Bed of Nails

by Michael Slade

  Thank God, Zinc thought. Just in the nick of time.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

  “Ask you what, Bret?”

  “What I did with the speargun I used to spike Yeager and Pigeon, then took into the cave.”

  Good question.

  “What did you do with the gun?”

  “I’ve got it,” said a voice behind the Mountie.

  The tunnel Zinc had used to enter the grotto had delivered him to the bottom corner of the marae. A ninety-degree turn to the left had lined him up with the throne. Another tunnel entered near the other bottom corner, and judging from its angle into the makatea, it probably intersected with the parallel cave at about the point where Zinc had found Petra down the sinkhole. It was from the mouth of that tunnel that the answer to Zinc’s query about the speargun came.

  Whirling, the Mountie found himself confronting Wes Grimmer.

  Mano a mano.

  Both armed.

  It was a Mexican standoff.

  With a flash of insight, the inspector understood. Petra hadn’t lied. On the night she spent with Bret Lister, Wes had killed and dumped his victim in two parts: the head outside Ted Bundy’s house and the body at the foot of the Thirteen Steps to Hell. Then on the night she spent with Wes Grimmer, Bret had killed the Cthulhu sculptor at the convention hotel. And the reason no one suspected they were a killing team was that egotistical rivalry supposedly had them gnawing at each other’s throats.

  Lawyers, thought Zinc.

  A lawyer argues white is black or black is white, according to how he is paid. A good lawyer can argue both sides of a case with the same sincerity. Grimmer was an Olivier who switched on and off as his role dictated. Lister was a Hoffman, a method actor so immersed in his role that it took control of him. And in the end, it didn’t matter who acted how, as long as it convinced the onlookers.

  Sneaky. Clever.

  As for why they did it, Zinc had little inkling. Was it some sort of Nietzschean motive? The will to wield power? To become Supermen? Leopold and Loeb? Was it the thrill a pair of big-balled lawyers got from standing above the law? Or was it sex along the lines of what the pathologist Gill Macbeth had suggested while examining the body in North Vancouver?

  “Two killers would be my bet. The base of his penis and his anus are both chafed raw.”

  “A two-on-one?”

  “That’s how I see it.”

  “A female in front and a male behind?”

  “Or two males, front and back, to form a daisy chain.”

  Which explained why the crime scene was cleaned up thoroughly. Both lawyers knew the forensic pitfalls.

  The flash of insight sparked through Zinc’s mind in a second as he and Wes aimed pneumatic spearguns at each other.

  “Hobble him, Bret,” said Grimmer.

  “Shoot, Zinc!” Yvette pleaded.

  The Mountie—caught in the middle again—was sandwiched between two psychos. He stood at the foot of the marae with his back to the throne of bones. The four of them were in a line that stretched across the cavern: Yvette lashed to the seat of skulls, Bret in the space between her and Zinc’s back, Wes in the gloomy mouth of the tunnel burrowed in front of the cop. The torches flanking the throne of bones threw shadows onto the skeleton wall over the black hole; a pair of dark Zinc Chandlers were cast by the dual flames, and above each, a third arm with a knife grasped in its raised hand.

  The hobbler.

  Bret Lister.

  Coming to cripple Zinc.

  So first things first—take out the immediate threat—the Mountie pulled the trigger of the air gun to hurl the spear in its barrel at Grimmer before he could fire, and …

  ... nothing happened.

  “That’s my gun,” Wes said, “and it’s out of gas. A pneumatic gun won’t fire unless you pump it up. I’m sorry to have to say it, pal, but we played you for a sucker.”

  Zinc didn’t have a usable gun, but he still had the spear. A spear in the grip of two powerful arms muscled from years of heaving sheaves of wheat and bales of hay. Lightning fast on the ball of one foot, the Mountie swiveled 180 degrees around from Wes to confront Bret instead. Having retrieved one of the knives he had dropped onto the marae, the backstabber was about to plunge the blade deep into Zinc. With one palm on the butt end of the airless speargun, the cop jerked the barrel up with his other hand, then spiked the barbed shaft up under Bret’s chin.

  “Uuugh!”

  The long and lanky lawyer was a lightweight compared with the cop. The pike rammed in by the upward thrust of the subterranean spearman ripped through the soft spot in the center of Bret’s lower jaw and spiked up through his gaping mouth until the Tahitian barb struck the hard bone of his cranium. The gaffing jerked the lawyer up off his feet, and like a fisherman swinging around to land his catch in the boat, the Mountie let centrifugal force carry him around another 180 degrees, a full circle that swiveled Bret into the stretch between Zinc and Wes as the other lawyer fired his spear.

  Thunk!

  The shaft hit Bret somewhere in the back. Zinc let go of the gun so the whirling dervish of a lawyer could spin out across the cavern. Bret’s back slammed up against the skeletal wall, driving the barb from Wes’s fired spear out through his heart.

  One down.

  One to go.

  With no need to recharge his gun—one pumping of air fueled a lot of shots—Wes was already loading another spear into the piston barrel. The weapon would be rearmed before Zinc could get to him, and if Wes retreated into the darkness of the tunnel, the Mountie would be a backlit target entering a confined space.

  How could Grimmer miss?

  An errant spear fired in the cavern might hit Yvette. Protecting her as well as himself would be twice as hard, so all Zinc could do to level the odds was lure Wes out of the grotto, and the only way to do that was to flee himself.

  Turning, Zinc scooped up the diver’s knife that Bret had dropped when he was gaffed off the floor. This cavern was the junction room of a subterranean hub, and like the spokes of a level wheel, a ring of tunnels radiated out from the marae. As he dashed past the throne of bones for one of the far tunnels, Zinc grabbed the nearest flaming torch from its socket to light his way back into the makatea.

  Into the tunnel of razors.

  With Wes hot on his ass.

  Mana a mana.

  And may the best mana win.

  TABOO

  Mission

  The shrill shriek of the burglar alarm that was set off when the Ram-It smashed in the plank door of the Gothic church filled the gloomy guts of the mission with what could have been the screams of banshees, warning those partaking in a black mass that Christian infidels were storming the gates of hell. As the Mounties of Mission Detachment rushed in to secure the premises, DeClercq took in those details caught for a second by the sweeps of flashlight beams.

  Flit …

  Flit …

  Flit …

  The font just inside the door at the rear of the nave, traditionally filled with holy water, was stocked with a pool of coagulated blood and beset by a swarm of flies.

  Flit …

  Flit …

  Flit …

  Gargoyles by the dozen glared down into the nave from the scissor-trussed arrangement of crisscrossed rafters that held the high barrel-vaulted ceiling aloft.

  The stained-glass window in the south wall of the nave was a dull rendering of the Last Supper. Surrounded by his twelve disciples—all except Judas Iscariot with halos around their heads—Jesus held a round wafer up in his right hand. The table was set with a goblet of wine beside what was originally an empty plate. Recently, someone had reworked the window through a little creative glazing to add joints of human meat to Christ’s plate.

  Flit …

  Flit …

  Then suddenly the church exploded with light.

  A cop had flicked a switch.

  What the chief’s vision adjusted to was a charnel house of graphic images. The
pews and kneelers on both sides of the aisle up the middle of the nave had been removed to accommodate a workshop of Gothic artists. As with the outside of the mission, the inside board-and-batten walls—vertical boards with joints covered by narrow vertical strips—were stained black. A series of moveable full-length mirrors set up like a Stonehenge circle reflected demonic details that had been captured on the canvas of paintings that turned like mobiles from strings strung up to the rafters. At the epicenter of the nave, radiating the visual horrors, stood an artist’s easel surrounded by the paints, palettes, brushes, and other tools of vivid creation. Next to that was some sort of computer for composing hologram mirages projected by a laser. There was also a sculptor’s station for working in clay and resins, with miniature monster models to use as guides. What seemed to be an alchemist’s table was off to one side, and closer inspection revealed that it was stocked with a pharmacopoeia of psychotropic drugs. Ecstasy. LSD. MDA. Crystal meth. Special K. GHB. Evidently, the goths liked to work zonked out of their skulls.

  Then the chief noticed the pills near the mortar and pestle. Ecstasy and Viagra ground up together. Evidently, the goths liked to play zonked out of their skulls, too.

  The security alarm kept shrilling.

  “Can someone shut that racket off?” DeClercq hollered.

  “I’m on it, Chief,” said a constable.

  Dividing the nave from the altar sanctuary was the chancel arch, symbolizing the sacrifice of Christ. DeClercq noticed a large desk sitting in the throat of the arch, flanked by two railings that had been carved from cedar logs in the shape of Christ’s outstretched arms. Nails by the thousands were hammered along the wood, and squatting on each open palm was a statue of squid-faced Cthulhu.

  The huge desk was actually two desks fused together like a pair of Siamese twins, so a pair of authors could write face to face and edit one another. On each half of the dual black onyx surfaces sat a laptop computer. Multiple copies of two novels lined the divider that halved the partners’ desk. Crown of Thorns by Bret Lister, backed by Halo of Flies by Wes Grimmer.

  The pulpit loomed up from the left front corner of the nave. Rounding the desk on its pulpit flank, DeClercq stepped into the sanctuary beyond the chancel arch.

  It, too, had been defiled.

  Instead of the three short steps that usually climb to the altar at the east end of a sanctuary, the headboard of a king-size bed abutted this holy of holies. On its reredos, the decorated wall backing the altar, the icon of Jesus on the cross had been inverted to resemble the Hanged Man, its nailed feet suspended from the rafters overhead. The rose window, with its tracery pattern of red glass the color of blood, framed Christ’s head, already bloodied from the crown of thorns, like the nimbus on a Hanged Man tarot card.

  The space below, which the cruciform icon had previously graced, flaunted a raunchy painting. A graphic depiction of a male and a female having sex, the legs of the male arched like those of a spider, the female spread below, her clitoris bearing a grinning death’s head.

  The altar itself was lined with bondage equipment: lots of leather, lots of studs, and lots of probes and prods that plumbed the darker depths of the sexual psyche. A CD player was flanked by piles of goth compact discs, labeled with the names of artists such as Alice Cooper, Alien Sex Fiend, Bauhaus, Black Sabbath, Joy Division, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Cure.

  There were quad speakers at the four corners of the bed, the sheets and pillows of which were black satin. Satan only knows what went on in this bed. But whatever it was, there were three partakers, for three indented pillows lined the bed’s headboard.

  Abruptly, the alarm stopped trilling and the lights were doused. The constable, it would seem, was no whiz kid. Careful not to ruin any latent fingerprints, DeClercq flicked a switch by the bed with his pen, hoping it would activate a separate circuit.

  It did.

  The effect was so dramatic that he quite literally jumped in the air. Out of the speakers came blasting Alice Cooper’s “Bed of Nails.” Lights of the weirdest kind exploded within the church. Infrared, ultraviolet, and laser holograms. The mission was converted into a Gothic hell on earth, populated by the most obscene monsters imaginable. The black-lights hit the suspended paintings to bring them to life. If this was a glimpse of the reality of the occult realm, none but a damned psychotic would ever dare set eyes upon it. And as for the holograms, all were horrific mirages of bestial rape, with the same woman being ravaged by the horniest of hell’s legions.

  So why was her demeanor ecstatic?

  Because she was the sexual predator?

  It sure as hell looked that way.

  The woman—whoever she was—was ravaging the monsters.

  And if the woman in the holograms was the artist as well, the name she’d used to sign her self-portraits was the Goth.

  DeClercq had noticed something when he jumped in the air out of shock. His feet thumping on the landing had caused a trapdoor set into the floor of the sanctuary to bounce. With his pen, he flicked off the switch to kill the music and lights, then, dropping down on his hands and knees, he called for a torch and pried open the lid.

  What yawned below was a black well with a ladder of rungs down its wall.

  A cop handed the chief a flashlight.

  Down the well went DeClercq.

  RAZOR BLADES

  Tangaroa

  Zinc was trapped in the nightmare of a thousand horror films. Someone is fleeing down the hall in a deserted or abandoned building, or someone is scrambling through a sludgy sewer underground, or someone is down on his hands and knees for a frantic crawl along the air ducts of a space station, while back there, hard on the heels of the fugitive lunch-meat, is a chainsaw-wielding hillbilly, or a toxic-waste-slobbering genetic freak, or a creature from another galaxy. With every roadblock encountered by its prey, the relentless monster draws inexorably closer. So how in hell does someone get out of this?

  In Zinc’s predicament, he was literally caught between a rock and a hard place. Having fled into this hole behind the throne of bones, the Mountie found himself dodging as fast as was feasible—and that wasn’t nearly fast enough to gain headway—along a narrow tunnel that twisted and turned through the razor-sharp edges of the honeycombed coral in the bowels of the makatea. One slip, one trip, one stagger and stumble because of the uneven floor, and he would be sliced to ribbons by the limestone shredder.

  Sort of like catching your thumb while grating cheese.

  Except a shredder this big would strip him to the bone.

  The torch was a blessing, and the torch was a hindrance. Lose the light and he would have to run this gauntlet blind, reducing his flesh to a skeleton with every flail in the dark. But to be the Olympic torch runner in this hell-bound tube was to light the tunnel for both Grimmer and himself.

  Here I am.

  All lit up.

  Take your best shot.

  All that kept the Mountie from taking a spear in the back were the twists and turns that had both men dodging. Hit a straightaway and Zinc might as well have a bull’s-eye pinned to his spine.

  Occasionally, a dark nook indented one of the walls. A cubbyhole, however, offered no sanctuary. Duck into one of the dents and he would be a dead duck, for sure. The torch would give him away.

  Think! he thought.

  Think …

  Think …

  Shit!

  His internal compass had told him that they were in a loop. Just as Halley’s comet has a string-of-pearls orbit around the sun, flying out into deep space before returning to our central light source about once every seventy-five years, so this tunnel had taken them out and away from the Kingdom of Bones, only to arc them back gradually to the other side of the cavern from which the chase had begun. Stretching ahead was the straightaway that Zinc feared, and it led to a bend at the far end with torchlight smudged on its curve.

  Back to the cavern.

  Back to Yvette.

 
; Putting her back in danger.

  Think! Zinc thought. Use what you have at hand.

  A torch.

  A knife.

  A dent in the wall.

  Hurling the torch as hard as he could toward the bend ahead, Zinc sidestepped into the nearest nook. Seconds later, the beam of Grimmer’s flashlight swept around the final curve before the straightaway; it was followed by the spearman, hot on the Mountie’s tail. Kicking his foot out from the dark hiding place into Wes’s path, Zinc tripped his pursuer and sent him sprawling along the tunnel. The flashlight and the speargun clattered to the floor as Grimmer threw out both hands to bear the brunt of his fall. The lawyer hit the ground within reach of the weapon, and as Zinc came out of hiding to engage him, Wes pawed at the trigger grip with his bloody palms.

  His palms, but not his fingers, for they were either dangling from the razor-blade walls or lying like cocktail sausages on the floor to either side.

  Zinc gripped Grimmer by his shaved head and stabbed the blade into his back. The lawyer bellowed as the stainless steel sank deep, a snarl magnified by the cramped tube and echoing out in both directions up and down the tunnel. Again and again, the knife rose and fell, until there was no fight left in Zinc’s adversary.

  Two down.

  None to go.

  Time to free Yvette.

  Gathering up the flashlight and the still-armed speargun, Zinc ventured on to the bend, which was illuminated by light flickering in from the remaining torch flanking the throne of bones. As he exited from the tunnel into the cavern, he caught a hint of something at the corner of his eye, a moment before he was clubbed unconscious by someone who had been waiting for the Mountie to emerge.

  Lights out.

  MISSIONARY POSITION

  Mission

  Down the rungs of the ladder, DeClercq sank into a perverse pit of someone’s deviant sexuality. At one time, this had been a secret darkroom where that unholy degenerate had developed, printed, and pinned up pornographic photos of naked Native kids being abused in the residential school’s dormitories. It became obvious to DeClercq that the hand that took these pictures was also the hand that had once gripped the pulpit above as the reverend preached his true gospel. The same hand had wielded the strap and a yardstick in the missionary school that the Native kids in these photos had attended. That hand had gripped the terrified hearts and minds of children who were forced to submit to rape and sodomy. The hand of the old missionary, who apparently used this dark hole to carry out his darkest ritualistic desires. Girls or boys, it didn’t matter to the lecherous man of God, as long as he could fuck them with his staff and his rod, then pin these yellow, curling photos up on the wall as his masturbatory stimulant for in-between times.