Do you know how the world got this way?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders just as Max delivered her rum and my water. “Something to do with the Church of Reciprocity I’m guessing.”
I raised an eyebrow as I took my first sip of water. “That’s a very good guess. Did a little bird tell you that too?”
“No, nothing as poetic as that. It was a theory based on available facts.”
I put my glass down on the end table next to me and the butler rushed in to put a coaster under it. “It sounds like you have access to better facts than I do.”
It was Medusa’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Yes, you should have better visitors at that trailer of yours.”
I smiled. When last we’d spoken, she hadn’t acted like she’d known me—or cared who I was. Either she’d been playing dumb, or she’d made some inquiries. “Someone broke into that trailer a couple of days ago. They took my pithos and a magic pinecone.”
“But you’ve got your pithos here with you…”
“They dropped it.”
“Nicos must’ve been angry with them.”
“Could very well be. I didn’t ask. The thief in question was loaded up with lotus. She’s since been… detoxed.”
“And you haven’t interrogated her? She could have much to say.”
“I still have access, but the girl seems to remember very little. One of the side effects of lotus I’m told.”
“Right,” she said with a smirky smile, uncrossing and recrossing her legs in the other direction.
“What? What is it?”
“The strain of lotus Nicos uses is more advanced than the kind Odysseus’ sailors were fed. Nicos is a wealthy man with all the benefits of modern science.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning his lotus has more… elaborate side effects than the lotus of old.”
I leaned forward. “Don’t be stingy.”
“Even when one throws off the grosser impact of the drug, one is still highly suggestible.”
“Shit. For real?”
“For real.” She folded her arms over her ample breasts. “You know, I really shouldn’t be telling you all this.”
“Why? What do you mean? There’s nobody here but us chickens.”
“Nicos has eyes and ears everywhere.”
“You’re afraid of him?”
She gave a little laugh. “Of course, I’m afraid of him. You should be too.”
I ignored the warning and pressed on. “It’s obvious now why the Church wanted the pinecone— “
“It was a Demizoi.”
“Yes. But I don’t know why they wanted the pithos. I mean if there is a reason beyond the obvious reason why anyone might want it. Either to let all the inmates out or to take over the curse and prolong their lifespan.”
Medusa drained her glass and held it out dramatically toward Max who was standing behind me. Max took the glass and retreated without comment. “First of all, you need to drop the ‘they’ when you’re talking about the Church of Reciprocity. The Church is Nicos and Nicos is the Church. He built it from the ground up, and it’s like a fifth limb for him now.”
“Okay. Speculate: Why do you think Nicos wanted my pithos?”