by Edward Lee
Both Mrs. Newlwyn and Betta stared at Dan.
"Sure did, but he doesn't think its a very serious endeavor-"
"Not like the thing Amano Tessorio was into," Venetia added.
Driscoll gave a puzzled look. "What do you mean?"
"Judging at least by what you told me, Tessorio was a genuine hard-core Satanist, rebelling against the Church in secret."
"These rednecks who did the murders," Dan said, "are just lowlifes in a fake cult, delusional, a follow-the-leader kind of thing."
"Let's hope so," Driscoll replied. "But I've got to tell you-the whole business, I mean, this police officer I've never heard of coming here..."
"And wanting to talk to you," Dan prodded.
"Oh, I look forward to talking to him and hearing what he has to say about these arrests-the Diocese will definitely want to know. But ... where was I when he came?"
"Golfing." Dan frowned.
"I used to golf," John unexpectedly commented. "But just ... the miniature kind."
'"That's probably what Father Driscoll was doing, too," " Dan said, "and just isn't telling anyone. He wants us to think he's Tiger Woods."
"Oh, Dan, please. You're more than welcome to join us next time we tee up, but I have to warn you, we play for ten bucks a hole. That's a bit out of your league, isn't it?"
"Not interested," Dan said. 'Setting's a sin."
These two really are a riot, Venetia thought, but a minute later she was almost offended when Betta dropped a pot on the floor. This time she stooped so severely, her cotton panties became all too apparent, and Dan, John, and even Father Driscoll all took a long look. Would you look at these sexist pigs! Venetia thought.
Just then her cell phone rang. "It's my mother. Be right back." She slipped out to the atrium.
"Hi, Mom. Did you-"
"I hope you all enjoy the steak and seafood."
"Believe me, Mom. It's all much appreciated. Please thank Dad for us. But did you-"
"I'm finished with those searches you wanted."
Venetia felt very confident. "Nothing, I'll bet."
"Oh, no. It was very interesting."
Venetia's throat went dry. "You mean these people really exist?"
"Existed, honey," her mother corrected. "But I still don't understand why you're interested in-"
"Mom, please! What did you find?"
"Father Thomas Alexander. He became a priest after returning from several combat tours in Vietnam-he even won some medals. He wrote several books about the modem clergy, and evidently he was quite a respected counselor for the Richmond and New Jersey Dioceses. At his last post, he was the special assistant to the chancellor of the Richmond Diocesan Pastoral Center-some kind of a big wheel, I guess."
Venetia could barely talk. "And he's ... dead?"
"Yes, dear, he died of a heart attack in Russell County that's southern Virginia-twelve years ago. He was fortyfive years old."
A fog seemed to swirl about Venetia's mind. Impossible. I know I'd never heard of him before, or that other person.... "What about the other person, Mom. Ruth-"
"Ruth Bridges."
"Was she a nun?"
Maxine Barlow laughed. "Hardly. There were a lot of court dockets and arrest notices on her. She'd been arrested a number of times in four different states for prostitution, drug possession, check-kiting, and the like. That's why this whole thing is so strange, honey. Why would you have me search for information about a priest and a prostitute?"
Venetia began to feel sicker and sicker. "Never mind that, Mom. She's dead too, I take it."
"Oh, yes, I've got her obituary right here from the St. Petersburg Times. Ruth Bridges died of unspecified causes at a place in central Florida called Fort De Soto Park. She was thirty-nine years old. There's even a picture here. She's blond and pretty but ... well, pretty in a trashy sort of way."
Venetia felt a sharp headache coming on. "When did she die, Mom?"
"Two days ago."
Chapter Eleven
(I)
At least I don't have to carry his ass around on my back anymore, Ruth thought.
The priest walked with confidence now, on two stout, muscular Usher legs, and the right arm, which came from the same species, flexed awesomely beneath the tacky gray-brown skin. It was the left arm that was the problem: a jointless hose of pink meat.
"Look, man, I'm sorry about the arm. I did the best I could."
"It'll be all right," the priest replied. His splotched, three-toed feet with claws left nicks in the cement with each step. "And I guess I should be happy with this." He shot a quick pose with the right arm, eyeing a bicep the size of a melon.
"What a stud. How about the other arm? Can you control it?"
"It takes concentration to fire the proper nerves," he told her. "Anneloks have a different kind of central nervous system-remember, they're just man-shaped worms." He slit his eyes, seemed to focus on a thought, and then the long tube reached straight up into the air.
"That's not bad!" Ruth exclaimed.
He looked embarrassed. "I was trying to scratch my chin. But if I keep practicing, I think the Annelok arm may come in useful. I've seen them crack stone pillars just by wrapping an arm around it."
Ruth's gaze scanned the dark street. "I'm glad we're not in that shit-town place anymore-"
"Sewageton," the priest corrected. "We're in a subdivision now. We won't be going to the next chartered District until tomorrow."
"So what are we doing now?"
"Making a pickup."
More pavement-made of crushed bones-stretched down the long street. Streetlamps on every corner glowed scarlet.
"Here we are." Alexander's monstrous legs strode sure as machinery when he stepped into a transomed entrance. "Keep your fingers crossed."
The transom read THE BTK MOTEL.
At the front desk, a Human woman with a halved face looked up. She had roofing nails in place of teeth.
"I'd like to rent Room thirteen, if possible," Alexander said. "I like lucky numbers."
The woman nodded and whatever she said came out garbled from her split jaw. When she gave the priest the key, Ruth noticed that all of the fingers on both of her hands had been whittled free of flesh.
"Why Room thirteen?" Ruth asked, following him up a spiral staircase.
Alexander whispered, "To pick up something that's been left for us."
"By who?" Then she reflected. "Oh, this intelligence source."
The priest nodded.
On the landing a female Troll with a cleaning cart was picking up chopped body parts. "Kids these days," she complained. "They get into such mischief."
Ruth frowned at the pointed tail hanging from her skirt.
"This is the Mengele Suite." Alexander unlocked the door and showed her in. "Nicest room in the motel."
Ruth switched on a Femur-Lamp and immediately looked appalled. "This is the nicest room?"
Bloody bandages comprised the wallpaper. The dresser was a pocked metal cabinet like something she'd expect in a doctor's office, and in the drawers were surgical instruments caked with blood. The bed was a mattress lain atop an operating table fitted with leg- and wrist-cuffs. In the opposite comer sat an iron chair with similar cuffs, and a coal bed beneath the seat.
Alexander's huge feet thumped in. "It's named for Josef Mengele. He was a Nazi doctor who experimented on captives. He'd regularly perform surgeries without using anesthetic, particularly brain surgery. The pricier rooms in any motel will always have a special motif to drive the rates up."
"Is that shade-"
"Human skin? Of course." Alexander raised the window shade and looked out. "So are the lamp shades. The mattress filling is hair, and see that curtain of beads?"
Ruth saw the strings of beads adorning the doorway to the bathroom, but the beads were teeth.
Fuck that shit, man....
"If you think this is bad, you should see the Ivan the Terrible Suite at the Hilton."
Ruth groaned when
she looked out the window. On the street two Broodren were dragging innards out of an old woman with a shopping cart, cackling like monkeys. When a Caco-Bat flew by, it looked right at Ruth and smiled.
"What are you doing?" she squealed when she saw the priest standing on the bed. The fist on his Usher's hand was almost as big as a bowling ball-
Thunk!
He punched a hole the size of a sewer lid in the ceiling.
"Who do you think you are, Van Halen?" Ruth gaped at the hole. "You can't trash the room! We'll get busted."
"Don't worry about it, Ruth. We'll be long gone before anyone finds out." The snakelike Annelok arm pointed at her and then curled inward. "Come up here, I need your help."
Ruth climbed uneasily onto the bed. Her eyes bulged when he grabbed her hips and raised her head and shoulders up into the hole.
"Hey! What am I-" Her head felt swallowed by darkness. "I can't see shit, man! Bring me down!"
"Light one of the matches you got at the convenience store and look around. We're looking for a pack of Hectographs."
Ruth railed. "How the fuck am I supposed to know what that is?"
"It's like a deck of cards. Stop complaining for a change and do it."
Pain in my ass. She pulled out the pack of matches, lit one-
And screamed.
When the match light flared, she was looking at a severed head lying on its side. It was a man, and he was smiling.
"Hey there," the head said.
"Holy shit!" she screamed down to Alexander. "Let me down!"
"Oh, sounds like you found a Talker, huh? I know it's a little unnerving at first-"
"Unnerving? There's a head cut off up here and it's talking to me!"
"Wow, you're really pretty," the head told her. "My name's Pete. What's yours? Let's go out sometime."
"Let me down!" she shouted again to the priest. "The head's name is Pete and it's asking me out!"
"Ruth, animated severed heads are all over the place in Hell. They're like tumbleweeds in the West. Now, be nice to the head and ask it where the Hectographs are."
Be nice ... to the head?
"Oh, I know what you're looking for," the head named Pete told her. "Some Contumacy guys were up here a few days ago."
"So where are these Hecto-things?" she asked, trying not to look directly at it.
"Show me your breasts and I'll tell you."
She stared. "Fuck you! I'm not showing my boobs to a head!"
Alexander groaned below. "Ruth, just do it. You used to do it in Florida every night for free drinks. What's the difference?"
Ruth sighed at the question.
"Come on," the head asked. "Please?"
Ruth pulled up her top for a few seconds, then put it back down. 'There, now you've seen them. So where're these things?"
The head grinned. "Give me a kiss and I'll tell you."
You fucker! Ruth grabbed the sulphur pistol and-
Bam!
The head burst to bits.
I hate it when guys lie to me.
Alexander's voice grew weary. "Ruth, can you find the Hectographs?"
"Oh, here they are." She reached out. "T'hey were right behind the head the whole fuckin' time."
Alexander lowered her back down.
"If you can't control your awful language, Ruth, at least try to control your temper. We could've used that head for more information."
"Fuck the head! And I got your damn Hecto-whatevers, so stop bitching at me!"
The operating table bowed when Alexander sat on its edge next to Ruth. "Hectographs, Ruth. Hell's version of photography. Here, they use gold nitrate instead of silver nitrate and tin salt instead of silver salt."
"Oh, pictures. Like from the drugstore!"
Alexander nodded, and rubbed his temples with the huge hand.
"So this intelligence source of yours who you won't tell me anything about ... she stashed this here for us?"
"Yes, or f should say she had some operatives in the Contumacy stash them."
"Contumacy ... Oh, yeah, like those dudes at the Mutilation Zone, anti-Satan people."
"Exactly. Terrorists in reverse." Alexander slipped one Hectograph from the pack but held it back without showing it to her. "But first you must understand the next part of our mission."
Ruth leaned back on the bed, stretching her tan legs as she yawned. "Sounds like we're spies."
"That's pretty much what we are. We're field agents, so to speak, for a cause that exists in opposition to the Mephistopolis and all Satanic endeavors. So-" Alexander scowled when he looked over. "And don't fall asleep, Ruth! This is important!"
She flapped a hand. "I'm listening."
"There's a Grand Duke here named Aldezhor. He's very important because he's Lucifer's personal messenger. Ever heard of the Archangel Gabriel, God's messenger?"
'No."
Alexander shook his head. "Well, this Demon Aldezhor is the Devil's messenger. And the most important cryptograms in Hell are all delivered by him."
"Aldezhor," Ruth droned.
"It's his job to process all of Hell's most crucial communications without being detected by the Contumacy."
Ruth seemed confused, her fingers laced behind her head. "That's his job?"
"Uh-huh, and it's your job to wait on him."
Ruth winced over. "What do you mean, wait on him?"
"Wait on him in a restaurant," Alexander said. "And when you bring them their meals, you take a peak at the cipher."
Ruth leaned back up, annoyed. "How the hell am I gonna do that?"
.By distracting them." Alexander cocked a brow at her. "And I think you know what I mean. I didn't buy you that racy outfit for nothing. The Tongue-Skirt and Hand-Bra will make you the most unique waitress in the place ... those and your overall looks, of course."
"Thanks," she grumbled.
"There's another reason why those clothes will help out, too, but we won't go into that now. Let's focus on one thing at a time." He nudged her to regain her attention. "You see, every day at lunch a Chevalier from the Department of Diabolic Encryptions brings Aldezhor the daily cipher from Manse Lucifer to Fortress Boniface. And that next note has something very important on it. Something we need to know."
Ruth flopped back on the bed, hands over her face. "Oh, man, this is so confusing! Manse Lucifer? Demons eating at some restaurant to pass messages? It's fucked-up, man!"
"Just continue to do as I tell you and follow my lead, and this'll all work out."
"I don't even know what this Aldezhor guy looks like," she complained. She was trying to get comfortable on the odd bed.
"That's what these are for." He held up the pack of Hectographs and showed the top card to her. "When you see this guy come into the restaurant, you do everything in your power to get his table."
Ruth held up the card. It looked like a regular color picture from a photo lab but had fuzzy borders, the image having been burned onto some weird photographic emulsion.
Goose flesh rose on her arms when she looked at the image.
Ahead disproportionately large-and queerly angledjutted from shoulders that were wide yet somehow also gaunt. Two protrusions curved outward from the slablike forehead.
Horns, she realized over her fatigue. Sharp ones.
But even more disconcerting than the Grand Duke's physicality was simply the way it looked: all dark. Not black, not brown, just ... dark.
"Aldezhor is a Scaedurian," Alexander told her. "That's a species of Subcarnate."
"It almost looks like he's made of shadow."
"That's because he is, and he also ..."
Alexander's words petered out when he saw that Ruth had already fallen asleep.
(11)
One thing Venetia hadn't taken much of in college was psych. But her own troubles had sparked her concern, which led her back to a section of bookshelves reserved for psychology and psychiatry.
Maybe I'm overreacting, she thought, or maybe it is more than fatigue... .
>
One book seemed accessible-Psychiatric Spirituality: A Guide for Catholic Clinicians. She was hunting for causes of hallucinatory symptoms, but found mostly incomprehensible psych-speak: ego-syntonic hallucinosis, erotogenic ideas of reference, ketoacidosis and stage four sleep maladaptations. This is depressing, she thought; the terms all had definitions that were scary ... and all rooted in forms of schizophrenia and psychosis. Then she flipped a page and saw:
Aural Hallucinotic Hypnagogia: The hearing of noises and/or voices during the semiconscious state immediately preceding sleep. More often, symptoms are connected to stress and fatigue, while the content of the aural activity may reflect the individual's personal worries. Catholic clinicians are well-used to otherwise mentally healthy patients experiencing aural hypnapompia, particularly in the twenty- to thirty-year-old age group. Even the most mentally sound Catholics experience observations and ideas that challenge faith; hence the symptoms. In fact, all forms of mild hypnagogic and hypnapompic imagery are periodic and normal, particularly among those who are 1) in the twenty- to thirtyyear-old age group, and 2) on the verge of committing to a clergy-related vocation.
Venetia nodded to herself. On the verge of committing to a clergy-related vocation ... That's definitely me. A few of the last lines in the text seemed most reassuring of all:
Aural Hallucinotic Hypnagogia must never be confused with serious clinical hallucinosis. The "voices" that the individual hears are merely a form of precursory dream fragments and usually of no pathologic significance.
Venetia sighed in relief. How do you like that? I'm not crazy. She put the book back on the shelf and looked out the window. I wonder, though, she thought. Did I ever really believe that two people in Hell were talking to me? The fact that Thomas Alexander and Ruth Bridges did indeed exist was harder to explain, but still ... I could have read about Alexander in the Catholic Standard a long time ago and just forgot. Same thing with the woman. So what if she only died two days ago. I probably half-heard it on the news.
When she turned, she noticed the edge of a slip of paper slightly sticking out between other two books. She withdrew it.
A handwritten note. And ... what is this?
She is beautiful in her skein-weave of darkness. It is horror which flows through her veins of ghostly dust, and horror that fills her eye sockets. This is but another unblessed personage I will be enthralled to meet at the fortress some day: Pasiphae, the Night-Mother, the SlutMother.