by Rex Hurst
“You have the nganga, tío?” asked the male, Arlo.
Father shooed away the servants and with magnificent aplomb produced the bowl that had once been stored in his private safe. The same one which had made Kathy’s mother more excited than any sexual act. The one both her parents had come to Mexico to find copies of and then disappeared. That raised suspicions. Was Father involved? Jon had no idea how much clout the old man had in this country. It could all be a coincidence. After all, Kathy’s parents had gone missing in Matamoros, literally on the other side of the country. Jon had checked.
The twins snatched up the bowl and probed it with cold fingers. They licked their lips and nodded as the artifact was inspected, practically swaying with serpentine hisses as they did so. Jon was about to ask a question when Father shot a finger to his lips.
“Absolom already inspected it and gave it a thumbs up,” Father told them. “But take your time. We’re going to get settled, maybe take a dip in that magnificent pool, then I’ll introduce Charlotte to my son.”
The twin’s gaze lifted to regard Father as he said this, then stared into each other’s eyes. Some indecipherable communication passed between them and they nodded. Servants came in and took their bags.
“She is in the wine cellar,” Lola informed him.
“I think I’ll bring her up for some fresh air.”
“As you wish, tío,” said Arlo. “The client’s people informed us that he and his woman will be here tomorrow. No reason to delay.”
“Indeed not.”
At his room, Father informed Jon to save any questions until later. Jon didn’t argue, jetlag began to hit him. The suitcase was thrown in a corner. He didn’t see the point in unpacking. They were supposed to only be here a few days.
The room itself was large, dark beige, and filled with old credenzas and various knickknacks common at the beginning of the 20th Century. A four-poster bed dominated the room. Upon further inspection, he found that the frame was an antique, complete with silk drapes around the sides, but the mattress was firm and modern.
There was one creepy thing. All of the decorations consisted of photographs of the twins and a woman Jon guessed was their mother. Each was in the exact same pose, but the ages varied from photo to photo. The twins on the edges of the picture, holding hands, eyes downcast. Their faces almost obscured as they stared at the floor. In the middle was a plump older woman with dark curls and a pallid complexion. As an adolescent she must have been beautiful, but her looks had faded by the time the pictures were shot. Fat folds, wrinkles, and sagging flesh had chased away most of the beauty, however its shadow still lingered under the skin. An evil smirk, filled with contempt for anyone else, was chiseled on her face.
The only break in the pattern was the very last one. It was the same pose, but both the twins’ heads were up and gleeful smiles painted their faces. The woman was there. There was something wrong, though. Something not properly conveyed in a still shot. The smirk was gone. Her face drooped even more. An oddness drifted about the eyes. They looked almost near-dead.
He heard a splash through the window and stepped out onto an outdoor balcony. Below, Father, well-toned and muscular, was swimming in a massive pool the shape of Mexico. The air was beautiful, languid, a universe away from the rest of the city. He lay down on the bed and succumbed to blessed sleep.
His dreams were more vivid than usual. He was in a giant concrete maze, being chased by two monster rats whose tongues whipped acid into the air. He could smell the rancid meat on their breath. Did one normally smell things in dreams? Jon, as he huffed and puffed away, couldn’t remember doing so before. Then he stopped. If this was a dream, then these things couldn’t really harm him.
The rats pounced. He was knocked down. The smells grew worse. Huge incisors bit into his shoulders.
Wake up. Wake up. Jon ordered himself, but that didn’t happen.
The rats dragged the squirming Jon over to a blue pentagram, which lit up in electric lines. The monsters let him go and backed away, dragging their noses across the ground. A giant hand reached down from the swirling heavens above and grasped him.
A massive thumb pressed against his face and it popped back like a Pez dispenser. There was no pain, just incredible pressure on his head. Another hand descended, holding a screw and a screwdriver. The screw was twisted and twisted into Jon’s exposed upper palate until it punctured his brain.
The hands and rats blurred and washed away as if they were watercolor stains. He drifted in the warm embrace of a milky galaxy, eventually coming to rest on a plane of glass. Brilliant stars twinkled about him. Twin shimmering creatures, like showers of light with blue glowing eyes, floated to him. They took in his soul, measured it against a featherweight of love, and then cast him away.
Jon was poked awake by a decrepit maid and told, “Meester Fond ess downstares.”
The smells of the dream still lingered in his nostrils. He changed clothes, tossing the dirty ones back into the case with the clean, and hurried down curving stairs to a sparsely furnished living room. Father was there in a plush leather chair. The woman from the photographs sat beside him in a wheelchair. A red blanket was tossed casually around her. Father rose.
“Jon, I want you to meet your great-aunt Charlotte de Courrière. The last of the Order of the Bright Dawn.”
The Order of the Bright Dawn. The occult group which had created Dark Dungeons. Jon had tried researching them, but there was nothing. From the library, down to dark nooks where fact and myth blurred, there was no information on this group. After learning of Father’s connection to Brian Elder, he assumed that the old man had lied about everything anyway. This revelation made him reconsider.
“Hello?” he said.
The old woman shifted, unresponsive. Jon stepped closer. She was sallow, pale, and deflated. There wasn’t much going on inside, but she wasn’t a complete vegetable. Her eyes would not look at anything directly, certainly not another human’s. They seemed to seek out the middle distance between objects and gaze at nothing. She hadn’t visibly aged since the final photo from upstairs, while her children certainly had. Another ageless wonder. His life was starting to get crowded by them. Father poured some brown liquid into a snifter.
“You’re looking at the great magical failure, just like her organization,” Father began. “She reached beyond to pluck power, to realize herself in totality, to become the one—the magus—and walk between the raindrops. This lump of flesh is the result.”
“And she did this on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked.”
“December 7th, 1941. A day that will live in infamy, but for a different reason to our family. It was the natural conclusion to a failed experiment,” Father took a sip, then asked. “Who told you that date? Brian Elder?”
“Yes.”
“You have an excellent memory. A trait to be nurtured.”
“He also said the founder of the order, a Limo Brightson, exploded on that day.”
“Limo Brightson was the name of the Dark Dungeons character of Limo de Courrière, Charlotte’s husband. He took it on as his magical veil, his protective ego. She really ran the show. For some reason, Charlotte loved him, or so I was told. They attempted to ascend together by repeatedly using ancient rites to journey to the beyond, the world of symbols and dreams. One blew up. The other is this bag of flesh.”
“What was this order?”
“It was a sign of the Roaring 20s. Magical societies were quite the thing and the upper crust couldn’t get enough of them. Let’s not forget, this was the age of Aleister Crowley. His Thelemite Society and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were big hits. Charlotte here wanted to recreate that success in America and become a mystical celebrity herself, which is an anathema to what the family teaches. Essentially the Order was the public face for our family’s private life. Charlotte convinced the others that it was a chance to bring those with magical talents into the fold and those with the greatest would be allowed to marry into our l
ine.”
“From your face, I assume it didn’t happen.”
“There was a brief flare, which made the whole debacle look good for a moment, but it was blown out by the Great Depression. She and her society faded into obscurity, not even worth a footnote of history. A complete waste.”
“You keep calling her a failure, but how do you know? Like Brian Elder, she doesn’t age. Maybe he’s the failure and she succeeded. This creature in the wheelchair could be the leftover bit of herself she shedded. Maybe her husband succeeded, too.”
Father swirled the liquor in the glass. His yellow gaze flicked back and forth between Jon and the aunt.
“Hardly matters,” he said finally. “Either way, I’d call it a failure.”
***
Jon walked the dead streets of Tijuana. The place smelled worse at night. All the stale beer, vomit, and outdoor toilets let loose their collective stench after sundown, as if the city itself was expelling bad air from its lungs.
He stomped on broken pavement and kicked spare bits of debris into the gutter. A three-legged dog limped across the street, sniffed at a half-eaten taco and howled its joy to the moon. If only trash could make him so happy, Jon mused. But it would not do. Not do at all.
Earlier at the mansion, Jon was all posed to grill his father over this “family business” and their “private life.” A secret which he seemed to be the only family member excluded from. One simple statement drove it all away.
“I promised you a trip to the whorehouse. Best time to go is now.”
With the tastiest carrot ever dangling before his nose, Jon tossed everything else. Everything seemed good at first. The driver stayed on the luxurious side of the city. Mansions and villas, which stretched over a quarter of a mile. Large gates. Only masters and servants allowed. The pigs of the lower orders were shut out.
The brothel was the same. Comfort and luxury shone through with every stick of furniture, every velvet drape, every bra strap, and crystal glass. Top shelf liquor flowed like mother’s milk. Cocaine was offered around on trays like canapés.
The Madame knew Father well. She twittered about him as he dropped hundred dollar bills and made outrageous demands. They chatted away in Spanish as he felt-up delicious prostitutes, all willing—or faking with incredible skill—to please.
Father had two luscious senoritas on either side. They were coffee-flavored, firm-breasted, sharp-chinned, and slim-waisted. He said something to the Madame and waved to Jon. The woman’s eyes widened. The other whores tittered and stared at him with practiced wanton eyes.
“Come with me, niño,” said the Madame. “Eye geeve you wat you need.”
He was led along a back part of the ground floor to a green door. The woman motioned for him to go through. Jon complied, then wished he hadn’t. Beyond the door was the most disgusting woman Jon had ever seen.
Completely naked, she was bloated beyond human proportions. Skin ruptures and purple streaks of bubbling flesh crisscrossed her body. She looked like a bag of skin leaking human fat. Both her arms were gone, sheared off in some accident. All that was left were a pair of stumps and puffed out scar tissue.
Her face lit up on seeing Jon and she waggled her stumps and licked black crud from her lips. Various growths had sprouted like toadstools on her face. Only two teeth held their grip inside her maw, both at the very front, giving her a mole-like appearance. Bloodshot eyes beckoned him.
The excess body mass strangely ended at her knees, the gams beneath were thin and sheer. Might’ve been beautiful were they not attached to the rest. They were a snake charm for these two specks of beauty, the only to be found in the room, led to a foul rat’s nest lurking between. It was evil-looking. Dank and greasy. Untrimmed and unwashed. Profane odors drifted about and grew stronger as one neared the fateful hole. A voice spoke up behind Jon.
“Some peeple like her, si?”
“No!”
Laughter. Lots of laughter.
Behind the Madame, many of the house’s patrons had snuck up behind to witness Jon’s dismay at the grotesque whore. The look on his face filled them with joy. Father was foremost among them, his top-dollar prostitutes still beside him. Only now one was on her knees, fellating him.
“What’s the matter? I offered you a way to pop your cherry and there it is. Don’t be rude and turn it down.”
“I don’t want that thing,” Jon yelled.
He could feel frustration tears welling up.
Fight it down, Jon. Not now. Father wants you to fail. No matter what he says.
“It’s a test of endurance,” Father smirked. “If you can fuck that, you can handle any dirty job. An ultimate exercise in manhood.”
“Oh, you’re so full of shit.”
“Maybe you’re a fag. Would you like to take her place? Asshole into vagina?”
“Shut up. Why can’t I get one like you got?”
“That’s because it’s my money renting this hole.” He slapped the kneeling woman hard on the face. “If you beg for table scraps, don’t complain when they’re rancid.”
“Fuck you. You’re the biggest asshole in the world.”
He took a swing at Father, something he had never dared in the past. The defiance had bad results. Father jerked aside, his cock slapping out of the whore’s mouth, and grabbed Jon’s arm, then used the forward momentum to toss Jon down the hallway.
“If getting a hot woman to bed you is so important, you should’ve taken care of it yourself. Gone after it with your own resources. You’ll always get less-than from others.”
Jon ran from the room, knocking over an expensive prostitute. Then ran from the house, kicking aside an end-table filled with cocaine. Then ran from the neighborhood, knocking over several garbage cans. An act of childishness, maybe his last one ever. He had no money and nowhere to go, but he recklessly threw himself into harm’s way to demonstrate his anger.
He wandered for hours, his mind darting from one impossible idea to another. Delving deeper and deeper under the poverty line, he withdrew into his mind trying to figure out his problem. He ignored his surroundings, preferring to mope, until Jon found himself surrounded by a horde of grinning Mexicans. A car pulled up, headlights blindingly bright. A pipe hit the back of his head. He was tossed into the car’s trunk and driven away.
CHAPTER 12
Deal With the Devil
It had been days. Most of it was spent in darkness, as his captors kept his head covered by a stinking burlap sack. After he first was kidnapped, the villains had surrounded him, licking their lips, each wielding a knife, a gun, a chain, or a broken beer bottle. They all had cheap clothes adorned by some bizarre accessory above their social rank. A ruby ring, a diamond stud, a glittering belt buckle bragging about the size of Texas. His shoes were taken, along with his leather belt. The crooks seem very interested in his teeth, and whenever a new member of the gang came in, they delighted in showing them off.
Only one spoke actual English—sort of spoke it.
“You money, eh?” the man asked, scraping a bowie knife across Jon’s throat.
“I don’t have any money.”
“You money!” the man thundered, then reconsidered. “Papa? Daddy? Daddy?”
Jon nodded vigorously. “Oh, yeah, he’s loaded. Money all over.”
“Good. Good,” the man smiled, showing an upper row of rotten teeth. “Where?”
He provided them with the address of the villa. That sent a wave of joy and whistles around the room. This was a fat catch. Their ticket to the big time, away from cheap piñatas and toilet water beer. The bag was dumped back over his head.
And that’s what his world became. Pure darkness, tied to a chair, bored to high heaven. He could feel madness creeping around the edges of his mind, sliding in through unknown angles. Lights with no earthly origins sparkled, spelling out arcane words in alien tongues. Put together, they presaged secrets not meant for the human mind.
About how the original color of elephants was orange. Ab
out how the devil had been dethroned by ruthless businessmen of the modern age. About how rocks can talk, but you have to wait half a century for each syllable. About how the footfall of doom was edging to make its first toehold in the world. About how the spirit of the Universe, Spiritus Universum, had been thrown down and supplanted by the specter of the previous universe. All sentient races spawned after that were cursed as interlopers and doomed to be spiritually exiled. Humans were the first example.
Then the bag would be ripped away and the real world shone in, chasing off the sensory deprivation dreams and malformed stories. Food and water were dumped down his throat. The sack would be replaced over his head and the world of unbelief claimed him once again.
Over and over, his perception of reality shifted one way and then another to the point where he couldn’t tell what was truth anymore. Eventually, the day came when they pulled the hood off for good. The whole gang was around him, smiling smugly at their fatted calf. Fifteen low-rent peasants, ready to rumble.
Strange as it sounds, even in his obviously vulnerable state, Jon felt superior to them. He looked at the scum, most we’re in their late thirties and had done nothing with their lives, could do nothing, would never do anything. They could barely think. Give each one a million dollars and they would still be nothing but peasants in snazzy surroundings. Each would probably blow through it in a year.
“Your papa give dinero. Lucky you. He pay today and we send you home. Comprende?”
