Lubos pinches her chin between two fingers.
“You weren’t made for this place,” he tells her. “You want something different than what our world can offer. So do I, of course, but our views differ. You seek peace in Our Fiery Home, and this is where our paths diverge. Such a small-minded perspective doesn’t surprise me, considering your time in Basil’s shadow. He knew the limits of his power, and he left because he knew he was capable of so little. His weakness kept him from fulfilling the needs of our people.”
“You know nothing,” she seethes.
“For an age our people have languished in the dark, smothering in this stinking, smoking dungeon,” he counters. “We must bring down the walls, and let the sun shine on this place. Our children must wander the earth as they wish. Let us have freedom. Let humankind taste our suffering for a turn.”
“The rules!” she cries. “The agreement!”
“The lie,” he hisses. “‘The Great Lie.’ Basil knew it. You know it too.”
Lubos drags Kamala out of the chamber, into the main hall. His three-fingered hand grips the column of Kamala’s neck. He throws her to the ground, and her face bounces off the pane of red rock. As she lifts her eyes, she sees it, but she refuses to believe. Hundreds, even thousands, of well-armed demons tremble before her, each one rabid with ambition, eager to feel the sun on his back and fill his heaving lungs with air that has not gone stale.
“Open the damned door,” Lubos commands.
Twin troglodytes guard the massive door separating Our Fiery Home from the rest of the world. As the trogs stare blankly, Lubos leaps up and grabs one by the lower lip, pulling him downward. “Are you daft? Open the damned door!”
A moment later, the door creaks open. Cool air flows into the main chamber. The fires flicker.
“Nameless—come to me,” he commands. “Any of you. Any of the Nameless.”
A scrawny demon sprawls at Lubos’s hooves, pushed to the ground by a demon named Gideon. “Take him,” Gideon offers.
Lubos lifts the Nameless demon by the bud of a horn and tells him, “Go ahead. Lead our procession into the great unknown.”
“Leave Our Fiery Home?”
Lubos nods and adds, “Step across the seal.”
“I’ll turn to dust!”
“A myth! An invention! Basil lied to you. Everyone has lied to you. Nothing will happen if you leave. No harm will befall any of you, in fact, whether Chosen or Nameless. Step across the seal and you’ll see.”
The demon hesitates.
“Step across that fucking seal or I’ll have these trogs pound you into paste,” Lubos says. “Your choice.”
The Nameless demon takes a tentative step toward the open door and stares into the abyss. The tips of his hooves linger at the rounded edge of the sigil—the one bearing primitive runes no demon has been taught to decipher. As the Nameless demon prepares to step across the seal, Lubos thrusts a fist into the demon’s back, and he tumbles forward. The demon scrambles to his hooves and struggles to reenter Our Fiery Home before his body withers, but Lubos prevents him.
After a moment, the Nameless demon stops his thrashing. He stands still, absorbing his alien surroundings, feeling the air cool his pimpled flesh.
“I told you,” a jubilant Lubos screams to those around him. “This Nameless one has not turned to ash! None who follow will! Basil tried to control you with lies, wanted to keep you as slaves, to keep you compliant and powerless. Take comfort in knowing each of you can come and go as you please—north, south, east and west. But hear me: We will go north. We will claw our way to the surface.”
Scores of Nameless demons trample Kamala as they rush to exit Our Fiery Home for the first time. She balls herself to shield her most tender parts from carelessly placed hooves. She winces, knowing Lubos has already won.
The pillars of Our Fiery Home will crumble.
Chapter 14
A Foot for the Serpent’s Tail
“It’s bigger today,” Herbert says. “The crowd, I mean.”
“Oh,” Basil says. He checks over his shoulder and sees Herbert’s lanky frame filling the doorway. “Hey.”
“These damned people just keep two-by-two-ing, like a brood of rabbits. You should be flattered by how much they hate you.”
Basil peeks out the window and surveys the parking lot. He sees forty people, maybe fifty, each of them holding a cardboard sign, each of them chanting the string of words Basil can hear plainly, despite the half-inch barrier of tempered glass: “Demon, addict, rapist, queer, evil isn’t welcome here!”
Over and over, just like that.
Sigh.
“It’s been almost a week since that nut-job pelted me with the onion,” Basil says. “They just keep getting louder and meaner. Only a few protestors are milling around the lot when I get here in the morning, but the place is rotten with them by the time I leave. And, like you said, more of them keep coming day after day. It’s like they’ve learned how to spontaneously reproduce. Maybe they’re pod people.”
“Imagine that,” Herbert says.
“What do they expect me to do? Just pick up and leave?”
“At the very least, yeah.”
“Where’s Bulcavage?”
“Pounding the pavement, most likely, trying to drum up new business. First time I’ve seen him do that in years. I think the response to the Big Bair campaign has invigorated him. You get his notes on the Hooke Cookers project? He wants us to come up with something mind blowing—he actually used those words, mind blowing—even though he gave us zero direction. He always does this. So. Grills. Meat smokers. How do you blow someone’s mind with a freakin’ charcoal grill?”
Basil presses his face to the window, wondering how to make a fissure crack open the earth’s crust just outside the office door and have it swallow up all of those hateful pricks—a nice, big hole to send them tumbling through the smoky updraft, into the heat of the underworld. Wishful thinking, he knows, because his ancient magic has left him. Up here, his Locuri spells have no power. Only cruelty, brute strength and the wiles of persuasion serve as his weapons. Any one of those traits should carry him through most situations, though he can’t imagine how they might help him solve the mess unfolding outside. Not without taking a bullet to the brain, at least.
“I can tell you’re distracted,” Herbert says. “Bulcavage won’t be back until tomorrow, so we technically don’t have to do anything with the Hooke campaign today.”
Basil hears the words, but he keeps staring out the window, into the sea of people who dislike him—despise him, it seems—for no good reason other than he faintly resembles the antihero of a myth they don’t fully understand.
Herbert goes to leave Basil’s office and lingers at the door.
“I should tell you,” he begins, “I’ve sort of been talking about you—you know, with your friends outside. They’re having meetings.”
Basil turns.
“Meetings?”
“It’s sort of a series now, at the Methodist church over in Crows Gorge. They even gave it a name: ‘A Snake in the Garden.’ They talk about what to do about you—or, in some cases, to you. They think you’ve risen from some mystical lake of fire to breed impurity into the bloodline and spread your wickedness. I don’t remember the verbiage word for word, but that’s the kind of stuff you hear. Not that it matters. I’m persona non grata there now.”
“Why’s that?”
“Beak’s a small town. Like any small town, everyone knows every damned thing about everybody else. They know we work together, you and I, so naturally they asked me what I thought of you.”
“And?”
“They hate you more than herpes. They’re obsessed.”
“What did you tell them about me?”
“I said you’re all right, seem like a good enough guy, and that I didn’t think you were up to anything nefarious. I told them they should see for themselves, suggested they talk to you and try to understand who you are and why you’r
e here before they decide to drive you out in a parade of oil torches and pitchforks. That suggestion went over like a rock off a cliff. They told me not to come back if I didn’t have anything constructive to offer.”
Basil nods and kneads the stubbly flesh of his chin.
“You’re all they talk about,” Herbert continues. “How you’re going to ruin the crops, pollute the air, impregnate their teenaged daughters with your demon seed. It’s almost comical. Twisted, for sure, but comical. One of them insists his son is possessed, his dog is dying and the field behind his house is plagued with some sort of demonic fungus and beginning to sink into the marshes of Hades, all thanks to you. It’s ridiculous. But I guess it’s not all that ridiculous, judging by the looks of you.”
Basil notices an inconsistency in Herbert’s voice, a strange affect he can’t quite put his finger on—something he hasn’t noticed until now.
“I am ridiculous in this world,” he says. “Spend a few hours beneath the surface meeting some of my people and you’ll see I’m a pussycat by comparison.”
“They’re making plans, you know. Battle plans.”
“Who is ‘they,’ exactly?”
“Edna and her band of merry idiots.”
Edna Babych, Herbert goes on to explain. She’s the one who’s been leading the protests. Herbert describes her: a graying brunette in her late forties, maybe early fifties, rail thin with sunken cheeks and thin, berry-red lips. Oh, and she always wears the same denim jacket, embroidered with sparkling red sequins that spell out a rather eerie idiom: “Three Nails in Flesh and Bone. Three Days in Darkness. One Path to Eternity in the Arms of the Lord.” He’s been attending services at Crows Gorge United Methodist Church for a year or so, he explains, and he remembers having seen her once or twice before all this nonsense started—mostly he remembers the jacket—but the few chatty members of the congregation advised him to keep his distance. “A zealot,” they called her. “A nutcase.” Her becoming an outspoken leader in the church came out of nowhere, he adds, more or less coinciding with Basil’s arrival.
“You two have already met, sort of,” Herbert says. “She’s the onion tosser.”
“Oh, her. She’s got a good arm.”
Herbert steps to the window and scans the crowd. He points to a woman in the middle of the pack, standing deathly still, her eyes boring holes into the building.
“That’s Edna right there, in her glory,” he says.
Basil doesn’t know if she can see inside or not, doesn’t remember if the windows are mirrored on the outside, but he can feel the sting of her marble-cold eyes wishing on him a fate much ghastlier than death. Her austere appearance suggests she would make a disappointing foe, yet her hatred for him implies otherwise: She seems willing to burn down the building, and reduce to ash any heathens inside, if it means she can get to him.
Basil wonders where Edna calls home. Finding out a detail as mundane as someone’s street address should be easy in a town the size of Beak. Put another way, the problem of Edna Babych can swiftly disappear if he so chooses.
“Most of them are pretty normal, actually,” Herbert says of the protestors. “They just want to make sure you’re not a threat to their homes, families and house pets, that you don’t want to deflower anyone’s goat. But when a nut like Edna shows up, the reasonable folks find a way to lose their voices. Under her direction, they’ve discussed a scenario in which they call in the Feds to have you removed. She was throwing around all kinds of good ideas, like firebombing your apartment and stringing up Anton and Bulcavage until their feet stop kicking.”
“Why them?”
“For harboring you, I suppose. Bulcavage probably does deserve jail time for the things he’s done and the people he’s screwed over, but not for the reasons Edna’s suggesting. No, Edna says he should hang for welcoming you into the community in the first place, for aiding and abetting a—what did she call you? … Oh, right: ‘a pox upon our way of life.’ She says you’re an infidel polluting God’s holy land. She actually used that word: infidel.”
“What are the Feds?”
“The G-men. The dark underbelly of the federal government or at least the side that would deal with the otherworldly likes of you. Edna probably thinks a quick phone call to Washington would excite a legion of Men in Black to descend on Beak and drag you off to some top-secret subterranean hideout for gassing and prompt dissection.”
“My doors do not lock. Let them come.”
“Trust me. The G-men probably already know you’re here. They know everything. Part of me wants to believe you’re the property of the military-industrial complex—like, you escaped from a research lab in some remote government facility a mile beneath the surface, and the people in charge just haven’t yet realized you’ve gone missing.”
Basil’s eyes return to the chaotic scene in the parking lot, where a man climbs onto the hood of the brown sedan next to the lot’s sole motorcycle. The man unzips his fly and douses the length of Basil’s precious noisemaker, from the fringed lever covers to the curve of the leather saddle, with a stream of lemon-yellow urine.
“Well,” Basil says, “this is unfortunate.”
Herbert winces at the sight.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he offers. “To some people around here, you’re sort of a local treasure. There’s this weird sense of pride because you chose Beak, of all places, to spend some time. It’s along the lines of ‘George Washington slept here’, I think. For better or for worse, you’re our problem and no one else’s, and we’re going to come up with the solution.”
“Is that how you see me? A problem to solve?”
“Not me, but I’m not a fanatic. I can’t say the same for Edna Babych. To her, you’re Public Enemy Number One.”
As if on cue, Edna raises both hands in Basil’s direction and crosses her arms in the form of a crucifix. The gesture seems almost profane. She then belts out a banshee-like scream intent on rattling the windows.
All Basil wanted was an office with a window overlooking the trees and the grassy plains. Now that he has one, he can’t bear the view. He reaches over and yanks on the cord, drawing down the blinds to block out the light.
Chapter 15
The Bat Beneath the Bridge
Tyburn. A body dangles from the gallows, its shadow twirling in the twilight. Timbers creak. Fibers groan, stretched by the pull of lifeless freight. I wonder what terrible sin this luckless reprobate committed. Theft, most likely—an undignified crime, or so say the men who mete out such punishment. Given my own circumstances, I could forgive a man for taking what he needs, even if it does not belong to him.
Better to die at the gallows than to starve like a mongrel, especially while surrounded by so many fortunate souls blessed with plenty.
As if on cue, my empty stomach lets me know it has not been fed in some time. I have grown used to its complaints. A different feeling has displaced the pain—a cousin, of sorts: not quite pain, just a there-ness.
I drift among other soot-faced laborers. Their stink engulfs me, ties me to them. My feet cold and wet, my hands bleeding, the muscles in my lower back just one task from giving in. I shake off the cold, as the chill air withers the sweat from my hair and the back of my aching neck.
The hidden sun sinks behind gauzy clouds. Yet another gray day will end without me feeling the warmth of the sun on my whiskered face.
God has abandoned this place, and me along with it.
Shop owners and workers who earn their keep without breaking their backs depart from the bridge’s middle, leaving the shops shuttered and churches barren. When a man or woman catches my eye, my gaze lingers. I imagine the soft, warm bed this blessed individual crawled out of early that morning, wondering if the bedclothes are still warm. I follow close behind, trying to will a handful of pence out of their pockets and into mine.
If only I could master such deceit.
My first order of business is to fill my belly, and then find somewhere warm to rest my ti
red body. I can afford a hot meal. I can afford a warm bed. Yet my predicament requires me to hoard. I must have “enough” to acquire a proper home rich with the fineries my bride deserves—or, more likely, to fund my journey back to Berwick and lessen the magnitude of my failure. I wonder: Do kindness and splendor exist within London’s bounds? Foulness plagues every block. Can’t walk for a moment without stepping in some porridge-thick slurry of mud and excrement. Can’t go a length of rope without stirring up a literal rat’s nest.
Perhaps when I have enough, a hidden world will avail itself to me and the sun will shine on the spot where I will build my new life.
For now, I see only this shadow world.
Nightfall will arrive shortly. I ponder the pains of suffering yet another sleepless night evading “Old Billy, the Beast of London Bridge”, as the newsboys have dubbed him—a devilish thing as strong as an ape and as cunning as a stoat, a slippery bugger. Old Billy’s supposed origin chills the blood. They say the creature made its London debut the day after a wealthy haberdasher named William Diggle got put to the gallows. As the story goes, the constabulary fingered Diggle for choking the life from some unwilling toms—a dozen perhaps—though he swore his innocence until the moment the rope snapped his neck. The newsboys insist Diggle used his last breath, right after they looped the noose over his head, to curse all of London.
So goes the legend.
Fresh rumors about Old Billy’s murders circulate with each passing day, the details of his handiwork more gruesome with each telling. Some swear the beast is a malevolent fool in a stovepipe hat and a blade in each hand, while others characterize him as a monstrosity with the claws of a jungle cat and shark’s teeth where human teeth should be. One shopkeeper suggested Old Billy is not of this world, a creature powerful enough to punch a hole through the veils of space and time to make a home among hapless earthlings. Most seem to think an angry God has opened the Gates of Hell and unleashed our doom-maker.
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