by Harvey Click
“No thanks,” she said. “I don’t like to watch people torture animals before breakfast.”
Mary was nearly out of the room when she heard him say, “Bitter, wait. I . . . I . . . I . . .”
She stopped. “My name’s Mary from now on,” she said.
“Mary.” Garrick worked the name a few times in his mouth, and she could hear his tongue licking those tiny teeth. “Mary, I made a pot of coffee an hour ago. It should still be fresh, but if you want a new pot . . .”
“Just do me a favor and kill that cat,” she said. “Maybe you’d like someone to take off the top of your head.”
“I . . . I . . . I . . .” His tongue moved anxiously inside his frozen face. “I believe you’ll find cereal and bagels,” he said. “Sorry there’s no bacon, but I’m a vegetarian.”
He tried to smile, but it wasn’t a good idea. He covered his mouth with his hand, and Mary went downstairs. Grimes sat in the front living room wearing his listening shells, his eyes rolled up in his head.
She went to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and stepped out onto the back porch. She sat in a wicker rocking chair and stared at the trees. Fifty acres of woods, Garrick had said last night. There must be good money in mutilating animals. Bright day but chilly, and her jacket was up in some fucking tree where Ryver had put it. She was shivering by the time Dexter stepped out onto the porch.
“Figured you might want this,” he said, handing her his leather jacket. His right cheekbone wore a big blue bruise.
“Thanks.” She put it on. “That looks nasty,” she said.
“Shoulder hurts worse. How’re you feeling?”
“Not too bad,” she said. “Did you see what Garrick’s doing upstairs?”
“No, the doors were all shut.”
She wondered why Garrick was more interested in showing his experiments to her than to Dexter. She didn’t like the way he’d looked at her. The last time she’d seen him she was seventeen years old, and already then he was looking at her that way and licking his teeth. She shivered again and zipped the jacket.
“Naomi’s funeral’s today,” Dexter said.
“You wish you were there?”
“No. There’d be too many questions.”
They sipped coffee and stared at the leaves. “It’s probably not safe to go back to your place,” she said.
“Probably not.”
“Let’s go on that trip you planned,” she said. “Maybe by winter all this will be over.”
“How would we know? Every night we’d expect Ryver to show up, or more of those Lost Ones.”
“Let’s stop worrying about Ryver,” she said. “Grimes says he’s the Lost Ones’ enemy now.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to start sending him Christmas cards. I’m going to stick with this till I see him dead.”
“Screw Ryver,” Mary said. “You can live your life, or you can waste it on hatred. You can’t do both.”
“I’ll stop hating him when he’s dead.”
“I’ve spent my whole life saying that. One of these days I’d like to start living.”
The door opened and Grimes stepped onto the back porch. “Ah, such bucolic bliss,” he said. “Two young lovers, a sylvan setting, the air crisp with autumn. Have you had breakfast?”
“Garrick’s experiments took my appetite away,” Mary said.
“He’s quite the scientist—no? He owns three patents.”
“What for, torture devices? Explain something to me, Grimes. All that time I lived with you, why didn’t you tell me he was your son?”
“For his protection, as well as your own. Too many people would like to get their hands on him.”
“Why, has he been carving up their pets?”
Grimes stared at her. “Perhaps it’s slipped your mind that he rescued you last night. By the way, the Lost Ones hauled away their casualties, and there was nothing on the morning news about any trouble in the park. So far as the world knows, nothing happened.”
“Good,” Mary said. “Then we can get Dexter’s car and hit the road.”
“Don’t be silly,” Grimes said. “The Lost Ones don’t like you very well. Last night you killed three of them and crippled some others. Let’s go inside, it’s chilly out here.”
They went to the front living room, and Grimes piled another log in the fireplace. A smoke screen stood to the side of it. He pulled a rocking chair near the fire and sat down.
“Garrick made this chair,” he said, “and those over there. He’s very clever with his hands.”
“I don’t get it,” Dexter said. “They’ve got the damned Talking Horn, what else do they want?”
“Me,” Grimes said.
“So our problem is easy to solve,” Mary said. “Good-bye and good luck.”
“If you leave, I daresay my luck will be better than yours,” Grimes said. “The Lost Ones are everywhere, not just in this state or even this country. Some of them may be inept, but their leader certainly isn’t.”
“Who’s that?” Dexter asked.
“Who he was when he lived is anyone’s guess,” Grimes said. “He’s been dead a very long time, but that hasn’t slowed him down. He calls himself Cypher, God, the Man, the Many, and plenty of other names. He calls himself Shakti when he speaks to the Lost One named Katerina. He promises his servants whatever they want in return for what he wants, and what he wants are spectreholes.”
“Why?”
“To escape from hell—or Afterworld, as its unfortunate inhabitants call it. Opening a portal from earth to hell requires just three spectreholes, but opening one from hell to earth requires a great many more and great talent besides. Hell is a closed space, easy to enter and impossible to leave, except for a genius with enough spectreholes and the intellect to create a multi-dimensional paradoxical polyhedron that can trick the contours of time-space. Cypher has been collecting them for centuries, and now he has the number he needs. It’s possible the Talking Horn was superfluous—I suspect a spectrehole delivered to him a few days earlier may have provided the magic number.”
Mary squirmed while Grimes lit a cigar. She knew he was hooking Dexter, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
“Physicists have arrived late to the party,” Grimes said. “In the last century they finally began to notice how their observations affect the nature of what they observe, but sorcerers have always understood the participation between human consciousness and the fabric of reality. It’s the basis of rain dances, the evil eye, prayer, the marvels of adepts, and even the few simple skills I possess. The only way to send a spectrehole to hell is by packing it inside a living human body. Why? Because it binds itself to consciousness. Divine the connection between the human mind and the spectron, and you’ll crack the riddle of the universe. The brain’s ability to capture spectrons aided our survival in ancient times, when our ancestors heeded the voices of demons and the dead. Today only a few mediums possess this talent, but those few may be enough to destroy us.”
“Skip the carny blarney, we’re not interested,” Mary said because she could see that Dexter was.
“You’d better be interested if you wish to survive,” Grimes said. “It’s too late in the day for the luxury of ignorance. A few days ago a spiritualist named Toya Jones communicated with Afterworld, and the spectron that she captured linked her to Cypher’s new doorway. He managed to send a nice little package from hell to earth, a parasitic worm that he planted in her brain.”
“I saw a worm crawling out of the Talking Horn last week,” Dexter said. “First there was a kind of static.”
“That’s the sound of Cypher breaking in,” Grimes said. “I’ve heard the same noise myself lately. You see, I too communicate with someone on the other side. He calls himself the Philosopher.”
“Ebenezer talks about a Philosopher in his journal,” Dexter said.
“Yes, he’s been Ebenezer’s mentor for a very long time and my own for many years now. And he’s your mentor as well, though
you don’t know it. It was the Philosopher who told you to write your article, and it was he who told me to steal the Talking Horn.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Dexter said.
“Truth is often absurd,” Grimes said. “He and Ebenezer agreed to sacrifice your family heirloom because they decided it was essential to trap Ryver before he could provide Cypher with any more goodies. They knew the Talking Horn would make better bait if it was well advertised, so the Philosopher told you to write the ad—your article I mean.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Yes you do,” Grimes said. “You were always Ebenezer’s favorite—no? The Philosopher picked you as a disciple while you were still in diapers, and his teachings are stamped in you like fingerprints. I know, because it was my job to activate your training.”
Mary watched Dexter’s fists throb like two hearts. Great. Now he was hooked but good.
“And what exactly am I supposed to do with this so-called training?” he asked.
“You’ll know when the time comes.”
“I know one thing, I don’t take orders from anyone,” Dexter said. “Dead or alive.”
“We all take orders,” Grimes said. “Only once have I disobeyed my mentor, and that was when I tried to dissuade you from publishing your article. I wanted the Horn so badly for my collection that owning it seemed more important than stopping Ryver. The Philosopher soon set me straight, and believe me, his discipline isn’t pleasant.”
Mary glared at Dexter and said, “Why are you listening to this shit? He’s used both of us and now he’s trying to use us again. He could have kept you out of this mess, and Naomi would still be alive.”
“No one could have kept him out of this mess better than you,” Grimes said. “And if I told you that I know where Ryver is right now, you’d step over your boyfriend like a rug on your way to the door. An enemy is always more attractive than a lover—no? Now shut up and listen before I throw both of you to the Lost Ones.”
Mary noticed Dexter grinding his teeth. He always did that when he was trying to hold his temper.
“Go ahead and talk,” he said, “but keep it polite.”
“Yes, this will be simpler if we all remember our manners,” Grimes said. “I’m taking valuable time out from my listening shells—I should be watching the gallery.”
He got up and poked the fire. “So far all Cypher has been able to send through are a few worms, because they consist of simple genetic information that can be received by a single spectron in a medium’s brain. But his plans are larger. Somewhere on earth his disciples are building a receiving doorway wide enough that all of hell can come through. But where and how? Ryver has shipped so many spectreholes to Afterworld, there can’t be many left on earth. I haven’t a clue, and neither does Letha.”
“How does Letha fit in with this?” Dexter asked.
“She’s been keeping an eye on the Lost Ones for a long time,” Grimes said. “It’s a sort of hobby for her, but more than a hobby for me. I daresay we’ve done too much watching and not enough doing, and now it may be too late to do anything except watch ourselves die. We can possibly defeat one immensely powerful sorcerer resurrected from the dead, but nothing can defeat the thing he’ll bring through with him. Zyx, the Lord of Worms.”
Sparks flew up as Grimes jabbed the logs.
“ ‘Zyx quakes the dirt of hell with the rumble of his burrowing,’ ” Dexter said.
“What was that?” Grimes asked.
“Words from the Talking Horn. I always try to memorize them.”
Grimes scribbled something in the air with his poker. “What else have you memorized?”
“ ‘In a cistern of sentience shall he knead his orifice from fungus,’ ” Dexter said. “ ‘So it is written and so it shall be, unless the earthside medium is destroyed.’ ”
“Damn it, Dexter, he’s working his hypnotist act on you,” Mary said. “Don’t look at the poker.”
Dexter glanced at her but scarcely seemed to hear. “ ‘The house shall fall to worms, and ruin shall rear its head from the toadstool that lives in the cellar,’ ” he recited. “ ‘The earthside aperture twists into a fold of space that turns on itself like a serpent, and the solid fold consists of all line segments joining points in a plane region to fourteen points not in that plane. To create the beast within, the beast must destroy the man. Therefore, you must find the one who has been eaten. Seek him in the house of worms and kill him there.’ ”
Grimes smiled. “You see?” he said. “You already know your orders.”
***
Garrick wanted to fix lunch, but Mary thought of his hands touching worms and rats and bloody cat brains, and she insisted on fixing the spaghetti herself. There was no meat for meatballs, but at least there were some nice fat mushrooms.
“If you got some wild hair up your ass about saving the world from demon worms, you can count me out,” she said. “The worms can have it for all I care.”
“That’s what I like about you, Bitter,” Grimes said. “You’re always so cheerful.”
“I told you, the name’s Mary. M-a-r-y. Think you can manage that?”
Garrick grinned, showing those awful teeth. She tried not to notice how he was getting sauce all over his face as he sucked up his meal, but he was sitting right across the table from her.
“Soon as we’re done eating, Dexter and I are leaving,” she said.
“You wouldn’t get very far, and even if you did the distance wouldn’t save you,” Grimes said. “The Lost Society is a vast terrorist network of hermetic assassins stretched around the entire planet. They’re rich with drug money and very well armed.”
“If they’re that damn bad, we’re not safe here,” she said.
“No, we’re definitely not safe here,” Grimes said. He twirled spaghetti onto his fork and tucked it neatly into his mouth. “That’s part of my plan.”
“Sounds like a brilliant fucking plan,” she said.
“It is,” Grimes said. “You see, there’s one place I know of that’s perfectly safe. The problem is, we need to be invited.”
Garrick slurped up a big saucy mushroom slice and grinned at Mary. “You mean Mother’s place,” he said. “She’ll never invite us.”
“Yes she will,” Grimes said. “She’ll have no choice when the Lost Ones come to kidnap her son.”
Spaghetti strings hung from Garrick’s teeth while he stammered.
“Quit babbling and use your napkin,” Grimes said. “You have food all over your face.”
“You mean you . . . you . . .”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Grimes said. “Letha will have no choice but to invite us when the Lost Ones learn your address. Then we’ll find a way to fight this thing together. We all have our talents, but she has more than any of us. Together, we may stand a chance.”
Garrick found a napkin and wiped his face. “Mother doesn’t get involved in politics,” he said. “Cypher, the Philosopher, she’s . . . she’s . . .”
“She claims she’s neutral,” Grimes said, “but no one can be neutral anymore. She’s either with us or against us, and now she’ll have no choice but to be with us. She may not want to save the planet, but she’ll want to save her little boy.”
“What makes you think her place is so damn safe?” Mary asked.
“Because in thirty-five years I haven’t been able to find it,” Grimes said. “Places don’t get much safer than that.”
“Doesn’t sound like she’s much of a friend,” Dexter said.
“She’s more than a friend, but something came between us,” Grimes said, and the way he glared at Garrick made it clear who the something was. “If anyone has a better plan, let’s hear it. No? Then please pay attention.”
“I’ve been paying attention to you for too many years,” Mary said. “Look where it’s got me.”
Garrick grinned at her again, and she tried not to notice the glob of tomato sauce hanging in his long hair like a Christmas t
ree ornament.
“Shut up and listen,” Grimes said. “Ignorance isn’t much of a plan. In 1963 the Afterworld sorcerers teamed up to capture Cypher because he was becoming a threat to all of them. They trapped him in November, while he was busy orchestrating Kennedy’s assassination. They didn’t dare kill him because hell is a closed space and souls can’t escape. If you kill the body, the soul is immediately reincarnated knowing everything it knew before, and all you’ve managed to do is turn your enemy into a fresh healthy baby born in some other wretched city of hell where you’ll probably never find him. They didn’t dare kill him, so they paralyzed him and nursed him with Longevity elixir to make certain he stayed alive.”
“So people in hell have bodies?” Dexter asked.
“Of course they do,” Grimes said. “Afterworld is like a magnet for souls who love bodies and the material world too much. Be light of spirit if you seek a lighter place. Please pass the bread, Garrick.”
Mary tried not to notice how Garrick licked his fingers before he touched the bread.
“They kept Cypher in a casket in a deep dungeon under constant guard,” Grimes said, “but he made a pact with Zyx while he lay there paralyzed. The demon rescued him with worms. They crawled into Cypher’s ears and devoured his brain and imitated his memories. Soon the guards became ill with nosebleeds and headaches while parasitic worms chewed up the meat inside their craniums. Now Cypher is many, the guards and many others, and all of their heads are squirming with the same worms and the same memories. Some of these worms are upstairs in Garrick’s laboratory, and I daresay they’ll devour our own brains soon if we don’t begin using them.”
The only one still eating was Garrick. Spaghetti noodles hung from his mouth like bloody worms. He slurped them up and grinned at Mary.
***
Garrick returned to his lab after lunch, and Mary and Dexter followed Grimes into the living room. He handed them each a pair of listening shells.
“You need to master these,” he said. “I can’t watch the Lost Ones every minute, and Garrick’s busy with his experiments.”
“Those damn things make my head ache,” Mary said.