“Marotta,” Leonard breathed. “Oh God...”
“Where is my book, young man?” Andrea lowered her hand. “I’m flattered by your interest in me. Your friend here told me a lot...while she could. But now I have things to do and I need back what belongs to me.”
The grid seemed to pulse and writhe on her, and now they saw why. Black pincered insects like earwigs had emerged from the centers of spirals, from intersections and nodal points, and were crawling along her body. None dropped off, or even strayed from the narrow black highways, but soon she was covered in a seething mass. Meredith repressed a gag and looked away. Leonard had begun to shake violently. His eyes strained out of their sockets and tears coursed down his face, leaving flesh-colored trails in the plaster dust that made his own face ghostly.
“Let Andrea go!”
“She isn’t important.”
“Let her go, God damn you, let her go!"
“She’s already gone.”
“You bastard! "
Meredith looked up in shock as Leonard leapt at the thing, swinging the linoleum knife down at its chest, one bare breast a spiral with the nipple at its center.
The knife disappeared into that pale flesh. Leonard’s hand disappeared into that pale flesh. His arm. His shoulder. Andrea took his head in both her hands and pressed it between her breasts, cutting off his scream before it could come. His head vanished into the soft white flesh without leaving a ripple. She hadn’t even flinched at his impact. His momentum had buried him half inside her, and she guided the rest, oblivious to Meredith’s hysterical shrieking and the mad thrashing and kicking of Leonard’s legs in the air. Andrea took one leg in each hand, guided them in. One shoe fell off a foot, thumped at her bare feet, then Leonard was gone.
“Now I’m a door,” Andrea said to Meredith. “This is what your brother wanted, isn’t it? Now you have a choice. Shut up! If the police come you’ll be sorry!” the thing rasped.
“Oh God...oh God...”
“Now you have a choice. Find me the book, or you can join your brother.”
“I'll find it, oh God, I’ll find it...please!"
Andrea stepped to one side to let Meredith pass from the room. “Look for it.”
“Please don’t hurt me...I’ll do anything...please...I’ll find it...” As she passed the creature it caught her elbow and smiled in her face, insects roving across its cute, slack features. Meredith swallowed a shriek, gagged on it.
“It’s been a long time since I had a woman. A human woman. And such a lovely woman. You did say you’d do anything...”
“No! Please! Please!”
Andrea let go of her arm. “Find the book.”
Meredith stumbled on into the parlor, shaking with sobs. Andrea shuffled behind stiffly. As Meredith searched in the drawers of Leonard’s corner desk she blubbered, “What’s going to happen to my brother? Let him out...if it wasn’t for him you wouldn’t be getting your book back.”
“If you miss him so much you can come in here and join him.’
“No! Please let him come back!”
“Find that book.”
It was atop the monitor of his computer, in the shadowed nook of his computer desk shelf. Meredith slid it out into her arms, pressed it against her breasts.
“Good girl.” Andrea spread her arms. “Give it here.”
“Take it!” Meredith screamed, and she leaped a step at the apparition, flinging the book by one corner squarely at its naked breasts. At this range she couldn’t miss...and Andrea was too somnambulistic to dodge. She hoped.
Andrea didn’t dodge. If anything, she spread her arms out farther. The triangular book struck her between the breasts...so hard that it lodged in the flesh deeply. It remained that way, half buried, for two beats. Andrea had not flinched, her peacefully shut lids did not quiver. But she smiled.
“Thank you,” she said, in the rasp of Louis Marotta, the lost explorer.
The book was sucked abruptly fully into her, was gone. But its passing left a twisted, funnel-like hole. And into that hole were sucked the lines and curves and spirals of the web of her body, like a net being pulled rapidly through a small opening. It took only seconds. Then Andrea stood rigid and totally white, like a soft cold statue.
She fell forward an her face, and Meredith heard her cute nose crunch.
The door was gone. Marotta was gone.
Leonard was gone. She had made a mistake. She should have run with the book. But she had trapped him.
She felt as though a twin conjoined by tissues had been roughly hacked away. With a pitiful wail, she crumpled near the nude corpse of his girlfriend.
“You bitch!” Meredith sputtered, and reached over to pound her on the shoulder with the heel of her fist. “You had to find him that book, didn’t you? Didn't you?”
She had never liked that brain-dead blond dwarf. Perched on their connecting membrane. Splitting it with her weight. She had taken him away. Meredith felt more jealous now than when they’d both been alive...
But Leonard might still be. Right? Like Marotta had remained alive, all these years...
She could only hope that the two men were not in the same dimension.
She spoke to the people at The Book Worm. She spoke to the niece, Anna Marotta. Neither could help her...
But there were five more books. That was a lot. Five more of them...somewhere.
She heard that there might be a copy in San Francisco, where Marotta had lived before Boston. She took a plane. And on the plane she thought about the risks. The creatures that might be unleashed into this dimension. She remembered the insects swarming along Andrea’s body, then sucked into the hole with the map like flies caught in a web. She didn’t care if she let through great clouds of flying creatures like blood-drinking locusts. Didn’t care if she let through insects that dwarfed mountains. Or let back into the world scores of greedy, hungry men like Marotta who had vanished over the years into one door or another...
Infinite dimensions, Leonard had told her. An infinite maze for her to search through...
But she would open those doors. One by one. With sound, and drugs. With symbols. And dream her way into them. And enter her flesh into them, if she had to...
He was out there. She felt the connection of an astral membrane. Twins, they had always been. Twins of different mothers.
When she found him, maybe then he’d believe that there were some things she cared about.
It would be a lot to go through, to show a person you cared, she thought aboard the plane.
But why not? It was something to do.
Pazuzu’s Children
They brought him a few dates and a piece of unleavened bread. His meager repast was not meant as punishment; it was all that could be scrounged, as yet, from the labyrinth's ruins. The man who told him this looked embarrassed as he explained it. This man's role of apologetic host was a curious contrast to his previous role; not an hour ago, the man had repeatedly burned the head of Lieutenant Gavin Hilliard's penis with the head of his cigarette.
Hilliard had read several books about Iraq, and he took his captors to be Yezidi, Devil worshipers. Some of them wore ponytails, and fancy little beards that looked like something actors might wear to look foreign and villainous in bad movies. The Yezidi never uttered any word that started with the sound sh, Hilliard remembered, because it was the sound which began the Arabic name of the Devil. He would have to listen for that. But there were things about his captors beyond their appearance that made him consider the possibility.
There was the strange brusque sign language they used as a kind of salute to each other, or to punctuate their speech occasionally. (Maybe in place of sh words?) And sometimes they didn't even seem to be speaking Arabic at all, but some tongue even more tangled to Hilliard's ears, who didn't speak Arabic but had at least gotten used to its sound.
And then there were the books. Hilliard's cell in this subterranean complex was carved out of solid rock, rock that had been hidden from the air beneath the sa
nds of the Syrian Desert...all but for jutting fangs and talons of stone as if a behemoth had been buried there and fossilized. At first, from his plane, he had taken the natural spires to be the eroded towers of man-made ruins. The rock must be tough to stand up to the hellish blasting desert winds at all; it must have been an arduous process tunneling and building this honeycomb within it. The narrow hall outside his cell was lined in stone blocks, with an arched ceiling. Hilliard could see into it clearly when he was alone and approached the slot of a window in the iron door of his small room. Once he had looked out to see men scurrying down the hall, their arms laden with books. Old books, covered in dust and bits of rock, salvaged from one of the sections of these catacombs that had collapsed under Hilliard's attack.
One of the men transporting this ancient library had seen his eyes in the window, set down his burden, made a weird angry sign with his hand, and slammed shut the panel that covered the window slot. As if the American's eyes were not fit to gaze at these tomes, even with their covers closed.
And then there was the pendant his host/inquisitor wore. He had worn it when he brought Hilliard the dates and bread, and he wore it now as he returned to the cell. The man brought a friend this time, whose bizarre appearance might help support Hilliard's theory. This new man was weather- eroded as rock himself, entirely bald, his eyes so filmed in cataracts that they were white as cue balls in his skull. Around both eyes were spirals tattooed in blurred dark blue ink, filling the sockets and extending beyond his shaven eyebrows, so that his blind eyes rested at the center of these spirals like the molten centers of twin black galaxies.
The blind man sat down on a chair against the wall. The torturer gestured for Hilliard to sit down on the other chair in the room. He himself would stand. He was being the polite host again.
He lit a cigarette. Hilliard must have reacted; the man smiled and said, “I know, a nasty habit. I hope I don't have to share my cigarettes with you this visit.”
“I told you,” Hilliard croaked, his throat feeling coated in the dust of this place. “I don't know anything about why I was sent out here.”
The inquisitor was still smiling, drew at his butt; it crackled, glowed brighter like a small glaring eye winking open. “You don't have to play Clint Eastwood, my friend. Your comrades aren't watching. No one will ever know what you tell me.” He seemed amused by his own reference to the American film star, explained -- though Hilliard didn't ask – “I've been to your country, you know. And England. Elsewhere. Meeting with brothers spread across this world, in dark corners like this.” Crackle, ember glow. “I know you were just doing your job. A loyal follower does that, I fully understand. But don't make me do my job, Lieutenant. I have men who take pleasure in it, but it's far too crude for my tastes. I only meet with you myself because I can speak with you. If I deem you no longer worth speaking with, then you'll meet these men of mine I refer to. And we shouldn't let it get to that.”
Hilliard sat up straighter, cleared his throat. He tried to appear strong, despite the tears that wound out of his left eye, which was swollen nearly shut from a blow by a rifle butt when his captors first found him in the desert. “You can't be torturing me. Even if you don't respect the laws of civilized people, you should at least realize that when my people see me like this it will only make them angrier at your country, and more supportive of Desert Storm.”
The inquisitor chuckled, turned his back and began to slowly pace the cell as if he were its restless inhabitant. “You are brave, Lieutenant. But you would have to be, to pilot one of those planes. I, myself, abhor flying.” He looked over his shoulder. “You have the American arrogance that you'll live forever. That you deserve to live forever. Neither is true.” He stopped pacing.
“Your people will never see your wounds, Lieutenant, because they will never know that you survived your plane's crash.”
Hilliard stared out of his one good eye. He tried to swallow; the ball of saliva caught at the top of his throat.
The inquisitor went on, “I know; why then cooperate with me? Well, if you do, I promise you there will be no more pain. I will give you a drink. You will go peacefully to sleep like a drunken man. And you will dream forever. But if you are difficult with me...if you persist in your pompous American...ah, tough guy routine,” pause, crackle, glow, “then I will skin you alive. Quite seriously. You will suffer in ways that make man’s imaginings of hell seem merciful."
“Look...please,” Hilliard began. “I...I have...” A strangled tiny sob cut off his own words and he sagged in his chair.
“Good. That’s a good sign, my friend. You're growing humble already. Yes, I know, you have children, a wife, a dog, a little white fence.” The inquisitor resumed his pacing. “I mentioned man's visions of hell before you interrupted me. I was going to ask you if you recognized my pendant. Hm? No?” He lifted it from his chest, halted in front of the Navy pilot. “Hm?” he persisted, until Hilliard looked up and wagged his head.
“A demon,” he managed.
“This is a representation of Pazuzu. He was the Assyrian devil of the southwest wind. He sowed pestilence, disease...just as you bring death from the skies. You see his form is rather like a man's. Man's arrogance is not limited to America, I confess. Men all over have remade the gods in our own image. And also in the image of other life around us. Horns of a goat, snarl of a dog, claws of a bird. The wings are correct, roughly.” The grimacing monster that the man wore around his neck had double sets of wings. “The truth is obscured in time, but also hidden purposely, of course. Misdirection. You symbolize one thing by representing it as another. You call it Pazuzu, even when its name is similar but different and infinitely more sacred. You give it the head of a dog because you can't...or don't want to...imagine it more like the body of a devilfish. But even that description is a human's unimaginative -- insufficient -- comparison.”
Hilliard glanced up at the blind man, who remained silent and seemed to be staring at him but couldn't possibly see through those ruined orbs. Some kind of priest, to give him a final absolution? Or curse?
The inquisitor paced once more, went on, “In the Louvre -- I've seen it myself -- they have a bronze Pazuzu from the seventh century. There is an inscription which says, ‘I am Pazuzu, son of Hanpa; I am the king of the evil spirits of the air who come raging violently from the mountains.’ Son of Hanpa; huh. Gods are not ‘sons,’ though Cth-- though Pazuzu has children. And he is from far beyond earthly mountains. Far beyond this sphere. He is no spirit of earthly winds, but of the winds of stars.”
“Did anyone else but me survive?” Hilliard said.
The inquisitor slowly turned his head to regard his captive audience. Suddenly Hilliard regretted his bold interruption, but the Iraqi kept his tone civil. “No. You are the only one, I'm afraid.”
There had been five crewmen in each of the two Vikings that had been sent from the carrier Eisenhower. Both had delivered their deadly cargo, but once they did so the Vikings had no real means to defend themselves other than their maneuverability. The Vikings had fired flares that were meant to attract ground-to-air missiles away from the planes, but this tactic hadn't worked. Hilliard had never seen where the missiles could have come from, since from the air he had observed nothing at the target site but rocks jutting up from the desert sands. No guns, no structures, no men. Maybe it hadn’t been missiles at all, but some devil worshipers’ magic, he thought deliriously. All he knew was, his plane had been struck from behind, while the pilot of the other plane screamed something about an arm ...look out for the arm...
“Since you seem eager to return to the subject at hand, let me ask you again,” his host continued, still civil. “What did they say you were to bomb out here? What did they tell you about it?”
“Nothing. They gave us coordinates, that’s all. They scrambled us fast...like they had just found out the information and were acting on it as quickly as possible.”
The torturer did an odd thing. He turned to look at the seated blind
man, his galaxy eyes unblinking. And the old man nodded once. This seemed to satisfy the inquisitor. He asked Hilliard, “They said nothing to you about what we might be doing here? Nothing about our practices?”
“Nothing. They were very urgent, that's all I know. Bomb the rocks...that's all they told us. But we knew it was hush-hush. Something to keep quiet about. They got that across.”
Again, the Iraqi looked to his elder. Again, the old one nodded. What, then -- was he some human lie detector? Being blind, were his powers of hearing more keen (Hilliard had thought such ideas were a myth), so that he could detect the intonations of falsehood?
“Look,” Hilliard said, “I won't say you tortured me. I give you my word of honor on the lives of my kids. I've cooperated with you all along.
I don't know anything. Really, it will be better for you if you let me go. If they ever found out you'd killed me...”
“Shh.” The inquisitor held a finger to his lips. So that sound wasn't forbidden to his sect after all. “You have been in a holy place. Though you do not comprehend them, you have seen things you should not see. You see the Inner Circle.”
“But like you say, I don't understand it, so what can I tell people?”
“They must know some of it already,” the inquisitor sighed, shrugging. “That's why they sent you. But I wonder if they know the full scope of things. The full scope of our jihad. They must think this is all about silly human politics. That Saddam wants oil, or land, the material things you godless Westerners crave. Saddam is of the Inner Circle, Lieutenant. He is no Moslem. That is a young religion, a religion of mere men. It is his facade, like the name of Pazuzu. Saddam is the Man of the Blue Turban. The Man of the Apocalypse. He is a manifestation of the Faceless One. He is Nyarlathotep.”
“I don't understand any of this,” Hilliard sobbed abruptly, desperation electrifying his nerves. “I don't want to understand it...please don't tell me about it! Please just let me go...”
“You are very fortunate that I am offering you such a merciful death, Lieutenant. You destroyed many valuable grimoires, important objects...and you came very close to slaying one of Pazuzu’s children. A being that we were to have unleashed upon your people. A being to make their conceptions of demons seem like fairy tales for children...”
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