by Harvey Click
“That’s why I put this mattress down here,” Karl said.
Amy stared at the thin noose with horror. She told herself that she should be grateful—a short while ago she had been contemplating suicide—but the idea of her head remaining alive for a full minute was terrifying.
But she decided she would shut her eyes and let them do it. One horrid minute, and then it would all be over, no more questions, no more fear, no more torments. Surely she could bear one minute?
Karl went to the other steel door, unlocked it, and stepped inside. Amy heard muffled voices from the next room, and a minute later Karl returned with an emaciated woman who was also cuffed at her hands and ankles. There was a strip of duct tape across her mouth, and it took Amy a moment to recognize the long stringy blonde hair and deeply sunken bloodshot eyes.
Sandoval smiled and said, “Miss Jackson, I believe you already know Miss—” He didn’t seem to be able to recall the name.
“Marci Hitchens,” Karl said with a note of irritation in his voice.
“Yes, Miss Hitchens,” Sandoval said. “I understand that the two of you were close friends in high school, so I thought it would be nice to arrange a reunion.”
Marci stared at her with surprise, fear, and rage. Though her mouth was taped shut, her eyes spoke clearly. They seemed to be saying, “What the fuck are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you to get your dumb ass far away from here? If you done what I said, I wouldn’t be here right now, I’d be safe at home drinking a beer.”
Karl led Marci over to the wire noose, and she started jerking and thrashing when he tried to loop it over her head.
“You’d be smart to stand still,” he said. “If you move around like that you’re likely to jerk this wire and make the dumbbell roll off the table, and I don’t think you want to do that.”
Marci’s body stiffened, and Karl slipped the noose over her head and tightened it around her neck. She began to tremble, and her bloodshot eyes raced around in their sockets as if they were looking for a way to fly out of her head.
Karl stood beside the table with his hand resting on it, ready to roll the dumbbell off any time he wanted. Amy remembered the blood oath she had sworn with Marci: “Each one for the other, no matter the peril, bound as best friends and blood sisters for life.” There was another oath she had sworn that said something about never betraying the Unseen or any of its members by any word or deed, but she couldn’t remember the exact words and right now it didn’t seem to carry a lot of weight.
“Let’s try again,” Karl said. Sandoval’s eyes rolled up and his mouth fell open. “How big is your organization?” Karl asked.
“There were just thirteen of us, including me,” Amy said. “Originally there was one more named Scotty, but a herky-jerky killed him last week.”
“What are their names?”
“I only know their first names. That’s so we couldn’t give out too much information if we were captured.”
“Tell me their first names and describe each one in detail.”
She did.
“Who was your leader?” Karl asked.
Amy looked at Sandoval before she answered. His eyes were still rolled back in his head, and she thought he was probably telepathically probing her to see if her answers were true. She looked at Marci, who was staring back at her with horror. She looked at the dumbbell, which was perilously close to the edge of the table.
“Neoma,” Amy said. “The pretty one with the long black hair.”
“You said there were just thirteen, including yourself,” Karl said. “Would you like to reconsider that answer or shall I give this dumbbell a shove?”
For a moment Amy panicked and couldn’t think of their names, but then she said, “Colby and Kate. I never met them so I can’t describe them. They live in a house trailer just east of this property, and they’ve been spying on you.”
Karl smiled. “Are you forgetting anyone else?” he asked.
Amy stared at the cinderblock wall and made her mind blank. “No, that’s all of them,” she said.
Sandoval let out a high-pitched cackle with his eyes still rolled back in his head. “She’s thinking about the cinderblock wall,” he said.
“You have three seconds, and then I drop the weight,” Karl said.
“Shane,” Amy said. “Shane Malone. He owns Shawn’s Saloon in Blackwood.”
“Who else?” Karl asked. “How many others are there?”
“That’s all. I swear that’s all of them.”
Sandoval unrolled his eyes and blinked. “She’s telling the truth,” he said.
“Is there anything else you want me to ask her?” Karl asked.
“No, that’s enough for now,” Sandoval said.
“Okay,” Karl said.
He shoved the dumbbell off the table, and the wire noose cut Marci’s head cleanly off her shoulders. Her body fell forward with blood spurting from its neck. Her head landed on the mattress but rolled off it across the floor and stopped face-up at Amy’s feet.
Her eyes were still alive. They stared at Amy with rage and condemnation.
Chapter 20
Amy sat in her cell and cried until her throat was sore and her eyes ached, and even then she kept crying. The guard was watching her, so she draped the blanket over her head and cried beneath it.
When she was no longer able to cry she lay back on her wooden shelf with the blanket still over her face and tried to spirit-travel. But it was no good—all the magic seemed to be drained out of her. She continued lying there until she heard the door opening in the wall next to the stairs. She sat up and saw Sandoval emerging from the room where they had killed Marci.
He said something to the guard, who aimed a remote control at the security camera, causing the little green light to turn red, and then went upstairs. Sandoval scooted his wheelchair up to the bars of Amy’s cell and smiled.
“Now we can speak privately,” he said. “No one can spy on us, so we can be perfectly candid. The other prisoner is fast asleep, passed out in fact. We give him whiskey to keep him happy. I’ve been told that anxiety makes a person’s flesh taste sour, and Zahbeezul the Skin-Eater likes his meat nice and sweet. But as for you, I see a lot of anxiety in your face. I can see that you’ve been crying.”
Amy turned her face away. She couldn’t bear to look at him.
Sandoval chuckled and said, “I think you mistake my meaning. Don’t worry, I have no intention of feeding you to Zahbeezul. No, you’re far too valuable for that. Zahbeezul is quite content with the flesh of junkies and drunks and similar riff-raff. They’re useless people unless their flesh tastes sweet.
“But to be fair, the way they squander their lives is perhaps not entirely their own fault, for in fact much of what gives a man worth and value is written in his genes before he’s born. Sorcerers have understood this for a long time. We knew something about DNA long before scientists gave it a name. No, we don’t look at it under a microscope and tell you if your children will be tall or short, but we’ve always known that just a bit of hair or a fingernail paring or a scrap of skin contains the whole blueprint of a person’s essence, and for many centuries we’ve known how to sniff out certain qualities of that essence.
“And your DNA has some rare and valuable qualities, Miss Jackson. I don’t know if you’re aware of these qualities or know how to use them, but we’ll watch you closely and soon learn what you can and cannot do. I believe Karl has shown you some of the results of my experiments. These children are the culmination of my life’s work and will prove to be my grand legacy. Before long my children will rule this miserable planet. My children and your children.
“The problem is that demon genes are strong and robust while human genes tend to be weak and recessive, and that’s why I search for people such as yourself. The powers coded in your genes are exceedingly rare. It’s my belief that such powers were once common among humans, but now we are a weak and degraded species, scarcely fit to live, much less to rule the planet.
Among other species only the strong survive, but humans have a perverted propensity to coddle their weak and allow them to reproduce more prolifically than anyone else. I believe this unhealthy propensity comes from our religions, which were created by the weak to subdue the strong and worthy.”
Amy draped the blanket over her head. She couldn’t stand having him stare at her.
“You cover your face in horror because you’re picturing a nightmarish scenario,” Sandoval said. “But it will be nothing like that. If a demon coupled with a human there would be no offspring because the demon would devour the human. No, you can put the horror movie fantasies out of your head—this will be a safe and painless process. Dr. Leiber will extract your eggs, fertilize them with demon semen, if you’ll excuse the awkward rhyme, and implant them in women less fortunate than yourself. They will suffer the pain, and you’ll remain safe and comfortable. The surrogate mothers won’t survive the delivery, but their otherwise worthless lives will be redeemed because they’ll give birth to gods, Nephilim. Your sons and daughters will be blessed with your genes and the genes of the highly intelligent mazzikin who greeted you at the hospital, and there will be nothing else in this world so great as your children.
“And so we come to the crux of the matter. If you choose to cooperate, you can live here in comfort and possibly even acquire great status and power. But if you choose not to cooperate, there’s a less pleasant option that I’ll show you in a little while.
“Yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you will feign cooperation and gain our trust while looking for an opportunity to escape, but I assure you there will be no such opportunity. I believe you’ve already recognized that I have telepathic abilities, and I’ll know your plans for rebellion as soon as you know them. If you agree to cooperate you’ll initially be kept under tight security. You’ll be given a room upstairs, a comfortable bed, better clothes and good food, but you’ll be kept under lock and key and constant scrutiny. We’ll lay little traps for you—we’ll give you what appear to be opportunities to escape and we’ll see what you do. You’ll be given greater freedom only if and when you earn it, and how much freedom you earn will depend entirely on your behavior. If you decide to adopt our customs and beliefs, it’s entirely possible, with your special strengths and talents, that you’ll eventually become my successor.
“Karl as you may have noticed is chafing at the bit, impatient to take my place, but since we’re speaking in confidence I’ll tell you that Karl has no special talents, none whatsoever unless you consider ambition a talent. And though I’m old, much older than you probably think, my heart isn’t going to stop beating anytime soon. I’ve served Satan my whole life, and he is well pleased with me. He gives me health and longevity because I’m useful to him on this miserable planet. He has promised that when I die he’ll give me a principality to rule in hell, so I fear death not one whit—but I don’t intend to die until my work on earth is finished. Karl of course doesn’t understand this, he’s expecting me to drop dead any day, but each day I surprise and disappoint him.
“I know what else you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m evil and you will never serve evil, but that word has no meaning. Like all great men, I’m beyond good and evil. There’s no such thing as good and evil, there’s only strength and weakness. Good and evil are lies promulgated by religions in order to subdue the strong and worthy. One religion even claims that the meek shall inherit the earth. Some fools have believed this nonsense for more than two thousand years, but can they name one great ruler who was meek? Are the heads of corporations meek? Are the heads of states? No, the meek work for the strong in order to make the strong stronger and richer, or else they live under bridges.
“Tell me, Miss Jackson, do you believe in God? Though you hide your head beneath a blanket you can’t hide your thoughts from me, and I believe your answer is ‘sort of.’ Well then, I challenge you to call upon this God that you sort of believe in and ask him to send angels to rescue you. When I call upon Satan to send me angels, he most surely does. Yes, the demons that serve me are angels—even the Bible that you sort of believe in will tell you that. Some of them are dreadfully debased creatures, such as the centicreepers, but others are powerful and highly intelligent, such as the mazzikin who will father your children or the Skin-Eater who so greatly magnifies my powers.
“So what of the God that you sort of believe in—will he send you angels as well? Or is he long dead, long ago defeated by Satan, who now rules this world and the next? When’s the last time you saw the Red Sea part or saw a man walking on water? Where are your miracles now that your God is dead?
“I’m a very powerful man, Miss Jackson. I’m living here in this impoverished wasteland only so I can have privacy to conduct my experiments. This crumbling mansion in the backwoods is merely a bivouac for me, a temporary slum. I was born in a grand manor house or señorío in Valencia, the son of an aristocrat. My father was an occultist, as was his father, and he owned every grimoire and book of sorcery worth owning. By the time I was twelve I had read most of them, and by now I’ve read all of them many times over.
“Miss Jackson, I can teach you things that only a handful of living people know. I can be a great mentor for you. With your innate powers and the knowledge I can give you, you can have power and wealth beyond reckoning. All of this can be yours if you choose to follow me and move beyond the fallacy called good and evil. But if you don’t choose this, there’s another option, which I’ll show you now.”
There was a silence, and Amy wondered what he was doing. She uncovered her head and saw that he was poking a number into his phone.
“Send down my friend,” Sandoval said.
He put the phone back in his pocket and smiled at her. A minute or two later a tall man wearing soiled gray chinos with a dirty gray shirt hanging out of them came shuffling down the stairs very slowly. He seemed to be drunk or drugged and was clutching the bannister to keep his balance. He had a ragged brown beard and long hair that looked greasy and uncombed. When he got to the bottom of the steps he looked at Sandoval and didn’t seem to know what to do next.
Sandoval pointed at the guard’s empty chair and said, “Why don’t you pull that chair over here and sit down with us, Billy?”
Billy! Amy hadn’t even recognized him. He looked weak and hollowed out, nothing like the brother she knew.
Billy grabbed the back of the wooden chair and dragged it awkwardly across the floor with slow shambling steps. He spent some time trying to get it placed just right beside Sandoval’s wheelchair, and then he sat down and stared at Amy with a blank expression.
“Do you recognize her, Billy?” Sandoval asked.
“Yes,” Billy said. “Hi, Amy. Do you live here now?” His voice was flat and toneless.
She had come up to the bars, and now she reached out and touched his hand. He glanced down at her hand but didn’t respond in any other way.
“Billy, are you sick?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said.
She glared at Sandoval and said, “You have him drugged, you fucking asshole!”
Sandoval smiled and said, “No, Billy needs no drugs. He’ll never need drugs again. Dr. Leiber has cured him of drug cravings for good. Billy, do you want any drugs?”
“No,” Billy said.
Sandoval pulled from his jacket pocket a shiny metal spike that looked like an icepick. “Billy, do you remember when Dr. Leiber shoved this through your eye sockets and into your brain?” he asked.
“No,” Billy said.
“But you do remember being told that you were given a lobotomy, don’t you?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Billy does it bother you that I had you lobotomized?” Sandoval asked.
“No,” Billy said. “It’s all right I guess.”
“Good,” Sandoval said. “And you and I are friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” Billy said.
“And are you comfortabl
e here? Does everyone treat you well?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Good.” Sandoval smiled at Amy and said, “So you see, this is your other option. Billy has very special DNA just like you. It runs in the family, you know. The operation of course has no effect on it, and through artificial insemination he has already impregnated more than a dozen angels, or demons if you prefer. I offered him wealth and power as well, but instead he chose option two by attempting to escape.
“In case you’re thinking of choosing option two as well, let me describe the operation to you. It’s best for the patient to be unconscious, and Dr. Leiber achieves this by means of electro-shock. The device he uses was built I believe in the 1960s, but it still works well enough. He’ll place an electrode on either side of your head and send several hundred watts of electricity coursing through your brain for several seconds. This will induce severe grand mal epileptic convulsions followed by unconsciousness.
“Then he’ll lift your eyelid and insert the point of this icepick, which technically is called a leucotome, into your eye socket above your eyeball. He’ll encounter resistance when the point reaches the layer of bone between your eye and your brain, and he’ll use an ordinary carpenter’s hammer to drive the point through the bone and into your brain. He’ll push it about two inches into your frontal lobe and then move it like a lever so the point cuts a path through your brain toward your nose. Then he’ll push it just a little deeper into your brain and move it in the other direction and back and forth until he has severed the connection between your prefrontal cortex and your thalamus. And then of course he’ll do the same with the other eye. Billy, you may go back upstairs now.”
Sandoval watched Billy climb the steps with difficulty. He put the icepick back in his jacket pocket and said, “You see, your brother is given a good deal of freedom in the house. He’s a good boy and we trust him completely. So that’s your choice, Miss Jackson—great power and wealth or Billy’s lot in life.”