by Harvey Click
“Come on, it’s safe now,” he said, and they continued climbing.
“So that’s how you learn the way down,” Grimes said. “The goddess gives you clues.”
“Yes, she rewards you with clues when you earn her love,” John said. “If you’re wise you can move down, but if you screw up you’re dead. Like back there, a guillotine cuts you in half. One day it was my duty to remove a body.” He snickered. “You can still see blood on the steps.”
The stairs climbed to a wall with words carved in the stone: “Those who love Athena are never alone.” John kissed the inscription and then chanted:
“Her love is writ in blood and bone,
her laws are all the wisdom known;
I love her laws and love alone
can open up this wall of stone.”
He pushed in the two stones with the words “love” and “alone,” and a small round mouth groaned open in the floor. They got down on their hands and knees and burrowed through a dusty crawlspace to a stairs winding steeply down.
“How does she give you these clues?” Grimes asked.
“She slips them into your dreams or scrawls them on your skin in vanishing ink or whispers them to you in the silence of morning prayer. Sometimes you wait forever and think a clue will never come. I got stuck in the third room of the tenth hallway so long that I was afraid she didn’t love me. But I have faith.”
“This goddess sounds like a harsh mistress,” Grimes said.
“Not if you love her,” John said. “Fear is the beginning of wisdom, and wisdom is to love the goddess, so fear is love, and therefore no one loves her more than I do.”
He smiled sweetly in the darkness, and it suddenly occurred to Grimes that the young man believed him to be Athena in disguise, putting him through this odd ordeal to test his loyalty. Perhaps he thought Athena was about to lead him down a few more steps.
“If you speak truly, your obedience will be rewarded,” Grimes said. “But if you lie, it will please the goddess to crush your head like a rotten egg.”
“I’d rather eat my tongue than speak falsehood in her temple,” John said.
“Good. Then tell me truly, is there an exit down below?”
“Yes. I’ve seen supply boats unload when I’m on roof patrol.”
“Is there any other way out?” Grimes asked.
“I don’t know. Why would anyone want to leave?”
“Let’s suppose the goddess wanted you to,” Grimes said. “Is there any way to do it besides working your way down step by step?”
“I’ve heard rumors, but I ignore them.”
“What rumors?” Grimes asked.
“Well, Brother Philip thinks if you take a running start and ram your whole body through a mirror, then you can shoot through your reflection to the lake. Personally, I think he’s nuts.”
The stairs ended in a low tunnel, and they crawled on hands and knees to a tiny room containing nothing but an empty cot and a flickering light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Apparently there was a generator somewhere, which meant there was gasoline, and gasoline might prove useful. Grimes wondered if the wiring didn’t extend all the way up, or if the candles and kerosene lamps were intended to befuddle novices.
“I stayed in this room just a few days before she rewarded me with another clue,” John said.
“If you seek a larger room on a lower floor,
step into a smaller room and tightly shut the door.
Wrong hooks cut your spine, but the right will take you down,
seven counting from the jamb and two hooks from the crown.”
He led Grimes into a closet and shut the door. The walls were studded with razor-sharp hooks.
“This one had me stumped,” John said. “It’s easy to count seven from the jamb and two from the crown, but there are hooks on both sides of the door. Then I understood that the right side will take you down. Her wisdom is in every word.”
He lifted a hook, and the closet jerked and descended to a room that reeked of urine. It was larger than the previous room, but they had to stoop because the ceiling was not even five feet high. A robed disciple sat hunched on the bed, counting teeth strung like rosary beads. Grimes touched the hilt of his dagger, but the tooth-counter scarcely looked up.
“If you’re staying, I got dibs on the bed,” he said lethargically.
“We’re not staying,” John answered. “I passed this level months ago.”
“Whoop-dee-doo,” the lethargic man said. “Push on and on, and get nowhere at all. Past every snare, there’s another dead wall.”
His tongue slithered over bloody gums. Apparently the strung teeth were his own.
Everyone needs a hobby, Grimes thought, but collecting your own teeth doesn’t seem like much fun. He had intended to ensorcel every disciple they met, but this one looked too depressed to be of any use.
John did something to open a small iron door, and they descended a winding passageway so tight they had to walk sideways. Apparently overweight disciples weren’t permitted to approach the goddess.
“I only know the way through two more traps,” he said. “But I’m eager to learn more.”
“Your eagerness will be rewarded,” Grimes said. “He who is able to perceive Athena in all her splendor, no matter what guise she wears, is surely ready to descend deeper into the holy mysteries—no?”
“No—I mean yes,” John said. He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the filthy floor. “I recognized you at once, O Beauty of Beauties. I’m blessed beyond words by your presence. May I kiss your feet?”
There was something to be said for this goddess racket. Maybe if Grimes got out of here alive . . .
“We’ll save the foot-kissing for later,” he said. “Take us safely past the next two snares, and we’ll teach you an invaluable lesson.”
They squeezed their way through to a dead end, and John chanted:
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair,
and help me climb down past the next deadly snare.
I’ll beat the walls thrice at each rung of the way,
or die in such pain that I’ll rue my birthday.”
A chain ladder clattered down from the ceiling. “At every rung you have to beat the wall three times,” John said.
“Will that work with two of us on the ladder?” Grimes asked.
John looked confused; the goddess had given him a tough question. “I don’t know. I guess we better go down one at a time.”
“You go first,” Grimes said. “Leave the lantern with me. Prove yourself worthy in the darkness.”
John gave him the lantern and grabbed the ladder. A trapdoor fell open, and Grimes watched him climb down a chimney, beating the wall three times at each rung until he disappeared beneath a bend.
All things bend into a straight line, Grimes thought, but no line stays straight very long in this labyrinth. The tower was like a nest of worms, stairways worming into hallways that wormed into tunnels that wormed through the walls. Even outside, it resembled a huge worm rearing up from the lake. The Lord of Worms must have planted the design in Letha’s mind and provided her the means to build it.
But Letha said she had built it before she began working for Cypher. Maybe so, Grimes thought. Demons operate that way, a recurring dream, a nagging urge hard to scratch in the back of your head, and pretty soon you’re working for their minions and following their orders down strange bent paths that lead you in a straight line to a place where no one wants to be.
A dark notion stretched through his brain like the long lantern shadows stretching across the stone . . . if Letha had built the tower before she met him in Damascus, then her illness wasn’t caused by Garrick’s birth but by Zyx. The demon had made her sick so she would need to serve him.
The shadows kept stretching . . . then Garrick’s disease wasn’t caused by bad genes but by Zyx, to give Letha another reason to serve him . . . then Garrick’s death in the lake was probably also orchestrated by Zyx to
break Letha’s final resistance so she would collect spectrons for him and open his earthside door . . . in a cistern of sentience shall he knead his orifice from fungus, a prophecy written centuries ago.
The Lord of Worms had long ago plotted every detail, even that first enchanted night in Damascus.
A loud clatter startled him. The chain ladder reeled back up into the ceiling, and the trapdoor in the floor snapped shut. Grimes had stupidly expected the ladder to wait for him, so he hadn’t paid much attention to the rhyme.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, what was the rest? One wrong word and he’d spring the snare.
Memory is the sorcerer’s most precious tool, he told himself. He chanted what he remembered, and the ladder came tumbling down. He looped the lantern over his arm and started down the twisty chimney, beating the wall three times at each rung.
Descending into Letha’s brain, which is Cypher’s brain, which is Zyx’s brain, he thought. Just another pawn in the game, doing what he’s told.
Chapter Thirty
The worry-knot between Emily’s eyebrows began to throb when Kat ordered everyone except her to leave the big room above the gallery. There weren’t many up there to leave, and it didn’t take them long to find the door. Twelve Lost Ones had disappeared while chasing Ryver, three more had died while chasing Dexter Radcliff, and two more had died while pissing off the Great Bitch. Morale was low.
“Come here, silly sister,” Kat said as soon as the last one was down the stairs. She had been slurring her words all day, slow tongue moving one way and lips moving another as if they were trying to say different things. “Come close so Rebus can’t hear.”
In fact Rebus hadn’t been present for more than a day now, but apparently Kat was too sick to know that. Emily approached the queen’s wheelchair and watched her cough a ball of bloody phlegm into a handkerchief.
“Do you love me?” Kat asked.
“You know I do, Great Mother.”
“Then prove it,” Kat said. “I want you to tie me up this time. Get an iron web from the desk drawer.”
“Yes, Great Mother.”
Emily frowned and went to the desk. Kat’s sickness apparently made her horny. Already twice today she had ordered Emily to kneel and worship at the holy crotch, and the Great Bitch’s nose wasn’t the only part of her that was bleeding. But Emily knew there were worse places to be than on her knees, such as hanging dead from the ceiling. Flies were laying eggs in Bert’s head and body and were buzzing thick around the naked junkie strung up next to her. Kat had decorated his skin with a propane torch, and the smell wasn’t good.
Emily found the iron-web arrowhead in the desk drawer and hurried back to the wheelchair. Kat was having another seizure, legs jerking and kicking while her hands grasped the chair arms as if half her body was trying to get up and the other half was determined to sit. Her face was red and contorted, and Emily didn’t know what to do.
“Bind me!” Kat yelled. “Hurry up!”
Her voice was a raspy gurgle of panic, and it frightened Emily so badly that she started to pee. A bad bladder had plagued her since childhood.
“You sure you want me to spray you when you’re all sick like this?” she asked.
“Hurry!”
Emily squeezed the arrowhead, and an iron cocoon wrapped the Great Shocky squirming and wrestling in her chair like a huge pupa. For a moment Emily felt giddy with power, but the moment didn’t last. Even sick and tied up, Kat was in charge.
“You have to help me,” the Great Bitch said, her tongue struggling over the words and her face ugly with fear. “It’s hard to talk . . . I’m fighting with the man inside.”
“Man?” Emily asked. “You mean Shakti?”
“No, Cypher lied to me. He isn’t Shakti, he’s a man . . . worse than that. I can hear his plans . . . horrible things. He’s getting control of my body now so . . . so I made you tie me up. I still have control of my tongue but . . . just barely. You have to help me.”
“How?” Emily asked.
“Go to the tool cupboard. There’s can of kero . . . kerosene. Pour it over me.”
“Shit. You want me to burn you?”
“Yes. Cypher bound me not to take my own life but . . . but you can kill me. I love you, silly sister. You’re the only one I’ve ever loved. Do you love me too?”
“You know I do,” Emily said.
“Yes, I know you do. So you’ll understand why I ordered my six best agents to wait outside and torture you . . . torture you to death. You do understand, don’t you?”
Emily frowned. “Not really.”
“I stationed them out there so you can’t leave this building,” Kat said. “I want you to stay up here and die . . . die with me. It will be beautiful . . . dying together. You want that too, don’t you? Keep in mind I’m tele . . . telepathic. I can hear your true thoughts.”
“Of course I want to die with you, Great Mother,” Emily said.
Kat tried to smile, face muscles twisting into knots, nose bleeding, eyes squirting green panic. Emily remembered a painting she’d seen once of some crazed pope screaming in his chair.
“Hurry up then, let’s die,” the screaming pope said. “Cypher is try . . . trying to melt the web. I hear him casting his spell.”
Emily went to the tool cupboard and got the can of kerosene. She didn’t believe the Great Bitch was telepathic because if Kat knew what some of the others had been whispering there’d be more than two corpses hanging from the ceiling, but she was careful with her thoughts just in case. Love, love, love, she thought. Won’t it be nice to burn?
Five years ago when she joined a Wicca coven back in Omaha, she hadn’t planned on anything like this. She’d mainly been interested in exploring her past lives and getting to know some other women to see if they were as sad and screwed-up as she was. Before long she got talked into a lot of drugs and demonic crap that she really didn’t care for, but it felt good to be accepted for a change, and one thing led to another, and here she was being roped into some damn suicide pact.
Love, love, love, she thought. She brought the kerosene back to the wheelchair.
“Hurry,” Kat said. She was weeping, and her face was red and swollen like a bag of blood. “Cypher’s melting the web,” she said. “Do it quick.”
Emily poured kerosene on the Great Bitch’s head and watched it run down.
“Save some for yourself,” Kat said. Her body jerked hard against the web, and her wheelchair rocked. “Soak your clothes then sit . . . sit in my lap when you light the match.”
Love, love, love, Emily thought. She emptied the can on Great Shocky’s head and reached in her pocket for her lighter.
Shit. She’d left it on the desk beside her cigarettes.
A deep, masculine groan welled up from Kat’s throat, and the wheelchair rocked harder. Something strange was happening to the iron cocoon. It was melting.
“Just a minute, I’ll go get some more kerosene for myself,” Emily said as she backed away.
The Great Bitch stood up, iron web dripping off her clothes like hot wax.
“Never mind the kerosene,” she said. “You shall help me build a much hotter fire than that.” Her voice was different, deep and rich like the voice of a preacher. “I will show you tinderboxes made of air and matches made of atoms,” she said.
The preacher stumbled and fell. Emily ran to the desk, but some bastard had stolen her lighter. She heard the thing flopping to its feet behind her as she ran to the tool cupboard and looked through the shelves.
The preacher was staggering toward her. “I will show you things no mortal has ever seen,” it said. “I will teach you the ordinances of the heavens. I will teach you to draw demons from the deep and command them with your tongue.”
Emily found one of Kat’s favorite toys on the shelf, a propane torch. She snapped the trigger, and a nice blue flame hissed out the nozzle.
“Keep away,” she said.
The preacher smiled. “I know the sad places in your hear
t,” she said, “and I know the whirlwind of hot love that can fill your groin with joy. Come live with me and live forever.”
The preacher kept preaching, and her words were fingers massaging away the deep knots of fear inside Emily’s brain. This was what she had always wanted, a perfect love that would last through fire and ice. She and Kat would spin together in a hot whirlwind of passion burning cities to cinders, and then they would crawl through cold ruins of a new earth like smooth soft worms drained of desire. Love, love, love. It was a pretty picture.
The preacher was smiling and walking toward her. “Put down your feeble torch and let us walk the new earth together,” she said. “I will show you the storehouses of the snow and the springs of the sea, and I will make them boil and steam for your pleasure.”
It was a pretty picture, but the flies eating the dead human meat hanging from the ceiling weren’t so pretty. Emily jabbed the torch flame at the preacher’s crotch, and blazing kerosene made a prettier picture.
The preacher kept falling and getting up again as flames peeled skin from her screaming-pope face, and when she fell for the last time Emily could see charred bone behind the scream.
She got a pistol from the tool cupboard and ran down the stairs with the gun cocked, but she didn’t need it. The parking lot was empty. All of Kat’s agents had fled.
Emily got in her car and headed west. She was going back to Omaha. She had seen enough of the New Society.
***
The Cypher who once was Luke the Shiv opened the iron door of his pleasure palace. He dragged in his heavy hunt bag and quickly shut the door before a crested cockatrice could dart in.
It’s mean out there, he thought. It’s the last time we go out. From now on we send slaves to do our hunting. He kicked the squirming hunt bag angrily and plucked a green nerve-gobbler off his arm.
Hunting is one of our sublime pleasures, thought the Cypher who once was Theophilus Perry. It balances and embellishes our spiritual lucubrations. By hunting we sharpen our wits and savor our creation.