Worse Angels

by Laird Barron

  She reached into her purse and brought forth red lipstick in a silver tube. She applied the lipstick thickly, her eyes on mine as she did so. Done, her lips were blood red, like she’d rooted in a pile of fresh meat. She smacked her lips.

  I gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Mr. Detective,” Nancy the Beautician said. “Mr. Detective, I certainly hope I helped you.” She stood and inclined her head toward me. “Sean is dead, Mr. Detective. Worst kind of dead. The no-comebacks type of dead.”

  I maintained a bland expression, trying not to let on that my skin wanted to crawl away.

  “Do you have any idea what happened, ma’am?”

  She made her fingers into claws and lightly kneaded my shoulders through the suit. Her nails were jet black. Her hands were much stronger than they appeared. Little meat hooks.

  “Those are prison muscles. Lose thirty pounds, you wouldn’t have to hide that body under a suit.” She shuddered and her eyes rolled to the whites and back. She lowered her arms and smirked coyly. “Yes, yes, I can tell the fate of simpering Sean Pruitt. He was dropped down a well. That’s how it’s done with unwanted children who won’t be happy. The leeches drank his blood. The worms had his flesh. His soul was conducted at light speed along the coil. His soul is either in heaven or hell. Same for you, same for me.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “Move along, Mr. Detective. You’re wanted in the main house.” She gestured. “The hounds are here to fetch you. See? See?”

  I glanced around. No one of note. My phone rang and her smile broadened.

  “Mr. Coleridge,” a man said. “I’m going to give you an address. Lunch is at high noon. We put on quite a spread. Don’t be late.”

  If I knew what was good for me was strongly implied.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  If life were a shifting maze in a violent video game, the Redlick mansion was the last zone in Horseheads I’d want to land in. In game terms, it would be the lair of a dangerous beast. Hydra, Minotaur, Cyclops. The founding fathers’ quarter of town, behind an ivy-lashed wall and a few acres of cultivated grounds. Old money, old house, closing in on a century and a half of plaster and paint facelifts. Marble pillars, leaded glass bay windows. Dormers and minarets; you get the picture. I’m sure the Olympic swimming pool, squash court, and helicopter pad were out back near the polo field.

  I pulled in behind a classic black Bentley. Al Capone–looking gangster ride. A valet collected my vehicle. No one patted me down for weapons. I’d left my tools in the car anyway. He escorted me into the mansion. I was compelled to think of it as a mansion. Far too expansive and casually grandiose to be referred to as a mere house. Chandeliers dominated the vaulted foyer. Exquisitely paneled doors at every turn.

  I was escorted to an antechamber and instructed to wait for Mr. Mandibole. While waiting, I admired the décor. A narrow window overlooked flower bushes, a painting of a white man in a frock coat tomahawking a native as two wild horses ripped a soldier apart, and a table supported the crumbling bust of some Roman or other. Excellent light came through a painted window beneath the ceiling beam.

  Matching goons entered the room and took up positions flanking the door. The goons were hefty and clean-cut in serviceable suits. Both carried automatics in shoulder holsters. Neither looked at me directly.

  A warbling flute trill preceded Mandibole’s entrance. I couldn’t detect its origin. That it might be an auditory hallucination didn’t escape me. Too many knocks to the head. High, shrill, dark side Jethro Tull; the music cut off as he rounded the corner, saw me, and slapped on a huge, bright smile. You’ve seen the grin in the arsenal of carnival barkers, self-help gurus, and death row psychopaths. His was the same, but emptier.

  “Coleridge! Coleridge! Isaiah Coleridge!” He spread his arms theatrically, singing my introduction in a tenor. “Speak the devil’s name and he shall appear. Oh, but who’s the devil here?” Trained and controlled. A bit twee, a bit obnoxious. Altogether unsettling. Too bad Lionel hadn’t accompanied me. He and this creep could’ve had a Devil-Went-Down-to-Georgia dance-off.

  Due to odd pressure changes, I only heard his voice in one ear at a time; defective headphones shorting in and out. The alternating dead ear registered a muffled feedback squeal; eerie fluting, boiling water, an inchoate shriek. I almost stuck a finger in to scrape the wax and barely managed to resist the maddening urge. The longer I stood there, the heavier my body felt, as if my muscles and bones were hardening to lead. The whole scene possessed the overtones of a nightmare, and maybe one I’d already lived through once or twice.

  He approached, loosey-goosey boneless, like the King of Pop shuffle-sliding across the marble floor. Cave fish pale and damp. Short; five-five, five-six. Built lithe as a dancer, skin stretched tight across his forehead, cheeks, and knuckles. Close-cropped hair, gelled flat and shimmery. Dark shirt and tailored pants. Shiny black shoes. Our reflections blobbed in those shiny shoes like trapped souls. Tight white suit jacket with a cursive monogrammed pocket square. The monogram was done in crimson. It spelled FIN.

  He clutched my hand and kissed it with a courtly flourish.

  “You are one lived-in sonofagun. Shall we do lunch?”

  The ear thing undermined my balance. I almost swooned in sympathy with some dame in a penny dreadful. First werewolves, now gothic heroines. Both were characters who tended to meet bad ends.

  * * *

  ■■■

  I followed him a trifle unsteadily and the goons fell in behind. As we walked, the calendar rolled back to the 1920s. Airy and bright with a faint aftertaste of institutional racism and menace. The clouds had burned off; sunrays lanced through windows and skylights. The effect was dazzling. A labyrinth unfolded around us—galleries, ballrooms, solarium, parlors. Grand fireplaces and frescos of rearing black horses painted on plaster and brick.

  “Redlick Manor was constructed in 1846 to a precise specification,” Mandibole said. “Sun phases are captured over there. Moon, over there. Solar system alignments, above.” He gestured with the expert timing of a tour guide. Wall panels, ceiling tiles, mantels and lintels were indeed carved with occult designs of varying subtlety.

  “The patterns within the tiles; the eyes etched into the pillars . . . If you feel you’re being watched, that’s a feature, not your imagination. The sundials, the arabesques, fitted to a suite of purposes. One purpose.” He inclined his head to regard me over his shoulder. He touched his hair. “Our friends the Labradors indulge a different, parallel, aesthetic, as do the rest of the elite families. Our friends and foes. Beneath the surface, where it truly counts, we share this commonality of purpose.” He checked to see if I was nodding along with his bullshit. I was.

  We came to a dining room appointed with gossamer hangings. The southern wall was covered in a fresco of black horses rampant to a blazing multi-spoked wheel, or spiked ring, adorned with skulls—the Redlick Group corporate logo done as a piece of Hellenic religious art. Gerald Redlick’s portrait hung at the north end. He wore a Russian military uniform and a Cossack-style fur hat.

  “Remember to toss a sheet over that when Newsweek comes in here to do a photo shoot,” I said.

  “Newsweek wouldn’t dare cast Senator Redlick in an unflattering light,” Mandibole said. “There are rules, my friend. The industry knows which side the bread is buttered on.”

  The table was set with a sumptuous feast. Cold dishes, steaming dishes, caviar, wine, and coffee. More liveried servants attended our every need. The goons stood beside French doors that let onto a balcony. I assumed the pair were fraternal twins. Or clones indentured to El Presidente.

  Mandibole and I sat at either end of the table. Whatever was happening between us was completely and irrevocably on.

  Hairless and trembling, an old man in a bathrobe shuffled in and took a chair closer to me. His midnight blue robe was patterned with silvery crescent moons and shooting stars. The
way his elbows bowed out from his body lent him an atavistic physiognomy; a Cro-Magnon whose features had gentled and refined down through the eons. His gnarled, shaking hands were far larger than mine. The nails were yellow, stained with bloody filth, and curling back upon themselves. As a kid, I’d seen a black-and-white photo of the man with the world’s longest nails in the Guinness Book of Records. This was nowhere close, but plenty unusual. His eyebrows were tattooed. He was the magician from a tarot deck and his robe was a wizard’s robe. A servant filled his dish with rich burgundy soup. The ancient lifted the dish to his lips and supped. He didn’t introduce himself, nor did Mandibole acknowledge his arrival beyond a disdainful flick of a glance.

  “Eat hearty, Isaiah.” Mandibole kicked one shoe up onto the table and clasped his hands over his flat stomach. “A man such as yourself muddles through life as the primitives explored caverns; a torch thrust forth, and terror in his bowels. You never know if this meal is your last. You never know if you’ll be the meal.”

  I crunched a celery stick spitefully. I washed it down with half a glass of red wine and glared with smoldering menace in case it might help.

  “Upon closer inspection, I fear I might have invited a tiger into the house. Try the lamb. It’s delightful.” He watched me select a chicken dish. “My bodyguards come highly recommended. Do they look tough to you? Could you, a professional cold-blooded killer, take them?”

  “They’d be a handful.”

  “A handful. Well. ‘Bodyguard’ is too elevated. They’re my toys.”

  “Ornaments,” I said. “Isn’t that what you mean?”

  “Enough about the Corsican Brothers. I’m curious what your research tells you about me.”

  I opted for the bald truth.

  “Your dossier is two double-spaced pages. Next to nothing. I can’t find school pictures, old driver’s license photos, zip. All updated records are provided courtesy of the Redlick Group. Birth records put you at thirty-nine, forty-seven, or sixty-five, depending upon whether you were born in Greenland, Manitoba, or the Himalayas. Graduate of a string of private schools and colleges. Multiple degrees. It’s impossible to tell what’s apocryphal and what’s legitimate. The most interesting aspect of your history is that you’re the sole survivor of not one, not two, but three major wrecks. Plane crash; train derailment; ferry capsizing.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Those aren’t my only qualifications. The highlights?”

  “Sure.”

  “I am—was—self-orphaned. My talents include four-star fellatio, because gods know high-end clients are numb to anything less than Hoover suction. Two disciplines of hypnotism; regression is my specialty. Close-up magic; card tricks, sleight of hand, and so forth. Eidetic memory. Ventriloquism. Throwing your voice is so much fun it should be illegal. I can sing, dance, and talk super-fast.”

  “It’s evident the Redlick Group prizes your oral skills.” I leaned toward the old man, whom I’d stared at the entire meal, and introduced myself. No response.

  “The Magician isn’t chatty,” Mandibole said. “His name is Mr. Foote. Heard of him? No? Foote is an old name, a discredited name, buried under the dust in the dustbin of history.”

  “Good to meet you, Mr. Foote,” I said. On closer inspection, I realized the mottles and blemishes on his face and exposed wrists were bruises. Purple, brown, and yellow.

  Mandibole looked on with patronizing indulgence.

  “Be wary. He’s a dangerous being. His cursed house was once a mortal foe. Foote served their court in a capacity similar to my own. Long ago, after the conclusion of a feud, he came to the manor as a political hostage. The truce holds and here our guest remains with a large sword hanging over his bald head.”

  The ancient wiped his mouth with the tablecloth. A servant removed his bowl. A different servant delicately set a joint of roast before him. The ancient regarded the roast without expression. As if summoned by his very concentration, through the French doors, a black cloud enveloped the sun. The light in the room dimmed; velvety blue, chromatic blue, laced with veins of deep red. No one moved to flip a switch. The chandelier hung; a cold mass of crystal. The Magician’s cheeks were sunken, his mouth puckered and evidently toothless. Tears leaked from his eyes and glistened as diamond-bright snail trails. He licked the roast.

  My grip tightened on my glass.

  “Is this necessary?”

  “Feeling pity for him is a waste of your emotional resources,” Mandibole said.

  “It’s not pity, Tom. It’s disgust at petty cruelty.”

  “Sweet summer child. Look closer. The wretch is duly equipped. There are serpents who fold their fangs until needed. Behold one who goes on two legs as if he were a man.”

  The Magician tore into the meat and gulped it down in several bites.

  “See what I mean?” Mandibole said.

  “The Ur serpents possessed legs,” Mr. Foote said, faint and rusty with the blood dripping from his mouth. “The Ur forged an empire. The Ur ruled Gondwanaland. Before the Aztecs, before Aborigines, and Christ. Humans are an invasive species. The Ur were men, you twat.”

  “The degenerate speaks,” Mandibole said. “A rare occasion.”

  “Our day of reckoning edges nearer,” the Magician said.

  My appetite had dissipated. I laid my left hand on a steak knife anyway.

  “Now the second course.” Mandibole clapped twice.

  Nancy the Beautician and several friends filed in and took their seats.

  I recognized three of the gentlemen as the racist yahoos who’d assailed me on my previous visit to town. The bruises I’d given the two beefy guys were at the sunset stage and damned impressive. Mr. Denim wore a hand cast, due to breaking his fingers on my skull. The duo was even worse off than the Magician and that made me glad.

  “You folks take your cosplay seriously,” I said.

  “Hello, Mr. Detective,” Nancy said in a breathy voice.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The women dressed in crimson-and-bronze sweaters and skirts; the men wore Valley High letter jackets. The silver-stitched motto read EVER LIFE, which seemed at odds with Mandibole’s monogram. I assigned them nicknames based on impressions. Nancy the Beautician, Mr. Denim, Golf Pro, Slick, Ichabod, Veronica, and Betty. These worthies regarded me with stoic malice. Mr. Denim and Golf Pro itched for a rematch if I knew anything about mad dog glares.

  “The Mares of Thrace,” Mandibole said. “A shy lot. I managed to coax these forth in honor of your presence.” Hardly shy. They were poised in their seats, intent upon me. He said, “Our motto is Ever Life. While flesh and bone are susceptible to the degradation of time and gravity, a youthful spirit is always attainable by dint of meat, drink, and the nourishment of spirit. Ours is a philosophy of dark hedonism. Currently, the Mares manifest the Aspect of Day. This aspect is what the humdrum world sees. Would you care to witness their transformation into the Aspect of Night?”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Thank me later.” He inclined his head toward Nancy and her comrades.

  The Mares bowed their heads, concealing their expressions. The air thickened. A static charge built and goosebumps dimpled my skin. The Mares straightened and lowered their hands. Their faces were grotesque smudges in the murk. Flat affect was the medical term—rigid, semi-flexible masks; about as lifelike as four-color comic book caricatures. Weirdly, the closer I looked, the less it seemed that they’d applied traditional makeup as a foundation. It was as if they’d smeared modeling plaster on, let it harden, and done the final touches with thick eyeshadow, blush, and lipstick. Twenty feet away, passable for human. Up close and personal? The results were dubious. Nancy especially unsettled me. Her eyes glittered yellow as they caught a fleck of bloody sun.

  Special-effects makeup? Autohypnosis? Was I hallucinating?

  “Mr. Coleridge, recently you phys
ically abused two of my servants who were in the Aspect of Day.” Mandibole referred to Mr. Denim and Golf Pro. “A word of warning: Pray you never test them when they manifest the Aspect of Night. Their physiological threshold and neuromuscular reactivity are heightened by an influx of natural chemicals, including extreme levels of adrenaline. While in this state, they can quite literally rend you limb from limb. While in this state, they would love the opportunity to rend you limb from limb.”

  “We’re all friends here.” My mouth was dry.

  Mandibole glanced toward his coterie.

  “None of you will utter a word. Is that clear, Nancy?” He waited for her to bow her head in deference. “Mr. Coleridge, anything you intended to ask my friends, you may ask me. I do not promise to answer fully, truthfully, or at all. Do commence.”

  “Sean Pruitt,” I said.

  “Dead. Nancy the Chatterbox already bent your ear. A tragedy, seeing as it was the grain of sand on the railroad track that derailed the Jeffers Project. Many lives were irrevocably altered by the loss.”

  “Time and perspective lead some to speculate that not all accidents are equal and not all suicides are voluntary.”

  “The facts are established. Looking for a scapegoat?”

  “Answers will do.”

  “Gravity and a sudden stop are the culprits,” he said. “A lifetime of poor choices. Rumor has it Sean suffered from mental illness. Absentminded lad.”

  “I’m interested in the truth, not the gossip.”

  “The truth. Did he jump or was he pushed? That’s what you’re asking after four years?”

  “Yes.”

  “What I say is immaterial. You won’t listen.”

  “I’m paid to listen.”

  “You’re paid to dig. There’s a difference, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to the people who loved him.” I crossed my arms. “Seems perverse to summon me and then yank my chain.”