by Harvey Click
He returned to the mirror to knot his silk tie and noticed that he was smiling. That didn’t seem appropriate with Garrick just a few hours dead. He put on a more somber expression, but the smile kept sneaking back.
There was no point in grieving, he reasoned. One could always father a new son, but a game this challenging came along only once in a lifetime.
He combed his hair and grinned.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Hush, little baby, don’t you cry, Momma’s gonna sing you a lullaby.”
Letha sat beside Garrick’s bed and sang quietly to him. She was still inhabiting the disciple’s body so she could stroke her son’s long hair and touch his hand. Touch, but not feel. Inhabitation only gave the illusion of being there. It allowed her to see and hear and smell, but not feel.
Despite the illusion, she was utterly alone.
She made the disciple’s hand remove the thermometer from Garrick’s mouth. Sixty-eight degrees, room temperature, but catalepsy could mimic death with no heartbeat or body warmth or breath. Garrick was a Longevital, whatever his father said, and a little bit of drowning never killed a Longevital.
She kept staring at his face. She had imagined nothing like this behind his mask, raw tumors lumped over a collapsing bone structure. Pity forced tears from her disciple’s eyes.
“Hush, little baby, don’t you cry, Momma’s gonna sing you a lullaby.”
You never know what’s worth having till it’s gone, she thought. She remembered the way she missed Michael after she hid herself from him, the way she missed her youth after it suddenly fled, the way she missed walking and touching and eating after she couldn’t do those things any more, the way she missed Garrick after she sent him away to his father.
And the way she had despised him while he was hers to hold.
She had felt him sapping away her strength even in the womb, and the day he was born she thought: so here’s my health and beauty and youth ripped out of my body to become its own puling creature. Though her breasts were heavy, she’d fed him with a bottle, fearing he’d suck away her last drops of Longevity.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”
Letha fled with her baby and a few disciples to the fortress tower. Soon her teeth ached, her breath soured, her joints swelled, her bowels grumbled, her hands shook, her nails yellowed and cracked, her eyes blurred, her skin brittled and spun a cobweb of wrinkles, her hair whitened like a dandelion, her chin and upper lip sprouted whiskers, and her back hunched and hurt. She pored through medical journals and dusty grimoires, searching for a means to reverse the decay even if it meant stealing her Longevity back from the creature who had stolen it from her. She extracted hormones and glandular tissue from her son and injected them into her own hardening veins, but they only made her sicker.
While Letha weakened, her son grew large and strong, so robust that his vigor seemed almost pathological, hardy good health blooming on his rosy skin so eagerly that his cheeks broke out in rashes as if impatient to be even healthier. His body boiled with vitality, but his disposition sickened into whimpering melancholy. He was unhappy in the toyless, sunless tower, fussy and pouty in the loveless care of dark-robed babysitters and greedy for his mother’s attention, even if the time she spent with him was dominated by painful extractions and surgeries.
“And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.”
After six years, Garrick’s sunny health and sullen moods became too much to bear. Letha hypnotically planted memories of a happier childhood and sent him to stay with his father, despising both the child and the man who had wooed her with soft spells in order to plant his poisonous seed in her womb. Cypher had convinced her that no sort of potion or Longevity treatment would turn back her glandular clock, but he promised her a way to stay alive, in some sense of the word, and if she served him well he would eventually give her something better. He described an Afterworld so horrific that even the nightmare he offered sounded good by comparison.
So she had followed his grisly instructions, painful as the tortures of Torquemada, and they worked. Then the loneliness began, a roaring whisper of deep silence, an aching vacuum more excruciating than the operation itself, stretching out the hollow hours like muscles on a rack. In her days of health she had shunned intimacy, but now she craved a lover’s touch, the joining of lips and limbs, the long bonding of flesh until another body and mind became as familiar as her own.
“And if that diamond ring don’t shine, Momma’s gonna buy you a silver mine.”
With loneliness came regret for having tortured young Garrick, a victim of biology like herself. When his adolescent hormones seethed into cancerous overdrive, her regret turned to pity, and when he masked his face and grew tall and intelligent in his shuffling, stammering way, her pity turned to longing, and she began to dream of joining lips and limbs with the unhappy fruit of her loin. So when Garrick turned twenty, she told Cypher she wanted a new body for him as well.
“Two favors cost twice as much,” he said.
“Then give me my new body now so I’ll be healthy enough to earn one for him.”
“No,” Cypher said. “You’re more useful to me as you are.”
It was true, she was more useful than any normal human. She could capture spectrons with her mind and project the complex Rebus illusion hundreds of miles. She was exactly what Cypher wanted her to be, undistracted by toothache or bodily weariness, a perfect apostle of pure mental power.
Letha couldn’t remember all the words of the song, so she made up her own. “And if that silver mine runs dry, Momma’s gonna give you a pair of eyes.”
Now she had two good bodies and her bargaining chip. It was time to wrangle with Cypher, but she kept remembering Michael’s words: “You can’t serve a demon without being possessed by the monster you serve.”
She navigated her mind through the intricate web of shielding to his room and saw him calmly sipping his coffee, probably wishing he had a cigar. Wasn’t he at least going to put up a fight? Effete old bastard.
“It’s your father’s fault you drowned,” she murmured to her son. “He knows you can’t swim. But you’re going to be fine, Sugarplum, you’re made of sturdy stuff. Mommy will fix you up better than new.”
She cradled his head in her arms and sang. “And if those sparkling eyes don’t see, Momma’s gonna give you a set of knees. And if those brand new knees don’t walk, Momma’s gonna give you a mouth that talks.”
Brother Francis entered the room and knelt. “The young woman is awake, Gracious Goddess.”
“You know what to do,” Letha said.
He got up and genuflected and left.
“You’ll be fine soon,” she told Garrick. She brushed a fly away from his face and sang.
“And if that handsome mouth don’t grin, Momma’s gonna give you a suit of skin.”
***
Mary raced down a narrow tunnel, trying to outrun the skinny shadow sprinting behind her.
“You’re my twin,” it yelled. “Our souls are kin.”
It lurched and darted whenever she glanced back, and she realized the light casting the shadow came from her own head: she was wearing a miner’s cap, its lamp like a third eye on her forehead.
A miner’s cap—I must be in a mine, she thought. Glittering gold lined the tunnel walls, so many riches to reap if only she could stop running, but the dark specter hounded her deeper into the narrow bowels.
“You’re my twin,” Ryver yelled. “Our souls are sin.”
Here the streaks of gold looked like fields of flame, all the houses in the world burning at once and even the dirt beneath them blazing. She watched the planet shrink to a charred cinder as she raced by, and then the floor of the tunnel melted and she plunged into an ocean of simmering purple lava. Her strangled scream awoke her.
She wrenched off her blankets and sat up, naked and drenched with sweat. The room had no windows and was scarc
ely wide enough for the narrow cot. Dingy lavender walls soaked up the light of a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. Mary’s claustrophobia sniffed the stale air and snarled, ready to pounce. She squeezed past the cot to the locked door and pounded on the heavy wood.
“Hey! Lemme outta here!”
Her wire and jewelry were gone, even her death chain. She wondered if the zombie-eyed men at the gas station had undressed her. Maybe they’d raped her too. She touched her groin, but it felt numb like her fingers. She yelled and pounded some more.
“I’ll tell the goddess you’re awake,” a male voice finally replied through the door.
“Goddess my ass,” she said. “Just unlock this fucking door. Now!”
“It’s locked for your own safety,” the voice said. “I’ll announce you and return in a few minutes.”
“Bullshit you will. Lemme outta here.”
“The temple is booby trapped for your protection,” he said. “You’ll need an escort.”
“Where’s Dexter? I want to see Dexter.”
“Your friends are waiting for you downstairs. Dinner will be served as soon as you come down.”
“Good, I’ll come down now.”
“The goddess suggested you may like a bath first,” he said.
“My hygiene’s none of her fucking business. Where are my clothes?”
“They’re being laundered for your convenience, but you’ll find one of Athena’s own gowns in the wardrobe. She gives you permission to wear it. It’s a great honor. I’ve never been allowed to wear one.”
“I want my own damn clothes,” Mary yelled.
“They aren’t dry yet. I regret to say we don’t have a modern dryer.”
“That’s okay, I’ll wear them wet. Where’s my jewelry?”
“Downstairs. You may have it back when you leave.”
“Who undressed me?”
“I did,” the voice said. “It was a great honor. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Open this door!” she yelled, but he apparently was gone.
Mary squeezed past a dresser and wardrobe to a bathroom larger than the bedroom. The light switch shocked her, but a dim bulb flickered on and revealed a claw-foot tub and a tangle of pipes snaking into holes in the mildewed walls. The cold tile floor felt damp and sticky. She sat on the stained toilet and watched a pipe drip into a puddle green with mold near her bare foot. When she pulled the chain of the old-fashioned water closet, brownish water gurgled sluggishly to the top of the toilet bowl. It stopped and waited with a wad of toilet paper floating on it like a dead fish. She went to the sink to wash her face but changed her mind when the faucet spewed its thin brown trickle.
She returned to the bedroom and opened the wardrobe. The long silvery silk taffeta dress looked like something Ginger Rogers might have worn in a movie with Fred Astaire. The cloth was stiff with age.
“Jesus,” she said. She sat naked on the cot and was losing a fight with her claustrophobia when something rang—an old wooden box telephone on the wall. She hadn’t noticed it before. She lifted the receiver and listened.
“Bitter? Are you there? Hello?”
It was Grimes’ voice, like a whiff of fresh air in the airless room.
“Jesus, Grimes, get me the fuck out of here,” she shouted into the mouthpiece.
“Yes, Dr. Radcliff and I are waiting for you downstairs,” he said. “Letha is sending up a man to escort you. Are you finished dressing?”
“Tell you what,” Mary said. “I’m feeling a little paranoid, so send up Dexter and then I’ll come down.”
“Sure, she’ll send him up.”
Somehow the voice didn’t sound like Grimes’. “Wait a minute,” Mary said, but the phone went dead.
The stiff old dress was supposed to hang above the ankles, but it dragged the floor. Mary stared at herself in the dresser mirror. The V-neckline showed her little breasts if she leaned any direction but back. She left the pair of silver shoes in the wardrobe; she hated high heels.
A key scraped in the lock. The door opened and Dexter smiled. “You look nice,” he said.
“Jesus, Dex, I was getting weird in here. I hate this place.”
“Come on,” he said.
She followed him out into shadows, and when he shut the door behind her the darkness was absolute.
“Dexter? I can’t see.” She groped and found a wall a few feet in front of her. “Where the hell are you?”
There was a clatter of chains, and rough cloth pulled up around her like a sack almost to her shoulders. The floor suddenly fell open and the sack descended, twisting and jerking like a demented elevator.
“Stop screaming, you’ll give me a migraine,” something said. It sounded like Letha’s voice, echoing in the darkness. “In my condition, a headache is a major problem,” she said. “And please don’t pee in my dress. In a little while I’ll be the one wearing it.”
The sack stopped with a screech of pulleys and bumped against tight walls as Mary kicked and squirmed. She seemed to be in a vertical shaft.
“I’m giving you a guided tour of a day in the life of Letha,” the voice said. “Get used to it, honey, it’s going to be your life pretty soon.”
The sack swayed and swung and suddenly plunged.
“I told you, quit shrieking.”
Mary’s scream shredded into a fit of choking; she was breathing more dust than air. The sack shuddered to a halt and began to move horizontally. Cobwebs glued themselves to her face.
“Welcome to the rest of your life,” Letha said. “From now on you’re going to dangle alone in the darkness. I need to borrow your body, but Cypher will want to keep your brain alive. He always says that a mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
There was a long dead silence. Mary’s head was spinning, or maybe the sack was.
“You drift in the void,” Letha said at last. “Where are you? Where’s the ground beneath your feet? How much time has passed, a minute or an hour? Is that just fear gnawing at your nerves, or is it a rat?”
Mary couldn’t tell if she was moving horizontally or descending or just spinning slowly. Some sort of drawstring just below her shoulders was cutting off the blood to her arms. They were numb but hurt anyway.
“Maybe you need a little company, maybe you want to step out and sniff the roses,” Letha said. “The trouble is, you can’t just put on your shoes and walk. There’s only one doorway out of the dark, and that’s telepathy. Or maybe you’ll go mad and invent your own company.”
Something was crawling across Mary’s cheek. She shook her head, but it wouldn’t fall off. It crept across her nose to her left eye, and blinking didn’t scare it away. She thought she counted eight legs as it moved from her forehead into her hair. Machinery groaned from time to time above her head, but the sack didn’t seem to be moving. She shouted for help and listened to her echo.
“Time is a stagnant cistern,” Letha whispered. “Can you tell time by counting sorrows? How many seconds have ticked away between this grief and that regret?”
Dust swallowed the whisper, and Mary wasn’t sure if she’d heard it or imagined it. Time wanted to stop, so she made the sack rock like a pendulum against the tight walls to keep the clock moving. She shouted some more.
“Where are you now?” Letha asked. “Are you upside down? Are you anywhere at all? Maybe by now you’ve learned some telepathy or madness, so let’s have some human contact.”
The sack seemed to ascend slowly and bounce to a halt, but Mary wasn’t sure. A sliver of light widened as a window slid open, and she saw a robed man stabbing the walls of his little room with a dagger.
She yelled at him, and he turned and dropped his knife. The window squeaked shut, and the sack drifted slowly down.
“How’s that for intimacy?” Letha asked. “Telepathy allows you to window-peep, but you’re still alone in the dark. Tell me, are you enjoying the first day of the rest of your life?”
Mary hung in dusty silence. Her arms stopped hurting an
d felt cold. The spider came crawling back onto her forehead, or maybe it was a different one. She saw pictures in her head of a mother singing to a baby: “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.” She longed to be with her son again, though she’d never had one, and she wanted him to be healthy and handsome. She yearned to be clothed in flesh and blood again, so she could smell wine and taste a lover’s sweat, and though the lover looked like Dexter she knew the pictures weren’t her own.
“Poor thing, this isn’t much fun, is it?” Letha said. “Anything’s better than being all alone nowhere at all. Time to come out of yourself again, time to bone up on your telepathy.”
The sack descended for a few seconds and stopped. Another window slid open, and Mary saw a naked man shackled to a wall. His body was streaked with bright red from the waist down, where much of his skin had been removed by narrow strips. His flayed penis hung enflamed and swollen like a fat blood sausage. Two robed men were delicately working on his face with scalpels, and he shook and roared while they peeled a small patch of bloody skin from his cheek. The window slid shut.
“Did that cheer you up?” Letha asked as the sack descended. “He was a good man but a bad aim, and he shot my son. The elixir dripping into his veins will keep him alive for a long time, so all of my grade-three disciples will have an opportunity to contemplate the wrath of Athena. He was one of my favorites. I used to spy on him when he undressed, such a nice sweet boy, so well hung. He was working on a doctorate in astronomy before he came here. Do I enjoy his suffering? Of course I do. And you will too before long.”
A trapdoor scraped open somewhere beneath Mary’s feet, and light leaked up into the filthy stone shaft.
“I apologize,” Letha said. “I promised you a whole day in my life but only gave you a few minutes. Don’t worry, there will be many long days to come.”
Mary descended into a large stone chamber. The sack hung from three chains attached to a hook hanging from an elaborate mechanism of pulleys and gears that looked like something from an ancient factory, too complicated and clumsy to work. A steel wheel slid onto a rusty steel track running along the ceiling, and a grapple grabbed the hook and pulled the sack until it dangled above a hospital gurney.