“How could this happen?” Max asked. “Why?”
“We might be able to answer those questions,” Mr. Johnson said, waving at Max from the background. At his side, Mr. Tung nodded his head. “Private hospital, a medical research team with the latest technology—”
“Thank you,” Max said, “but I’m not ready to sell myself to you.”
“A most interesting condition,” the sadhu said, thrusting his head to the forefront of the group. “Have you engaged in any unusual activities lately?”
“Your dreams, have they spoken to you?” the oknirabata asked.
“Been fucking spirits?” added the oldest Navajo shaman, an emaciated sliver of flesh and bone.
“I will see you in a few days, a week at the most,” Mrs. Chan said. “You will know when the baby is ready to come out.”
“So soon?”
“Better nine days than nine months,” the twins’ own healer, a Moroccan shuwwafat in robes and a veil, muttered as she got up. “Allah is always merciful to men. It must be that he knows men are not as strong as women.”
“And, my friend, I would meditate a great deal if I were you,” Mrs. Chan added, “to prepare for the pain.”
Mrs. Chan bowed to Max, presenting a fist in hand, then picked up her cane and, after a word with the mambo and a few others, left. Her departure signaled an end to the search for spirits for many in the loft. The Navajo shamans destroyed their sand painting; Dex gathered his crystals; others picked up bones, feathers, grimoires, and other paraphernalia, picked through the mound of coats, jackets, and hats piled by the alcove, and drifted past the suited men on their way out.
Kueur stepped out of the pantry at the back of the kitchen, opposite the walk-in freezer, and studied the departing shamans. Alioune, holding a woven basket, straightened at the dining counter and held her head high, as if she were sniffing a scent in the air. The twins watched the group like a hunting pair of lions paring down a herd to the most vulnerable prey. Separating companions and friends from casual acquaintances, men and women carrying true power from those who only wore it.
The Beast’s ghost growled. Max tasted blood in his mouth and realized he had bitten his lip in a moment of excitement.
“Dex?” Alioune called out.
Kueur dumped the armload of fruits, cheese, bread, and pastries she was carrying into Alioune’s basket and rushed to the New Age healer’s side. “We were wondering if you could show us your crystals,” Kueur said with a touch of breathlessness.
Alioune placed the basket among the branches of the ficus tree in a planter at the center of the loft, between the couch and the scenic window overlooking the Hudson. She guided the mambo toward the tree, and as soon as the woman began eating, Alioune glided back to take Dex’s other arm. Together, they brought Dex to the kitchen counter, where they leaned against him, casually brushing legs and shoulders and breasts against him as he took out his jewels, held them up to the light, and droned on about their properties and use with the vigor of a faithless priest performing the ritual of transforming a wafer into the host of his savior. His interest, like his gaze, was drawn to the twins themselves.
Max found himself drawn into their game of seduction. He shuddered at the scratching of long nails at the back of Dex’s neck, swayed in rhythm to the dance of slender fingers across Dex’s chest, twitched in response to the tweaking and pinching of nipples. Dex fumbled a crystal, let it fall. It bounced on the floor, until Alioune stomped on it with the heel of her short, black boot. The sound of crystal breaking and crunching underfoot carried through the loft, momentarily distracting the mambo from her gorging and the suited men in the alcove from the growing latticework of instrumentation. The tail end of the departing train of shamans glanced at the twins. Unlike Max, they did not linger to watch the show.
Alioune smiled at Dex’s shock. He started to hunch down to pick up the pieces, but Kueur grabbed his ponytail and pulled him back up while Alioune pressed against him and wrapped a leg around his thigh. Stones clattered onto the floor. Dex forgot to close his mouth, and Alioune kissed him, long and hard, the muscles of her neck and jaw working as she probed him with her tongue. Max’s mouth watered with the taste of her, his nose filled with the sweet and musky scents of her body, his body warmed in the spots she leaned against on Dex with sympathetic heat from the undulating curves of her body.
Alioune broke the kiss, pulled back while keeping her leg around his thigh. Dex chased her, eyes half closed, sweat giving his face a sheen. Kueur palmed his chin and drew him back, took his ear into her mouth, ran her other hand down the front of his shirt. His eyes widened. Suddenly, he cried out. Blood streamed down his neck. Kueur giggled as she drew away, lips and teeth bloody. Alioune gave him a sharp knee blow to the groin, and Dex doubled over, hand over his ear.
Kueur unzipped the front of Dex’s pants, reached in, and pulled out his balls. Dex moaned, started to go down on one knee, but rose back up as Kueur’s grip did not follow him down. He tried to bat away her arm, but his blows fell without effect and became weaker, like a fly slowly succumbing to a spider’s venom. Alioune rubbed her body against his as she went onto her knees in front of him. Licking skin left uncovered by Kueur’s hand, she picked up Dex’s fallen stones with one hand, shattered pieces with the other. Like a snake on a tree she crawled back up his body, shook the broken fragments of gem from her palm into Kueur’s hand. Kueur kissed him on the eyes, nose, cheek. Then she slapped him, and ground her hand against his face. Dex’s head rocked to the side. He swayed away from her, but she held him close by his penis. Alioune grabbed his hair and drove his face into Kueur’s shard-covered hand. He sobbed as his blood mingled with Kueur’s.
She took her hand away after she had rubbed Dex’s head with gem fragments. Licking her hand, she swallowed blood and crystal rock. When she was done, her hand was clean and whole. Taking a deep breath, she reared her head back. Then she spat, spraying Dex’s face with more blood and broken precious stone. He gasped, then sagged against Kueur.
His sex in hand, she led him toward the Box’s soundproof door between the kitchen and the bedroom. Alioune supported him as he took small, stumbling steps. She rubbed his back at first, then ripped his shirt with her nails. Dex shuddered where she raked his flesh. They led him like a crippled beast into the Box, cooing and crooning tenderly about the healing powers of their love into his good ear. Kueur paused at the doorway, started to turn her head, but stopped suddenly before Max could catch a glimpse of her face. Alioune hurried forward, pushing Dex before her. The door to the Box closed only partway, as if they had forgotten all their training in discretion and safety for the modern Western world.
The winter’s weak afternoon sun was streaming into the loft. Max picked up the remote control and drew the horizontal blinds across the scenic window. The mambo lay curled around the tree’s planter, eyes closed, sucking on an orange. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Tung had both withdrawn, leaving only two of their associates monitoring equipment. Max wondered if their remote-sensing devices could hear the Beast within him, feel his lust stiff and hot between his legs, see whether the life growing inside him was a boy, a girl, or a monster.
“How?” he asked no one in particular. “Why?”
No one answered. Not the twins, not the legion of men and women walking on paths of supernatural wisdom, not the far-off databases linked to the faintly humming portable computers in the alcove.
Alone.
Looking down the length of the prayer rug at the bulge, he had to laugh. No, not quite alone. He put his hand under the rug, on his belly. His skin was hot. He pressed down gently with his fingers. Inside him, something moved. Kicked.
Max drew his hand away, sucked in breath, waited. Nothing else happened. The past few days of nausea and paralysis came into focus, and he pictured himself carrying an alien other, giving it sustenance, nurturing its existence with his life. He felt as if a wandering ghost had come to live in the worn shell of his body, making painful demands, promisin
g nothing in return. Worse than a demon, whose bold needs and overt methods offered the challenge of battle, the thing within him had insinuated itself into his life without his ever being aware of the intrusion. It enjoyed a subtle intimacy with his body without his knowledge. It used him, robbed him, with every breath he took, as it built a fresh new form for itself out of the antique remnants and battered ruins of his body.
It was as close to him as the Beast had ever been, but at the same time remote. He did not know its feelings or desires. It sapped his strength instead of providing him with power. It did not answer his questions, explain its meaning. By the speed of the entity’s growth and silence, it wanted as little to do with him as possible. Max had never felt so old or useless. There was nothing to fight, nothing to do but wait for the baby to leave him.
The child moved again. This time the Beast rattled the bones of Max’s body, hissing at the realization that it had to share its host with another. Fed by the Beast, Max’s sense of abandonment grew into fear, then revulsion.
Fingers curled, nails scratched at skin. The Beast’s rage stoked the fires of Max’s resentment, built on fear, until he wanted to tear away his belly and rip out the parasitic creature that had dared nest in his body. He raised his hand. The rug fell away. He stared at his rounded belly, then looked up at his thick, blunt fingers poised to attack.
A knife. He needed a knife. He sat up, thoughts speeding beyond his control, the Beast barking and yipping, driving him every time nausea or dizziness or instinct urged him to pause, consider, stop. Pushing himself off of the couch, Max prepared to hurl himself into the kitchen.
He took a step. Another. Then his legs gave way as if bones and muscle had been sucked out and replaced with fat. He collapsed, broke the fall with his forearms, rolled, came to a halt on his back, breathing hard. The Beast gnawed at his will and snapped at his emotions, but Max lay still, momentarily exhausted, empty.
“Need help?” one of the alcove attendants asked, stepping into the loft with his assistant.
“Fuck off,” Max said, letting the Beast into his voice. The two men stopped. Reached up as if to adjust missing sunglasses, straightened ties instead, withdrew.
“It hasn’t got a soul, you know,” the mambo said in a low, lazy voice, squeezing words past all the food she had eaten. “That’s why you can’t hear it inside you. That’s why you can’t feel the bond that links it to you. It’s a dead thing, though it has a heartbeat.”
“What?” Max asked, raising himself on his elbows. He crawled around the couch on his back until he could see the mambo at the foot of the tree. “Who talks?”
“An old friend.”
“I have none. Only dead enemies.”
“Not so old, then.”
“Who?”
“Legba.” The mambo opened her eyes, smiled, waved fingers at him. Drool and chewed bits of food fell from her mouth. “I caused you some inconvenience not long ago.”
“Ogo,” Max said, remembering the African god, the twins’ father, who had recently tracked Kueur and Alioune to America and attempted to use them in fulfilling his quest for his lost twin. Legba had opened doorways for Ogo, as was his power to do.
The Beast urged him to continue to the kitchen, but Max forced himself to focus on the mambo. Instinct told him to sift through the veils of sensation, delusion, and illusion; to listen, reason, understand what was happening.
“That was business. Favor owed.”
“I didn’t think it was personal. I’ve never involved myself with you. Why do you care about what’s happening to me?”
The mambo shook her head from side to side. “Not necessary to care. Not necessary for involvement. Things happen. Places come and go, like the Nowhere House.” The mambo’s face suddenly tightened, and her eyes blazed with penetrating focus. “Doors open and close. Like the doors in the House of Spirits, in Painfreak,” she said, her voice a guttural growl warped by an odd accent.
The first reference eluded him, but the second clicked. The recent trip Max had taken to the floating, undying sex club in which he had thought the twins imprisoned flashed past him. He remembered finding his way to one of its many wings, the House of Spirits, and walking down a hall with doors, some open, revealing rooms, one with a pool of blood and a four-armed, black-skinned woman wearing a necklace of heads. She had offered him a lotus, a sword, and his reflection in her eyes. The image of her offer had opened the way to his escape from the House of Spirits, but not to his redemption. A chill raced up Max’s spine. He shivered, covered his genitals with a hand.
The mambo’s face relaxed into its normal visage of possession by the loa. “Sometimes a hand reaches out across doorways. Favors asked for are favors to be returned.” The mambo shrugged her shoulders. Her head lolled to the side. “Followers come and go, rise, mostly fall. I’m an old man. I like my steady meal. I help the balance here for someone else, and somewhere else the balance is helped for me.”
Max grunted as he made his way back to the couch. As he climbed back on, the mambo stretched, went on all fours, shook crumbs from her blouse and skirt like a dog shaking water from its hair. She stood, leaned on the cane, and looked to Max.
“So who asks you to help me?” Max asked.
“She does not want her name revealed,” the mambo said, glancing at the men in the alcove. “But she feels you are not so ignorant as to forget a phone call she once made to you.”
Max nodded. Returning from his misadventure in Painfreak’s House of Spirits, the same voice that had ridden over the loa had left a message that melted his phone and answering machine. The words were etched in his memory by the smell and. smoke from burning plastic: “Tread gently on the paths of the dead, my son. They are not as generous as the living, nor as forgiving.”
“Won’t I ever be rid of the dead?” Max whispered, then laughed at his own dullness. Not as long as I kill, he answered himself silently.
“Not as long as you kill,” whispered the mambo, half mocking, half growling in the other’s voice.
Max stared at the mambo, her words reverberating in-side him. He decided he could trust her loa more than he could most mortals and spirits he had dealt with, except the twins. He gathered the prayer rug and covered his lap, asking, “So what is the favor you need to do for me?”
“Keep watch,” she answered, slowly coming around the couch. “See what comes through the doors, what leaves.”
“Anything lately?”
“Oh, yes, much traffic.” Her eyes darted back and forth dramatically, and then she giggled.
“What did this to me?”
“You did,” she said, pointing her cane at him.
“If you’re here to help me, do it. Stop playing games.”
“You’re the one who’s played games. For so many years, you played with innocents. Rape, torture, murder, games like that.”
“I stopped. I’m no longer ruled by my Beast. The innocents don’t have to be afraid of me anymore.”
“But should you still be afraid of the innocents you killed?”
Fear tripped Max’s quick answer. He thought he had left his past behind in the House of Spirits. Had he been found again? “The scarves,” he said, glancing around the loft. Fighting down panic, he expected to see the scarlet silk that had housed the ghosts of his victims and lured him into Painfreak, into their embrace. The Beast whimpered within.
At that moment, Dex screamed. His cry pierced the loft, startling the men in the alcove. Even Max jumped, half turning and raising his arms to defend against a blow. Pain in the small of his back came as a second surprise, and he eased into a prone position on the couch. The mambo came around, eyes closed, mouth puckered as if savoring the long, drawn-out release of mortal suffering. She felt her way to the table with her cane, then knelt as if in prayer until Dex was silent.
The scream continued for Max, until he realized he was remembering the sound of his own pain when the scarves had seized him in the House of Spirits, when the ghosts of the w
omen he had sacrificed to appease his own and the Beast’s hunger had taken him. Entered him. Raped him with his own dark needs and their pain.
No one will ever love you the way I will, the scarves had said.
“The scarves …” said Max, giving up his search for red silk. He stared at his belly. Raped. With no seed or womb, what did the spirits of women have to plant in the flesh of living men?
The memory of women and their wombs. The sorrow of giving birth to children, loving them, leaving them behind in the midst of joy or anger, regretting things said and unsaid. And most potent of all, the terrible yearning for the children that might have been brought into the world.
The spirits of the dead had planted the shade of their life-giving power in their life-taker’s flesh. The pain of missing not only their own lives, but the lives they had or night have created mingled with his twisted appetites. In the heat of his suffering, on the forge of his agony, the two needs had twined together and linked like strands of DNA. And like DNA, the product of that joining had haunted and shaped the living matter of his body, constructing something new following the secret design of merged desires.
Max wiped the sweat suddenly beading on his brow. Fever burned like glowing coals, as if thoughts leapt and raced so quickly they were setting fire to his flesh. With sickening clarity, he saw how the past had reached out to plant the promise of the future in the living present. What grew inside him now was an idea, an emotion, a potential lost; the union between material and ghostly worlds. What would the future bring?
Was he harboring the avenger of the innocents he had killed? Was the thing waiting to be born so it could kill him, or was the creature in him working its vengeance on his body as it grew, tormenting him, slowly destroying him? The Beast roused itself from its terror and barked an alarm, pushing Max to take action.
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