The Impaler

by Gregory Funaro

  “Edmund?” she whispered—but only her voice echoed back from the black. And suddenly Cindy was not only angry but also very afraid.

  She stood up and grabbed her handbag, dashed down the escape steps behind the set, and felt her way through the wings to the side entrance. Her head was throbbing, her sense of balance off, but she found the doorknob and burst out into the night.

  The cool air felt good on Cindy’s face—sobered her up but did nothing for her anger. She quickly descended the outside stairs and ran into the parking lot. Edmund’s pickup was gone, but her piece-of-shit Pontiac was right where she had left it before the show.

  “Asshole,” she muttered—but once she was inside her car, her anger left her at once. On the passenger seat was a white rose, taken from her dressing room while she was asleep, she knew. Lying across it was a folded piece of notebook paper. She flicked on the dome light and read the note.

  Dear Cindy: Please forgive me for leaving, but I need to be sure things are what they seem before we go any further. I will see you after the show tonight. I hope you’re not angry with me. Edmund

  Cindy sat there for a moment, confused, reading the note over and over again. Edmund had written it in pencil, but it appeared as if he’d written another name first, then erased it and wrote Cindy instead. What was it?

  Looks like the name begins with E, Cindy thought, but she couldn’t make out the rest of it in the Pontiac’s dim dome light. But the note itself—what the hell was that about? And what kind of guy would leave a girl all alone in a darkened theater?

  Cindy sat in the driver’s seat, playing over the night’s events in her mind until the windows of her Pontiac began to fog. Amy Pratt was right. There was something kind of creepy about Edmund Lambert. The note, the talk about things being what they seem—so strange, yes, but at the same time … well …

  Cindy sighed and closed her eyes; tried to block out the realization of just how much that strangeness intrigued her—how much it turned her on. Jesus Christ, she almost had sex with Edmund Lambert after only a single date! This from the girl who in high school made her boyfriend wait over a year to get in her pants—and that was only because she was drunk and it was the senior prom and he begged her.

  But now, tonight, it was she who had begged Edmund Lambert. What the fuck was going on with her? And what was it about Edmund Lambert that made her act so unlike herself—made her throw herself at him just like that slut Amy Pratt would do?

  Cindy opened her eyes and stared down at Edmund’s neat block-lettered print. She needed to get to bed and sleep off what had the potential to be a bitch of a hangover; she had to pull the lunch shift at Chili’s, too, before heading off to the show.

  “He needs to be sure things are what they seem,” Cindy whispered, reading the note again. “Whatever the fuck that means.”

  What things “seem” like, a voice said in her head, is that he ditched you in the theater. Didn’t wake you or stick around to walk to you to your car. That’s fucked up.

  “But the note,” Cindy replied. “And the flower. It’s not like he just left me. Maybe he tried to wake me—”

  Are you kidding? You’re gonna give him a pass on this?

  “And the way he defended me at the party—”

  Oh, my God! You’re truly one needy, pathetic bitch!

  Cindy closed her eyes and told the voice in her head to fuck off. It was right: she should be furious with Edmund Lambert—but she wasn’t. And there was this odd feeling in the pit of her stomach: a dull sense of inevitability that at once both terrified and excited her—made her feel strangely liberated but at the same time like she was going bonkers inside a padded cell.

  Damn right, crazy OCD bitch. Talking to yourself in your car at four a.m.—

  “Out, out, damned spot!” Cindy screamed, her hands clawing at her tangled black hair—when suddenly in her mind she heard George Kiernan shout, “That’s it!”

  Chapter 58

  The General thought Edmund Lambert handled himself very well with Ereshkigal; for if in fact Cindy Smith was Ereshkigal, the General mustn’t allow himself to be seduced as the Prince had been all those years ago. True, that had been the beginning of Nergal’s love (if you could call it that) for the goddess; but it had also been the end of his rule in the land of the living. And it was to the land of the living that Prince Nergal wished to return; to once again take his throne in the sun and be worshipped.

  But the Prince needed the General to return as much as the General needed the Prince. The General was the last of the doorways, and through him not only would Nergal become a living, breathing god again but also the General would be able to travel back and forth through the doorway to Hell. The General still wasn’t clear how it would all work in the end—such things were still beyond him—but it would work. He was sure of that. The Prince had revealed it to him in his visions; and before that, the equation had told him so, too. 9:3 or 3:1, depending on how you looked at it.

  Yes, it was how you looked it that was the key. And thus, in order to determine exactly how Ereshkigal fit into the equation, the General figured that the answer must lie in how he looked at her as well. He thought about this long and hard during the ride home from Greenville; but only when he pulled past the crumbling fieldstone columns at the head of his driveway did the answer, in a flash of insight, finally come to him.

  Of course! he thought. Ereshkigal had to be part of the equation if one were to look at things from the other side of the doorway! Only with Ereshkigal could the equation of 3:1 be balanced in Hell—the General, his mother, Ereshkigal on one side of the colon, the Prince on the other. And perhaps the colon itself was a symbol for the doorway, which meant the numbers indicate their relative positions after the Prince’s return.

  But how would this work out in the end?

  No need to worry about it now, the General thought giddily. No, the most important thing was that Ereshkigal did fit into the equation after all. Indeed, the answer was so obvious that the General actually began to laugh at how stupid he’d been for not seeing it earlier.

  “But I still need to be careful,” he whispered to himself as he entered the farmhouse. The concept of careful was inherent to the equation itself. The General already knew, for instance, that he would need to bring the throne through the doorway for his own protection. That was part of the legend. And so, he thought, he would also need the throne to protect his mother and carry her back while the Prince was busy with his return. That was the plan; that would be tricky enough—but now there was Ereshkigal, too. He would need to keep his meetings with her and his mother secret until the very last moment. The Prince was jealous of anyone talking to his princess; but even more so, the Prince was jealous of allegiance to anyone but him.

  After all, wasn’t that why the Prince took Edmund Lam- bert’s mother from him in the first place? So there would be no one left for the boy to worship other than the Prince?

  At first, when the General began wearing the lion’s head, he’d hoped that—once the Prince saw how loyal he was—he would eventually grant Edmund Lambert’s mother freedom from Hell. Prince Nergal had never done such a thing be-fore—no, he was greedy and covetous of his souls—but perhaps, just perhaps, he might make an exception in the General’s case.

  But as time went on, more and more the General began to think that the Prince would never allow such a thing. He needed an alternate plan; and even though he still wasn’t sure how it would all go down in the end, with the introduction of Ereshkigal the General felt confident that the Prince would have to yield to the 3:1 himself.

  Perhaps that was written in the stars, too, the General thought. Perhaps that was why the Prince never wanted to talk about Cindy Smith.

  “No use getting ahead of myself,” the General whispered, and he went upstairs and showered. It would be daylight soon, and the Prince would be sleeping if he wasn’t already. The General had consulted with him before heading off to the cast party, upon which the Prince gave no
indication that he was aware of Edmund’s secret meeting with his mother and Ereshkigal. Quite the opposite, the Prince’s visions indicated that he was excited about the cast party, and wanted the General to report back to him.

  And so, once he was clean and dry, the General sat naked by his bedroom window until the sun was up and he could see no more stars in the sky. That meant the Prince was asleep. The General wanted to sleep, too, but first he needed to consult with his mother and Ereshkigal; needed to look for them in the swirling colors and confirm that his reading of the 3:1 was correct.

  He went down into the Throne Room and stood before the lion’s head, listening until he felt like Edmund Lambert again.

  Mama? he called out in his mind. Mama, are you there?

  “Yes, Edmund,” he heard her say after a moment. “I’m here.”

  Edmund removed the Prince’s head from the shelf and slipped it over his own. For a moment nothing happened; then all at once he felt as if the air was sucked from his lungs and his body was surging forward.

  Thhwummp!—a rush of brightness—and the doorway was open.

  There she was again! Radiant, floating in the swirling colors. She was alone this time, coming toward him, arms outstretched and smiling.

  “C’est mieux d’oublier,” she said.

  “I’ll never forget,” Edmund replied, taking her hands. He was about to kiss her when—flash-flash—his mother’s face changed. A low moaning seemed to rise up all around him, and suddenly Edmund realized he was staring into his grandfather’s eyes. “C’est mieux d’oublier,” the old man said, deep and guttural. Edmund was about to speak when—flash-flash—everything became the god Nergal.

  “WHERE IS SHE?” he roared—hovering, wings spreading, teeth gnashing.

  “No!” Edmund cried—flash-flash—and the moans became screams, louder and louder as Nergal grew until he filled the entire sky—a black orange sky above hordes of chanting soldiers; a smoking battlefield with lines of the impaled stretching as far as the eye could see. Edmund could smell it and taste it and feel it—

  “WHERE IS SHE?”

  Now Edmund could see the souls of the sacrificed rising toward Nergal’s mouth, snaking and twisting their way around his monstrous fangs like tendrils of cigarette smoke. And there was his mother among them, screaming and pleading for help!

  “Mama!” Edmund cried—but she could only call her son’s name one last time before slipping through the god’s teeth and disappearing into his throat.

  “You can’t take her again!” Edmund screamed, but the Prince flapped his wings and knocked the young man backwards onto—

  The cellar floor? Something hard and cold on his naked back. A glimpse of the throne through the lion’s mouth, of the headless body seated before him and—

  No, he was up and moving now. Through a maze—a dark maze that brought him to the temple doors at Kutha.

  “WHERE IS SHE?”

  Now a whirring sound and wind—the god’s breath! Edmund could feel it and smell it! A hot smell like burning pennies—

  And then he was in the workroom, staring through the lion’s mouth at the grinder on the workbench.

  It was turned on to high.

  “Please, no!” Edmund screamed, his voice coming back to him in echoes both hollow and deafening.

  “WHERE IS SHE?” the god bellowed inside the lion’s head, and Edmund was suddenly both at Kutha and in the workroom; could feel his hands on the temple doors and on the workbench at the same time as he stared through the lion’s mouth in disbelief.

  “Please, no,” he sputtered—his actions not his own, the scene before him terrifying in its inevitability as he saw the temple doors crack open and felt the wind of the grinder’s wheel against his skin. He was hovering above it now, his chest only inches from its spinning steel bristles.

  “I’m sorry, please, I—

  The temple doors swung open as the grinder bit into his flesh. A bright burst of pain passed before his eyes, and Edmund howled in agony—his cries matched only by the Prince’s incessant “Where is she?” and “C’est mieux d’oublier.” It was all one now inside the lion’s head, as was the white liquid fire squirting from the abyss beyond the doorway. It splattered him like acid milk and then turned red as the grinder tore open the flesh between his pectoral muscles. The blood spattered everywhere, and Edmund felt a hot wetness run down the backs of his thighs. And as the spinning bristles, like thousands of little teeth, chomped farther and farther down the center of his torso, incredibly, amid his pain Edmund registered somewhere that he’d shit himself.

  Thhwummp!—a rush of darkness and yellowy light, and now there was only the workroom through the lion’s mouth. The grinder continued to whir somewhere behind him, but Edmund was moving again—legs trembling, chest screaming as the blood ran down his stomach and soaked his geni-talia. The cellar began to spin; and in what seemed like a leap forward in time, Edmund found himself on the cellar stairs, sobbing and panting uncontrollably as the shit and blood trailed off behind him. He felt weak, but at the same time as if he was being dragged upstairs by an unseen hand.

  He ended up in his grandmother’s parlor, kneeling beneath the mirror that hung above the fireplace. The General had recently tilted it downward so he could sit naked on the floor and admire the doorway.

  But now it was Edmund Lambert who gazed up at his reflection. And when he saw himself kneeling there with the lion’s head atop his shoulders; when he saw the 9 and the 3 that Billy Canning had so intricately tattooed on the temple doors split apart by a thick red gash, the young man knew with chilling certainty that the General had severely underestimated the Prince.

  “WHERE IS SHE?” Edmund cried in the voice of the Prince himself—but, in the gaping bloody maw that was to be his doorway to Hell, the young man could not find his mother anywhere.

  Chapter 59

  It was almost 2 p.m. when Andy Schaap emerged from the wooded subdivision in Wilson. He drove about a half mile then pulled into a Bojangles’ parking lot, where he crossed another name off his list and rested his head back, wondering what Sam Markham would think had he known what he was up to.

  Indeed, all day he’d been expecting his partner to call him. Schaap had decided not to lie to him; would say that he was following up on his lists but wouldn’t go into detail unless Markham asked him. Of course, Schaap had no way of knowing that Markham had fallen asleep in his childhood bedroom early that morning and would sleep a vampire’s sleep until the sun went down. But Schaap would’ve understood; he was tired, too. The last couple of days had been exhausting for both of them.

  Names.

  Christ, there were so many from the cemetery—over three thousand that his computer program had linked to Iraq War veterans living in and around the Raleigh area. The program had already weeded out servicemen who still lived on base; and thus Schaap focused first on men not only who had served in units with lions or lionlike creatures as their symbols but also who lived in areas remote enough for the Im-paler’s operation.

  Schaap gazed down at the list in his hands—just over one hundred names. A much more manageable number, yes, but still daunting for one person. And so far he’d come up empty—had knocked off only nine names that day and met the tenth with a groan when he saw the address was located over an hour away near Fayetteville.

  Schaap thumbed through a series of pages and found another list the computer had generated by cross-referencing the cemetery records with a list he’d received that morning from the U.S. Army. The program had also ranked the names by unit symbol and location.

  He ran his finger down the page until he found a name in the city of Wilson.

  “Here we are,” he said. He leaned over to the passenger seat and checked the address against the satellite imagery on his laptop. “Sergeant Edmund Lambert. 101st Airborne, 187th Infantry. Eagle and a seal-tailed lion. Nice, Wilson boy. That’ll make you number ten and then we’ll call it day.”

  Schaap programmed Lambert’s addr
ess into his GPS and drove away—decided against a snack of Bojangles’ chicken and biscuits and vowed to treat himself to a Dubliner steak when he got back to Raleigh.

  After all, he’d earned it.

  Chapter 60

  The General awoke on the parlor rug. He’d collapsed there on his stomach, unconscious for hours inside the lion’s head. He pulled it off immediately and sat up, the gash on his chest crying out as he tore himself free from the caked blood and shit beneath him. His wound began to bleed again, but the General only sat there, staring up at himself in the mirror amid the mess that Edmund Lambert had created.

  Oh yes, the young man had certainly made a mess of things. But how could he have guessed that the Prince would’ve awakened during the day? And how could he have guessed that the Prince would find out about his plan?

  No use wondering about it now, he thought. The Prince was powerful, and he found out. That’s all that mattered. And now it was up to the General to prove his loyalty once again and set things right.

  However, as the General sat there thinking, it occurred to him that in all of the Prince’s ranting and raving he never showed him visions of Ereshkigal. Perhaps he was still unaware of how she fit into the equation. Perhaps, because she too was a god, she had the power to cloud—

  Again, no use wondering about it. He needed to square things with the Prince. The Prince had shown him mercy and allowed him to live, which meant perhaps he saw Edmund’s communication with his mother as a temporary slip. Yes, the General thought; the Prince still needed him as much as he needed the Prince. He could still hide his thoughts about his mother and Ereshkigal. And as long as he didn’t communicate with them through the doorway again, perhaps there was still hope.

  The doorway.

  The General looked down at the bloody gash between the numbers 9 and 3. The doorway was cracked open, but something was wrong now; something needed to be fixed. The General could feel this instinctively. He picked up the lion’s head and went back down into the cellar. The grinder was still whirring, and he stepped in the workroom and shut it off before heading into the Throne Room.