The Impaler

by Gregory Funaro

  “That’s right,” Edmund said. “Your god has returned.”

  And then he flew at her.

  Cindy screamed and made a dash for the door—her legs weak, heavy like cement as her fingers closed around the knob. She got the inside door open a crack, but Edmund was close behind and slammed the door shut. Then he grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her down—backwards across the floor, sliding, until she came to a stop in the sticky trail of blood.

  Cindy screamed again and scrambled to her feet—tried to run toward the back of the house—but Edmund Lambert caught her by the collar of her denim jacket.

  “Please don’t!” Cindy cried, the tears beginning to flow as she struggled against his grip. But Edmund Lambert only roared and gnashed his teeth—wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug, and dragged her kicking and screaming up the stairs.

  Chapter 86

  Markham staggered out of the workroom and into the darkened hallway—hit the opposite wall and almost fell over. Stumbling backwards, he leaned on the doorjamb for support, his wrists and ankles throbbing painfully.

  He could tell he was in a narrow passageway, but could see only the brick wall in front of him. The light from the workroom was messing with his vision; his eyes needed time to adjust to the dark—

  Suddenly he heard a scream—a woman’s scream!—and heavy footsteps thundering above his head. He spun around, disoriented—could not feel the hammer in his left hand; could hardly maintain his grip as he tried to shake the blood back into the fingers of his other hand.

  Another scream, and Markham steadied himself against the brick wall. Stepping forward into the darkness, he spied a dim light coming from another doorway farther down the passageway. He started toward it, groping along the wall. He could feel the texture of the bricks now. That was good; the blood was flowing back. His courage was flowing back, too, and he could feel his mind clearing, his senses sharpening—until he reached the lighted doorway.

  Markham gasped and instinctively raised the hammer. A figure across the room, seated in a pool of light—a man with a lion’s head!

  The article Schaap sent me, he thought, and as if on cue he spied the thick platinum wedding band on the figure’s right hand—could see his partner bouncing it on the conference table back at the Resident Agency.

  “Schaap!” Markham cried, rushing across the room. He grabbed the lion’s head by its mane, yanked it upwards, expecting to see his partner’s face—but there was nothing underneath but the golden shelf on which it rested; a shelf with a carved panel identical to the tattoo he’d seen on the Im-paler’s chest.

  His body is the doorway, he heard the Impaler say, and Markham stepped back in numb horror—the lion’s head falling to the floor, his eyes glued to the temple doors at Kutha. His partner was sitting beneath them with his head cut off.

  That’s what the chains were for, he said to himself, his mind reeling. The son of a bitch gutted and beheaded him—beheaded others, too. Their bodies are the doorway through which he speaks to the lion god in Hell!

  Markham’s chest grew heavy with sorrow and with rage, but he continued to back away—out of the room and into the hallway, where he hit his shoulder against another doorjamb. Turning, impulsively he reached inside—pins and needles shooting through his fingers as he found the light switch.

  The scene in this room made the one across the hall look like a Disney movie—the dentist’s chair, the newspaper articles on the walls, the blood everywhere—dear God, it was worse than he could have ever imagined!

  This is where they are sacrificed! Markham thought, and the sight of the leg brackets at the bottom of the chair sent a wave of nausea through his stomach. He could hear them screaming: the Impaler’s victims—Donovan, Canning—but Andy Schaap was with them, too. Yes, the blood on the chair was still fresh; appeared wet and glistening in the light from the single overhead bulb. Had the Impaler murdered his partner while Markham was unconscious?

  For the briefest of moments the thought of it threatened to drive him insane, when suddenly he heard more screaming and thumping above his head—farther away now, from another part of the house. Markham spun around—registered the large 9:3 and 3:1 taped to either side of the doorway—and quickly made his way to the opposite end of the passageway. He found the cellar stairs; found the light switch there, too, and flicked it—his stomach sinking when he saw the heavy steel door staring down at him.

  Then he saw the trail of blood leading up to it.

  But Sam Markham did not pause. And without thinking he rushed up the stairs, his hammer poised to strike even as he assured himself that he would have to go back to the workroom for something bigger to break down the door.

  Chapter 87

  Cindy cried for help again and again as Edmund carried her down the hallway—her screams echoing in the emptiness as he kicked open a door and threw her down on the bed. The room was dark, but a shaft of light cut across the bed from somewhere to her right—the outline of a doorway and the wall of another hallway beyond.

  Without thinking she scrambled toward it—then thwack!—a hard backhand across her cheekbone sent her flying onto the bed, the room at once turning from black to bright orange pain.

  “Edmund, please,” Cindy cried, holding her face. “Don’t do this!”

  Edmund passed through the shaft of light and disappeared back into the shadows—a belt unbuckling and the sound of it hitting the floor. Cindy screamed, but in a flash Edmund was on top of her, his breath hot and foul on her mouth as she struggled against his nakedness. He was incredibly strong, and with one hand he pinned her wrists above her head while the other tore at the zipper of her jeans. She could hardly breathe.

  “No,” she managed to squeak out, and Edmund stopped.

  “Not here,” he whispered. “Not on Mama’s bed.”

  He left her, and Cindy gasped for air—had little time to move before she felt the cold barrel of his gun under her jaw. She was being lifted off the mattress, was being pushed toward the light.

  “Carry that rope for me,” Edmund growled. Then the light, the hallway—not a hallway, Cindy realized, but a long and narrow closet with stairs at the end—rushed past her in a blur. In her terror, she seemed to arrive at the top of the stairs in a single bound. But what she saw there sent her spinning, made her legs feel like electric spaghetti.

  It was Bradley Cox.

  I HAVE RETURNED! George Kiernan cried out from the theater in her mind, and Cindy felt as if she would vomit. But there was no time to vomit—not even time to scream—for Edmund scooped her up and hurled her across the room.

  She landed on the floor in a crack of crushing pain. Her elbow, her left arm had to be broken—but she could not cry out, her mouth twitching like a fish out of water as her lungs went into spasm.

  Edmund came for her again, set down his gun on the floor, and stood over her roaring loudly. It was the sheer terror of that roar that finally brought her wind back; but before Cindy could scream, Edmund Lambert was upon her, tearing off her blouse.

  “Edmund, please,” she whimpered, trying to rake her nails across his cheek. She felt no pain now, could even move both her arms, but Edmund Lambert was too quick and too strong for her—only snarled and grabbed her by the wrists and pinned her hands behind her head as he buried his face between her breasts.

  Then she felt his teeth sink into her flesh.

  Cindy thought for the briefest of moments that she had been teleported outside her body—watched the scene below as if from the attic ceiling, and thought it strange when she heard the girl on the floor howl like a coyote. But then came the pain, and in a lightning strike of unimaginable agony she was back inside her body and staring up at the twisted visage of her attacker.

  He was chewing.

  Dear God! she cried out in her mind, the blood running warm across her chest. He’s going to eat me alive!

  “My body is the doorway,” Edmund said. And then he swallowed.

  Cindy’s muscles went rigid
and the room began to spin. And amid a swirling kaleidoscope of pain, she could hear a young woman begging God to make him stop.

  But as Edmund Lambert sank his teeth again and again into her flesh, a voice that sounded a lot like her father’s told her that God was busy elsewhere.

  Chapter 88

  The taste of the goddess’s flesh was indescribably delectable—sent shock waves throughout his entire body—and brought with it the chorus of the god’s return.

  C’est mieux d’oublier! C’est mieux d’oublier!

  The General saw it all so clearly now. There was no need for the lion’s head. The Prince had made that clear when he came through the doorway—a flash of revelation that was for the General both momentary and endless.

  And now the Prince had transported them both back in time. No, the General understood—outside time. They were still in the attic, yes, but also in the Underworld palace of Ereshkigal, their surroundings both familiar and strange—the stone pillars, the high vaulted ceilings, the lush fabrics that adorned the goddess’s bed chamber. And there on the other side of the room was the bathtub in which the goddess had let the Prince glimpse her nakedness for the first time.

  The General could feel the eyes of the dead, the eyes of the other gods on his back. But his mother was there, too—hanging by her neck from the rafters, watching him. And there was the little boy looking up at her, smiling with under- standing as the lines of the impaled stretched out along the road as far as he could see. There was no fear now. Only the end of the road; only the temple at Kutha and the hordes of worshippers calling his name; the battlefields and the souls of the impaled rising in the smoke to join with him in the stars.

  C’est mieux d’oublier! C’est mieux d’oublier!

  The twinkling stars—so many of them now that the sky looked silver—swirled around them and penetrated their flesh. The General could feel them inside and out; and suddenly he understood that the stars were not twinkling—they were trembling with fear!

  I have returned! the entire universe seemed to cry, and all at once it was laid out before him; everything one in the same now amid the unimaginable bliss of total understanding—time, place, even his body did not exist for him anymore. Everything had been given up for the Prince; the scales had fallen from his eyes and the Prince had rewarded him with the vision of the gods. Soon his flesh would fall away, too. Soon, the doorway would be open for him, and he would join with his mother in spirit—a sense of joining that he did not understand until now.

  “C’est mieux d’oublier,” he heard her say, and the General understood that the Prince had been the true path all along. Ereshkigal was the enemy. Ereshkigal had tried to trick them. And the Prince had brought her to the attic, to the threshold of the doorway to devour her into his spirit just as he had devoured Edmund Lambert and his mother; just as he most certainly would devour the General. The nine and the three, the return, the dots connected to make a new equa-tion—an equation that the General could not have possibly understood until now.

  “My body is the doorway,” said the General, said the Prince.

  And then he bit into her again.

  Chapter 89

  Markham closed his fingers around the cold steel knob and pushed. The door cracked open. The Impaler, in his haste, had forgotten to lock it. Thank God!

  He stepped cautiously from the cellar into a pool of blood. There was blood everywhere—on the walls; footprints and a thick smear tracking away from the cellar door as if someone had been dragged across the kitchen floor. Not Schaap, he thought. No, this mess leads to someone else!

  He took another step, wincing as his shoes peeled from the linoleum—then he heard a dull thwump from above his head. He stopped and listened, then saw the handguns on the kitchen counter: FBI issue, .40-caliber Glock 22s. His own and Andy Schaap’s.

  Markham traded his hammer for the guns, checked the ammo, and followed the blood trail from the kitchen into the hallway. Now he could hear whimpering and squealing coming from the second floor. He mounted the staircase—when suddenly a deafening roar sent a shiver through his veins.

  “Please, God, no!” the woman screamed, and Markham flew up the stairs like a ghost—kept his ears trained on the cacophony of crying and growling and roaring and quickly negotiated his way through the darkened upstairs hallway.

  He ended up in one of the bedrooms; saw light coming from the closet and went for it. He stood there for a moment, panting in the doorway as he gazed down the long, narrow passage to the door at the far end—open, light streaming downwards, and more stairs. They were in the attic.

  Markham swallowed hard—could hear muffled sobs and grunting and then the word “Ereshkigal” spoken in that low, growling voice.

  Ereshkigal, he thought. The Nergal myth—the rape of the goddess in the Underworld!

  In the next moment he was bounding up the stairs with his pistols thrust out before him like an outlaw. The old boards creaked noisily beneath his feet, but what greeted him in the attic froze him dead in his tracks.

  It was a young man—naked, bloody, and impaled on a stake that had been driven into the attic floor. There was a large, gaping hole in the ceiling, and the young man’s neck had been broken—his head tied back so that his lifeless eyes stared toward the stars. On his chest, in streaks of blood still shiny, the words I HAVE RETURNED had been carved into his flesh.

  Markham, his veins running cold, digested the entirety of the scene almost at once—but it was still enough time for the Impaler to react.

  Another scream, and at the far end of the attic, on the other side of the impaled young man, Markham saw move-ment—a blur of bloody-sweaty muscles that glistened in the light from the single overhead bulb.

  The Impaler growled and gnashed his teeth.

  Then he fired.

  The first shot burst through the dead man’s side—missed Markham’s head by inches, and buried itself in the wall behind him. Markham dropped to his stomach and slid back- wards down the stairs—returned fire blindly as two more bullets whizzed past him. The Impaler kept firing—three more shots and the woman began screaming hysterically. Then the sound of movement—creaking and something falling—and Markham peeked his head over the top step.

  A ladder lay on the attic floor.

  The Impaler was gone.

  Markham sprang to his feet—could hear footsteps above his head as he covered himself with his pistols. He skirted around the impaled young man, around the hole in the roof, and headed for the girl. She was on the floor, naked and sobbing and curled up in the fetal position near a stack of trunks—her face, her arms and legs, almost her entire body a glistening crimson.

  Markham, his eyes darting back and forth from the hole in the ceiling, was about to speak, when two more shots from the Impaler rained down on him. He dove to the floor, knocked over an old dressing dummy and covered the young woman. More bullets buried themselves in the dummy’s heavy torso, while others popped and splintered the exposed wood beams on the wall behind him.

  A brief silence, and then Markham heard the Impaler scrambling across the roof. He fired both pistols, sending a trail of bullets through the attic ceiling in the direction of the footsteps—then a loud thump at the other end of the house.

  Markham paused, wondering for a microsecond how many bullets he had left. Fully loaded, his Glocks held sixteen rounds apiece. If the Impaler was using his M9 Beretta—well, Sam Markham couldn’t remember how many rounds that model held.

  “Please, help me,” the young woman whimpered.

  “Are you wounded?” Markham asked her. “Are you shot?”

  “It was Edmund Lambert,” she sobbed. “It was Edmund….”

  Markham took off his jacket and covered her. She had bite marks on her neck and shoulders; large patches of flesh missing from her breasts, too. She was bleeding badly, but he could tell for the time being she was going to be okay. She would have to be.

  “What’s your name?” Markham asked.

  “Ci
ndy Smith.”

  “Sam Markham, FBI,” he said, checking his pistols. “Hold my jacket against your chest to slow the bleeding. You’re going to be fine.”

  “It was Edmund Lambert! He killed Bradley—”

  “I need you to find a phone, Cindy Smith,” Markham said, tucking the pistols into the small of his back. “Call 911. Wait until I’m gone, then—”

  “Don’t leave me!” the girl cried, reaching for his leg—but Markham ignored her and replaced the ladder.

  “I need you to be strong,” he said. “Call 911—the kitchen. I saw a phone in the kitchen downstairs. You understand me?”

  “No—he’ll come back for me!”

  Markham stepped onto the ladder. “All right, stay put,” he shouted as he climbed. “You’ll be safe here. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

  “Don’t leave me!”

  But Markham was already at the top of the ladder. He poked his gun out of the hole and stepped up onto the roof as the girl went on screaming beneath him.

  He was in the middle of nowhere; didn’t know which way to turn—the silvery farmland stretching out for what seemed like miles in every direction—when suddenly he heard the sound of a car starting behind him.

  Markham scrambled over the roof peak and headed to the other side of the house—jumped onto the porch overhang just as the headlights of the Impaler’s pickup began backing away from him down the driveway.

  Markham leaped from the porch roof and fired after the truck—broke a headlight on the first shot, then heard the windshield shatter and the hiss-pop of the radiator bursting as he emptied one of the pistols. He let it fall in the dirt and began firing with the other.

  He’s going to get away, he thought—when unexpectedly the truck spun out and plowed backwards into one of the old tobacco sheds.

  The weathered boards crumbled down and bounced off the hood as the truck came to a stop—its one remaining headlight cutting through the swirling dust like a laser beam. Markham ran for it, his stomach in his throat, as the old Ford’s engine whined painfully, its tires spinning in the dirt.