by Edward Lee
"Probably just three messed-up people living a delusion," Venetia suggested.
"Yeah," he conceded. "Hey, do you mind if I stop by the substation real quick before I take you back? I'll just be a couple minutes."
"That's fine," she said, almost half asleep now in the seat.
"Once they bring Dougie back from the hospital, I have to make damn sure I have a suicide watch on him."
"You really think he's suicidal?"
"Yeah, because Freddie and Sue didn't seem suicidal but they knocked themselves off anyway. They even told me they would. I can't have the same happening to Dougie."
Suicide cult. The words thumped in her head. A Satanic one ... It all seemed unreal, or so distant as to have no meaning, like reading of such things in the papers and just thinking, Oh, how strange.
But here it was, right in her face.
A phantom sensation from the knife-point continued to prick her neck, and she shuddered when she recalled the feel of Dougie's hand mauling her breast and crotch.
Berns parked in front of the Wammsport substation. "I'll be back in five minutes," he promised.
"Mmmm," she said. She was closing her eyes. I'll just take a nap while he's inside....
The half-sleep felt luxurious after being terrorized at the store. Thank you, God.... But it was true, she could have been killed, easily. She saw calm blackness behind her eyes. Her window was open, and she could feel a gentle breeze caress her face.
But then the strangest image flitted into her head: a wristwatch-was it hers?-but the hands were spinning backward, then forward, the day and date doing the same, until it got to the point where each second was a time hours off of the second previous.
Another image smacked: her naked body sprawled unconscious as a cloaked figure hunched between her legs... .
Bile flooded her stomach-
Then the tinny voice crackled and whined like an oldtime radio transmission: "You must find the Pith! You must find the bones! Venetia! Venetia! There's nothing you can do to stop the pouring of the blood!"
Venetia gasped like someone just saved from drowning.
"You must find the Pith! You must find the bones! Do you hear me? Do you hear me? This isn't a dream! You must bring one of the-"
She roused with a silent shriek on her lips, and at once found tears dribbling down her cheeks. "Oh, my God, what is wrong with me?" she squealed. Her fists churned in her lap. I must have a tumor in my brain or something. What else could cause such vibrant hallucinations over and over? When Venetia opened her fists-
What...
A piece of paper lay crumpled in one of them.
Someone put this in my hand ... while I was asleep.
Groggy, still teary-eyed, she squinted at the crabbed scrawl:
Embrace your strength, as I have not. In my cowardice, I am no longer worthy to serve God. Take heed not to be sacrificed by mistake. Only you can rightly enter the Pith.
"This is crazy!" she muttered and jumped out of the car. The note blew away. Someone's messing with my head! The main drag paralleled the docks. A block down she saw a bum hobbling across the street. Him! she realized. Father Whitewood!
"Wait!" she shouted, tramping down the sidewalk. Passersby gaped at her flight. "Father Whitewood! Damn it, would you wait!"
The man straightened, a smudged face peering at her from the hood of the greasy raincoat. He stopped, fist tremoring as if challenging himself, and for a moment it looked as though he would turn and come toward her.
"Damn it to hell!" Venetia swore.
Instead, this bum-the former prior of St. John's Prior House-got onto a bus and rode away.
"Come back!"
In the bus's rear window, the withered face gazed back at her; then the old man made the sign of the cross.
Chapter Sixteen
(I)
"It's going to be very soon," Alexander said, holding a weird brass crescent to the sky.
Ruth didn't even know what "it" was yet. "How soon?"
"Well, since there's no time here-" He shrugged, keeping his eye lined up on the device. "I'll only be able to tell from this. Don't worry, I'll know."
Ruth frowned. She sat next to him on a bench of long bones at the end of another alley. "What is that thing anyway?"
"Know what a sextant is?"
"Fuck no."
The monster-armed priest shook his head. "It's like a sextant, Ruth, a thing boaters used to use to chart courses by looking at the stars. This is a Moon-Sextant, though." He displayed it: a crescent of brass which-now that she thought about it-was shaped exactly like the black sickle moon that hung in the sky. "You line it up so the points are parallel to the ground and check the distance between the moon's points and the sextant's points. Here the moon never changes phase but it does change pitch. That's the closest you get to measuring time in Hell. The reading you snagged off Aldezhor was seven-point-seven. There's a gauge on this thing. Right now we're at seven-pointthree. I'll just have to keep checking once we're inside."
Ruth scratched her armpit, wishing for a shower. "Inside where?"
"There," the priest said. His Annelok arm pointed toward a massive building several blocks away. "That's Fortress Boniface."
"It's so ... bright," she said, shielding her eyes. Like everything in the District, it was made of those funny red bricks that had a weird glow, but this structure was the brightest. Each brick burned like fuzzy red neon against the darker scarlet sky.
"The blood bricks are Hexed very potently," Alexander explained. "Hence, the glow. It's one of the most important buildings in Hell and likewise one of the biggest targets for anti-Satanic terrorists."
"Like us?" she said.
"Like us, Ruth. The Hexing makes the bricks even stronger, so no one can break through them. The only way in is through the front door."
Ruth laughed. "And you think they're gonna open it for us?"
"Not for us, Ruth. For you."
"I'm not going in there by my-fucking-self!"
"I'll be right behind you." The priest winked.
This is so fucked-up, she thought. "Damn it, I broke another nail!" Then she gasped. From the ramparts of the fortress, she saw hoppers dumping charred and mangled bodies over the side. "Did you see that shit?"
"Unfortunately, yes. Before any interstitial rite, they murder scores of people. It's called a precursory oblation."
Ruth squinted. "Huh?"
"A demonstrative sacrifice that's not functionally related to the ritual," the priest said.
"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," she mumbled for the millionth time.
"They torture, then kill people for an extra effect. Like icing on cake. I'll bet they're slaughtering a thousand people a day in there: burning, threshing, crushing," the priest morbidly continued. "Remember, only the Human Damned have souls, Ruth, but even the Hellbom have a Deathforce."
"Deathforce? Do I want to know what that is?"
"You need to know. Deathforce can be likened to psychic energy-in Hell, it's in every living thing, Human and Demon alike. And when you kill Humans, Demons, Hybrids, etc. en masse, the Deathforce is released all at once. It keeps the air charged with positive Satanic energy. It makes their rituals work better, the same way gas treatment makes your car work better. Get it?"
Fuck, she thought. "I guess so..." She paled again, as another hopper emptied more bodies over the fortress ramparts.
"When they're done, they dump the bodies over the side to be scavenged by the local populace," he finished.
It was ghastly. This entire world seemed to exist on horror and despair. Why did I have to be such a shitty person in life? she lamented. If I weren't, I wouldn't even be here.
Alexander unsheathed an impressive knife from the Satanic Navy belt: a sharp blade on one side, a saw on the other. "This should do the trick."
Ruth found herself unsettled by the image of a priest grinning at a knife. Her voice rattled, "What's the knife for?"
The priest se
emed to contemplate his response. "It's like a lot of things, Ruth. There's good news and there's bad news. The good news is, we're on the last leg of our mission."
Ruth felt petrified. "What's, uh, what's the bad news?"
"We've got some dirty work to do first. It won't be p y"
Oh, like anything in this fuckin' city is, she thought.
"And she should be coming down this street real soon," Alexander added.
"She? Who? Your intelligence source?"
"No, no, Ruth. It's someone awful." He handed her one of the Hectographs. "This is who we're waiting for."
Pretty hot broad, Ruth thought when her eyes went first to the woman's body. Tall, buxom, long legs, and perfect hips.
"Shit, she's wearing a Hand-Bra and Tongue-Skirt just like mine."
"Um-huh. It denotes great wealth."
Only then did Ruth look at the woman's face. "Oh, make me gag! Did you see this bitch's face?"
"Urn-hmm. No Cosmo cover for her, huh? It's the face of a lower-order Demon called a Putridox. Probably the most revolting visage in the Mephistopolis."
Ruth almost threw up looking at it. The face looked like a splat of cottage cheese pocked with yellow spots. No nose, but eyes and a mouth that were vertical instead of horizontal. The eyes themselves looked like wads of smoker's phlegm. "This is one fugly bitch, man. I'm gonna have nightmares...."
.She is a nightmare, Ruth. Her name is Voluptua, and she's very important."
Ruth couldn't look anymore. "How could someone with a face like that be important?"
"She's the personal concubine of Exalted Duke Boniface," the priest said.
When he flashed a quick Hectograph of Boniface, Ruth shuddered at the image of the inhuman salt-mask.
"Voluptua is the one who's going to get us into the fortress."
Hmm, Ruth thought. She looked back at the picture of the woman and noticed an oddity. "Why's she wearing a scarf? It's hot as shit here."
Did Alexander seemed disturbed by his next thought? "You'll see," was all he said.
All the while, something bugged her about the picture, and finally it snapped. "Hey, this ho's body looks a lot like mine."
Alexander handed her another Hectograph. "Here's one of her naked, Ruth. Let me know when that steel-trap brain of yours starts to click."
Ruth was about to respond to the obvious sarcasm but-
The next picture showed Voluptua standing bucknaked on the Fortress ramparts, the horrendous whitelumpen face grinning as Ushers loaded a hopper with corpses.
Every physical feature of the woman's body bore a striking resemblance to Ruth's. They were nearly identical: breasts, nipples, navel, hip contours, and leg curves. She even trims her pubies the same way I do, Ruth thought.
"Her body looks so much like yours," the priest said, "she could pass for you."
Or me for her. That's when Ruth's steel-trap brain finally clicked. "You're shitting me, man! You want me to stand in for her?"
"Yes," Alexander said rather grimly. "You look just like her. Even naked, your bodily features are so similar you could fool those closest to her-including Boniface."
Ruth frowned so hard it hurt. "I might have the same body but-hello!-I don't have the monster face to go with it!"
"Don't worry about it, Ruth. It'll all work out."
Ruth couldn't believe it. "You're fuckin' shitting me, right? That's the big plan? We came all this way and did all this stuff for that? What kind of shit do you have for brains?"
"Quiet! Here she comes now," the priest whispered. "Come on, into the alley."
Ruth ducked in with him. She'd glimpsed a figure down the street. What is he gonna do? she wondered. Alexander stood with his back against the alley, the knife in his Usher hand, and his Annelok arm coiled.
A tapping came down the bright red street. High heels, Ruth edged an eye out of the alley... .
"How close?" Alexander whispered.
"Thirty feet," Ruth said. Voluptua sashayed down the sidewalk, blond hair flowing around her appalling visage. The Tongue-Skirt shined, the wolf-hands firmly cupping the breasts so similar to Ruth's. And when she passed-
Snap!
Alexander's Annelok arm shot out, caught the woman around the neck, and hauled her into the alley.
Ruth stood back, appalled. The woman flailed on the ground, gagging. The priest muscled her down with surprising cruelty, his Demonic knees pinning her shoulders. All the while, the Annelok arm constricted like a boa.
Voluptua's lumpy white face began to turn blue, and the vertical eyes bugged. "Unhand me! I'm from the Court of Boniface!"
Alexander ground his teeth at the sight of her. "God, you're ugly."
You got that right, Ruth thought. Then she noticed that each of the face's yellow pocks was occupied by a tiny red worm.
"I'll have you sealed in a keg and steamed for eternity, you wretched heretic!" the monstrous face spat.
Whack!
Alexander rammed the butt of the knife against the top of Voluptua's head. Her flailing ceased at once; now she lay still, unconscious.
The priest gave Ruth a very dark look. "You probably don't want to watch this."
Ruth crossed her arms. "I don't wanna watch anything! I want to know what's wrong with your fucked-up brain to think that I can pass for her! You're pissing in the wind, man! It'll never work."
"Look carefully, Ruth." Then Alexander took off Voluptua's scarf, revealing a ring of crumpled flesh about her throat.
"What the fuck ... ?"
"She's a Bi-Facer, Ruth." Alexander grabbed Voluptua's mane of blond hair and pulled.
The awful Putridox face stretched thin as it was pulled off the woman's skull; at the same time the queer folds of skin about her neck disappeared as a second face slipped over her skull.
"The bitch's got two faces?" Ruth nearly howled.
"Yep. The Putridox face was surgically grafted on top of her Human face. Anytime she wants to change faces all she has to do is pull up or pull down, like a stocking mask," Alexander explained.
Voluptua's Human face was pretty but ... Not as pretty as mine, Ruth thought.
Now the first face hung as a flap of skin off the top of the skull. Alexander casually cut it off with the knife, explaining, "In the Living World they've got face-lifts, implants, and tummy tucks; here, they've got Bi-Facial surgery-very pricy. You can have any face you want sewn on top of your own-if you've got the money, and as Boniface's favorite whore, you can bet she's got plenty of that."
Ruth's stomach grew upset from some unbidden dread. When Alexander finished cutting the Putridox face away from the Human face, he shook it out like a piece of laundry, blond hair and all.
Alexander shot Ruth a cunning grin. "Got the gist yet, Ruth?"
Her voice sounded like gravel when she replied, "You want me to wear that face, don't you?" She blinked, staring cold. "That ugly-ass, gross-out, Demonic monster face."
"Yes, Ruth. Without you, we're done. You're our only hope, and it's the only hope for you, too. Do you want to go to Purgatory in a thousand years"-his Usher hand gestured the stinking, smoking city-"or do you want to stay here, forever and ever?"
Ruth gulped.
"Remember, Ruth, our minds are limited. God's is not. Sometimes we have to let ourselves be redeemed the hard way. Take your choice."
Ruth shimmied in place. "All right, I'll wear the fuckin' monster face. Jesus ..."
"Good girl," the priest grinned, then-
Crunch!
He stepped on Voluptua's head with his Usher foot and crushed her skull flat. The stunning body hitched once, then fell still.
Ruth wasn't sure but just as Alexander's foot squashed the head, a thread of blue-black mist seemed to waft up like smoke and then snake its way to a crack in the alley wall.
"Was that-"
"Her soul," the priest said. He looked at the crack in the wall. "I'm happy to say that Voluptua is now occupying the body of a Brick-Mite."
Next Alexander took th
e woman's Bone-Sandals off. "Put these on now, Ruth, and then your Hand-Bra and Tongue-Skirt."
Great, I get to wear that freaky shit again, she lamented. She changed quickly, and found the Bone-Sandals to be a perfect fit.
Next, Alexander passed her the severed face. "It's time, Ruth. Just remember what you're doing is for the forces of good
Fuck that shit, man, she thought, then took a deep breath, winced-Aw, Jesus, I can't believe I'm doing thisand pulled the Putridox face over her head as though it were a ski mask.
Alexander put the scarf around her neck, then stood back and marveled at her. "Ruth, you look exactly like her. It's even better than I thought."
"Terrific," Ruth muttered. The new face felt like hot, wet meat against her skin.
"And like I said, I'll be right behind you the whole way."
"How?" she objected to the obvious. "Even if they don't make me as an imposter, they ain't going to let a priest into the fortress."
"Leave that to me," he said and then turned his knife around and began to saw off Voluptua's left hand.
(II)
Maybe there is a God, and He was protecting Venetia, Berns thought. He'd just dropped her off at the prior house and was heading back to the county substation. He hadn't even consciously squeezed the trigger when he'd shot the knife out of Dougie Jones' hand, and the truth was he rarely practiced at the range. That was the luckiest shot in the history of police work.
Hiding his own adrenaline rush from Venetia and the manager hadn't been easy; now his hands shook on the wheel. He wanted to go home and chill out but knew he couldn't. Dougie wouldn't be long at the hospital; Berns' priority now was making sure the punk was safe in his cell.
"Two-zero-eight, this is two-zero-zero," he said into his radio mic. "Give me an ETA on Dougie Jones transport, over."
Dead air answered him.
"Two-zero-eight, do you copy?"
Nothing.
The clowns must've left their Motorolas in the car. He tried another unit. "Two-zero-seven, this is Berns. Do you copy?"