To Tumblety, it sounded perfect. When they had arrived, however, the whore balked. “A rich man is having a party in there?” she said, pointing at the cave. She laughed and turned back to the carriage. Tumblety looked around nervously, but there was no one to hear her except the driver and he was of the Order. The only sign of human life was an empty, moldering farmhouse. Otherwise, the area would have looked just as it did before settlers ever touched the shores.
Tumblety had given her more money on the spot, and that was enough to salve any suspicions she might have. “I always get the strange ones,” she muttered, but she’d gone with him into the chamber willingly.
Now he nudged the woman with his boot. She made another sucking, strangling sound. Her hand scrabbled out as if clutching at her rapidly departing life. Tumblety stepped away quickly.
Her blood was pooling on the ground and congealing. He couldn’t have that. He needed it.
While she desperately gasped for air, Tumblety briskly set about removing her garments. She was heavily layered against the cold and seemed to carry everything she owned on her person. The smell did not improve. Tumblety choked and gagged several more times.
But he got the clothing off and managed, heaving and straining, to get the woman onto the flat ceremonial table. In the dim lantern light, he saw old red stains on the stone before her fresh blood covered them.
His ineptitude at the actual killing turned out to be a benefit. Her heart continued to pump for a long time. He needed every minute to draw the symbols on the walls and floor. Actual blood was much harder to use than the paints he’d practiced with, and the dry rock seemed to drink the red liquid faster than he could move the brush.
After what seemed like hours, it was done.
Tumblety was still drenched. His long handlebar mustache, usually waxed and curled, drooped below his fleshy neck. He wiped the sweat from his eyes. He wished he’d been able to use the driver for the hard work—the man was loyal, and well-paid for it. And aside from him, Tumblety had his confederates in the Order. But Crowley had been specific about this, as well. “The work must be done by your hand, and your hand alone,” he’d intoned, doing his best to sound like an Old Testament prophet. Still, Tumblety was in no position to argue. Crowley had conjured a moonchild—a living being from nothingness. The proof was all over London’s Whitechapel district. Along with great buckets of blood, but that was to be expected.
Tumblety adjusted the lantern so he could see the paper and read the words Crowley had scrawled for him there.
He began to chant. Nothing happened at first. He’d done similar incantations as part of the show he delivered to the people who paid top dollar for his medicines. But with those, he was sure none of his treatments really worked. True, he would shout down any man who challenged his results or his credentials. But there was always that nugget of doubt, like a stone caught in a horse’s hoof, that worried him. For some reason, he always managed to forget some crucial detail or get some important step wrong. He’d seen others work seeming miracles and create abominations, but he wondered if they were fooling him or if he was fooling himself.
To stiffen his resolve, Tumblety thought of the reasons for doing this. He’d been imprisoned, unlawfully detained by the federal government on suspicion of involvement in that tyrant Lincoln’s death. Grant, that inebriate, had ordered a massive sweep of arrests in the wake of the assassination. It had been widespread, indiscriminate and wholly illegal. It had also managed to scoop up many of the members of the Order.
A judge forced the release of all the prisoners—freedom was not completely dead in the country, despite how the war ended—but Tumblety never forgot the humiliation. More than ever, he was convinced of the rightness of his cause, of the need to abort this bastard child called America.
However, the brush with extinction—never before had so many of them faced exposure—caused a split in the Order. The majority of the members wanted to continue with the current plan, to overthrow the government from within. They saw the rituals of the Order as tradition or superstition, nothing more. They no longer believed in the powers that gave birth to the Order. But others, like Tumblety, were tired of waiting for success from earthly means. He and his sect broke away to find methods beyond the merely human to accomplish their goals.
Tumblety was more convinced than ever when he heard about the vampire. Through his connections in New Orleans, he learned the pretender to the throne had enlisted Marie Laveau to create a supernatural protector for the White House. He knew the members of the old Order would fail. They could not hope to defeat something that was not of this world. Only Tumblety could create a counter to the creature now serving the president.
Tumblety found the records of the witch cult of Salem; paid an exorbitant price for the journal hidden in the home of the bloody Bender family; and finally, made his trip to England to consult with Crowley.
If he didn’t want to waste all those years, he knew he could not falter now. He chanted louder, calling to nameless things that had fed at this trough centuries before. He knew they were there. He knew it.
The air grew even colder. Steam rose from the woman’s blood. He kept chanting.
The light grew dimmer.
Tumblety felt a small excitement. A wind picked up in the chamber. The lantern dimmed as if swallowed in a dark fog. Tumblety didn’t care. He closed his eyes, the words spilling from his lips as if he’d learned them since birth. He no longer needed the paper. He no longer needed light. The smell of blood filled his nostrils. The room was saturated, drowning in blood. It didn’t make him ill this time. It thrilled him to his very core.
For some reason, in his mind’s eye, Tumblety thought of a massive sea creature, like the Bible’s Leviathan, like the Midgard Serpent, rising to the surface of the ocean. It was enormous, its back breaking the waters, and it just kept rising, rolling back the waves like a newborn continent—
And then it turned and noticed him.
Tumblety was flung across the room. He hit the stone wall hard. Spots danced in his eyes, and for a moment, he passed out.
He wasn’t sure how long he was unconscious. It was probably only a few minutes. His mouth tasted of copper, and his body was wrung out. He imagined this was how Ben Franklin must have felt after the lightning struck.
Tumblety rose unsteadily to his feet and looked around the chamber. There was no new presence there. The lantern burned steadily. It was as if nothing had happened.
He’d failed.
Then, with a start that nearly took him to his knees again, he realized what was missing.
The body of the whore was gone. The table was as clean as a plate licked by a hungry dog.
Tumblety staggered back. His heart skipped. In future years, he’d trace the chest pains that would eventually end his life back to this night. In that moment, he realized, he’d entered into a compact with something far older and more primal than even Crowley could understand. That creature he’d seen in his mind, that feeling of something huge, whatever it was, sat beneath the whole of the American landscape, raising its snout only to guzzle blood and death. It slept for centuries. It was here long before anything human.
And Tumblety had woken it.
In return, perhaps, it had given him something back. But it would require more blood.
Fortunately, he and the other members of the Order were prepared to supply all it needed.
Tumblety hurried back to the coach. He would never come to Mystery Hill again. He wouldn’t have to.
The thing he’d done here would follow him all the way to the grave.
WICHITA, Kan.—Confessed BTK serial killer Dennis Rader made his first public apology for the murders that horrified a community for a quarter-century, blaming a “demon” that got inside him at a young age.
Rader, who pleaded guilty last week to 10 first-degree murders in the Wichita area from 1974 to 1991, nicknamed himself BTK, for “Bind, Torture, Kill,” as he taunted media and police with cryptic m
essages about the crimes. He faces sentencing Aug. 17.
“I just know it’s a dark side of me. It kind of controls me. I personally think it’s a—and I know it is not very Christian—but I actually think it’s a demon that’s within me.… At some point and time it entered me when I was very young,” said Rader, who was once president of his Lutheran church.
—“BTK Sorry for Murders, Blames ‘Demon,’”
Associated Press, Thursday, July 7, 2005
SEPTEMBER 21, 2012, OMAHA, NEBRASKA
The Boogeyman got home just before 3 a.m. The kill of Curtis’s flunky and the whore with him had gone incredibly well. He wore his uniform and jumped the security line and was able to bring his tools home.
No one else had been inside this house since long before his host’s final step into the abyss. No one ever joined him for a beer or to watch the game anymore. His neighbors had stopped looking his way when he emerged from his place. Despite his appearance, which was still normal enough to pass for human, he radiated a strangeness that caused discomfort in anyone who got too close. His coworkers had learned to tolerate it, but nobody would spend more time with him than absolutely necessary.
So he was surprised to see the blond woman standing in his living room as he entered.
He reached his conclusions quickly and ruthlessly. No one came to visit him now; any intruder meant discovery; he wasn’t finished with his work; therefore the woman had to die.
It took him a fraction of a second to add this all up, the same amount of time it took his muscles to launch himself at her.
But she had more than one surprise of her own.
With huge effort she swung her left arm in an arc to meet him. He expected to brush it away like dust. Instead, it was a solid oak beam colliding with his skull, sending him straight to the floor.
He prepared to spring at her again but froze. Another man was behind him. He was so intent on the blonde he hadn’t noticed the other intruder until the man’s gun was placed against the back of his head.
For an instant, he was filled with the familiar, adolescent rage. He wasn’t done with his work. He wasn’t finished, God damn it.
Then he realized these two were not here to kill him or stop him. If they were, the man would have pulled the trigger at once. Even if he had, though, it wouldn’t kill the Boogeyman. He could take several bullets without slowing. He could have torn them both apart before they would have recovered from their shock.
But he was intrigued. His eyes met the blonde’s.
He saw now. He could even smell it a little. She had a touch of the Other Side in her. It had taken part of her body and remade it. Half of her was as inhuman as he was now.
“Are you going to behave?” she asked from the side of her mouth.
He nodded.
She made an impatient gesture. The Boogeyman felt strong steel manacles lock around his wrists and ankles.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust you entirely,” she said. But the man withdrew his gun and crossed to stand beside the woman. He was a thick Hispanic man with once-handsome features gone blunt and cruel.
“I know what you are,” she said. “More important, I know what you want to do. And I know you’re going to fail. Again.”
That irritated him a little. She was still mainly human. Who was she to judge him?
She seemed to sense this. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You’ve got someone in your way. He’s been an obstacle to me as well. I haven’t done any better against him. You know who I’m talking about, right? You do remember why you’ve failed every time before?”
He nodded again. The look on his face was murderous.
“Cade,” she said with a smile. “Believe me, I feel the same way. I know what you were planning. Kill Curtis’s people. Draw Cade out. And while he’s looking for you in one place, you circle around and go after the president. Not a bad plan. But if I can figure it out, so can Cade. In fact, the only reason I’m here before him is because I was waiting for you. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. I’ve been tracking the killings that made you.”
The Boogeyman looked at her with new respect. He wasn’t sure who—or what—she was, but she was clearly not fully human.
“You haven’t realized yet that Cade will race back to protect the president before you ever get within a hundred miles. Believe me on this one. I’ve tried. He and that little shit Barrows are already on their way to D.C., I bet. A frontal assault is only going to end the same way it always does for you. You want to hurt Cade? You need to keep him off balance. You have to change your methods.”
He flinched. Changing his methods was like dying. What he did was what he was.
“Don’t worry. You’ll only have to adjust a little. It will be like aiming a gun instead of throwing a grenade. You’ll still get your recommended daily allowance of blood and death. But you do it my way and you’ll get Cade, too.”
He hesitated. There was no way to trust this blond creature. But she made a compelling case.
“Tell you what,” she said, reaching inside her bag with her good hand. “I have a little item here that should seal the deal. Consider it a free gift. No obligation to buy.”
She tossed it on the floor in front of him. It was a Halloween mask, a rubber hood designed to cover the whole head. The latex was a bright, hideous yellow with black markings over the places where the wearer’s eyes and mouth would peek out of tiny slits.
It was supposed to be a smiley face.
It was beautiful. He loved it instantly.
The Boogeyman thought it over. He stood and snapped the manacles. He gave her his answer with a question.
“Who do I have to kill?”
Half of her face lit up with a grin. “That’s the best part. Trust me, you’re going to love this.”
If it is true that the gods of one religion become the demons of the one that replaces it, then we in America must deal with the generations of demons once worshipped here who now wander the countryside, the city streets, the interstate highways and dead end roads, the theme parks and fast food restaurants, the shopping malls and parking lots, the peepshow parlors and cathedral aisles like hungry ghosts on a mission from Hell. We gaze with horror on their crimes, and don’t understand. We stare into the eyes of their hideous creatures, and don’t understand. We clean up the crime scenes and mop up the blood, and don’t understand. We imprison, institutionalize, execute to make it all go away… and don’t understand.
—Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces
SEPTEMBER 21, 2012, THE RELIQUARY,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Cade turned on his computer. Zach had gone home to sleep. They were to meet with the president in less than four hours. He intended to write down the details of the crime scene for the archives.
Instead, he found an e-mail waiting for him.
This was unusual. There were only two people with his e-mail address. Zach and the president. Neither used it. Mostly, Cade received random advertisements for something called Cialis.
But the return address on this caught his attention.
From: ASmileIsYourUmbrella@gmail.com
To: Cade@WhiteHouse.gov
Subject: Miss me?
This was new. The last time, the Boogeyman had still been using the U.S. Postal Service.
Times change, he thought, and his microsecond smile crossed his face. Then he opened the message, and his expression went cold and dead again.
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’m sure you thought I was gone for good. But you know me. The proverbial bad penny. I always turn up.
It occurs to me that you’re one of the few people who actually knows what that expression means. Kids these days, right? Ignorant and in love with their ignorance.
You know you can never beat me. Not as long as they keep feeding me. And they’re never going to stop. They’re all over the country. It makes me wonder, Cade. Why do you keep trying? How long do you think you can stop me from doing what I
want? You’re not really immortal. Not like me. Eventually, that corpse you’re wearing is going to fail. Then you’re dust.
Think about it, Cade. There have to be better uses of your time. Even if you left me alone, even if I killed a thousand people a year, it wouldn’t make a dent in their numbers. They’re everywhere. Packed in their houses, squatting on top of one another. The country is filled to bursting, like fat grubs squirming in a dead log. And they keep making more. Even the ones who don’t squeeze out a clutch of larvae can’t stop gobbling down food, making themselves even bigger, taking up more space. You can’t tell me you don’t find them as disgusting as I do.
Maybe you’re just jealous. I have a ticket to an all-you-can-eat buffet while you’re perpetually starving. You must hate me for that alone.
I always come back. One of these days, you won’t be here.
Cade took the bait. His fingers danced on the keyboard.
From: Cade@WhiteHouse.gov
To: ASmileIsYourUmbrella@gmail.com
Then I suppose I’ll have to find a way to kill you permanently this time.
He didn’t have to wait more than a minute for the response.
From: ASmileIsYourUmbrella@gmail.com
To: Cade@WhiteHouse.gov
That’s the spirit.
I’m warning you right now, Cade. This was just the beginning. I’m going to tear the president’s heart out and make him watch. I’m going to destroy him utterly.
And you won’t be able to do a thing to stop me.
But I sure hope you’ll try.
Your lighthearted friend.
_____
CADE KNEW BETTER THAN to attempt another message. Besides, there was nothing more to say.
He reached for his phone and called Zach.
“Wake up,” he said.
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