But the word ritual stuck in Matt’s head. “Wait a minute,” he said, a terrible idea dawning in his mind. “Does this marry-the-bear ceremony you’re talking about have anything to do with the last chapter in your book? The one I asked you about earlier?”
The terrapin head bobbed eagerly. “Of course. Where else should an Aryan soul seek purification, other than in the very crucible of Aryanism…which is nothing less than the body of an Aryan goddess?” His face was fissured like a jigsaw.
Matt’s head was spinning. Was Kingman saying what he thought he was saying? “So you’re saying…that the way ‘Charles’ got Shadewell to stop haunting him…was to… ah…hook up with a white chick?”
Kingman snorted, shook his head in dismissal. “Oh, Mr. Cahill, I’m disappointed. You’re as dense as the rest. I did not say ‘hook up.’ I said, ‘He purified his spirit in the crucible of her Aryanism.’”
“Right.” Whatever that meant. “So that’s what Alastair wants? To do a little purifying in her crucible himself?”
Kingman’s features hardened with a fury alloyed with panic. “That traitor…” he spat. “Does not understand…does not appreciate…He would take the godhead herself—she who was married to Ursus Major—and—and—” He paused. Seemed to notice that Matt was still there, was listening closely. “Well, anyway.” His thin lips clamped shut. He crossed to the bed, snatched up the laptop. “I don’t expect you’d understand. Some truths can only be grasped by the select few—those who have studied a lifetime, have sought, have suffered for such secret knowledge—the true believers, in other words. And I don’t think you’re a member of that club, Mr. Cahill.”
“I’m afraid not,” Matt said. Thank God.
Kingman went to the door. “As I said, I fully expect the authorities to be here by morning, at which point you’re welcome to go. But until then, I’m going to have to ask that you remain in your room. In a militarized zone such as this, it’s not safe for a civilian to wander around unattended. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course,” Matt said.
“Well, then. Good night.”
“Good night.” You demented shithead.
CHAPTER NINE
Matt lay on the bed in the darkness for a long time, aching, missing Roma’s cool touch. Wondering what it’d be like to kiss those full lips, to run his hands through her thick black hair. To see those gold-flecked, moss-green eyes staring up at him…
Aroused, he shifted his position only to have the fantasy dissolve as a dozen new bruises revealed themselves. The bone of his hip. The ball of his heel. The pad of his left thumb. His left collarbone. His right ring finger. His tailbone. His sternum. His skull.
Jesus…So fucked up.
He put his face in his hands. His palms grew hot, then wet.
His lust, mixed with pain, guilt, and fear, had somehow transformed into a cocktail of regret for his lost life, his lost love.
How he missed his wife!
Janey.
It took him by surprise, the overwhelming surge of sorrow. How incomplete he felt without her. Since she had died, he had been haunted by the idea that not only had he lost her, but he had lost a huge part of himself, had somehow erased every moment that the two of them had shared. They had gone to San Francisco together on their honeymoon, had wandered Fisherman’s Wharf in the rain, taking photos of Alcatraz, fending off the seafood sellers, tearing off steaming pieces of a sourdough from Boudin’s. They had ridden (and swiftly abandoned) a trolley car, laughing all the way back to the hotel over what a god-awful grinding, screeching, jerking, slow, surly, expensive, and tourist-swamped ride it had been. They’d stood on the beach, holding hands and watching the waves lift into a mist that rose above the lush ferns while the seals barked.
All these things were gone now. Sure, they still existed in his head…But so did Yoda. So did Zorro. So did E.T., and the Na’vi, and every other unreal, made-up thing he’d ever heard of. And now she was just like them, permanently demoted from a person to a memory, and forced to share ranks with the Fonz and Limp Bizkit and Ewoks and whatever the fuck else was in his head, slowly receding and distorting with time, until the real Janey was lost forever, and all he was left with was the faded, faulty outline of what once had been his only love. And in the meantime, he was left with the unshakeable sense that he was becoming less real, too: going from a normal guy with a normal job and normal relationships to a nightmare-haunted loner who rode the highways with an unexplainable psychic power and a bloody ax. Sometimes he looked into the mirror and was terrified at the face looking back at him. If he were to bump into Janey tomorrow, would she even recognize him? He couldn’t say for sure. And that uncertainty sickened him.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh…
Matt sat up (ouch). Listened.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh…
There it was again. The unmistakable sound of moaning…coming from somewhere above him.
He stood up. Was there actually another floor to the lodge, above the second? He didn’t think so. But there probably was an attic.
Matt walked softly over to the door and turned the handle. It wasn’t locked. The door opened with a soft squeal.
He poked his head out. The hallway was deserted. But there, at the far end, a trapdoor in the ceiling had been opened, and a retractable ladder extended from the trap to within a foot of the floor. A dim, flickering light came from above.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh…
Matt slipped out of his room and crept silently down the hall. He stood at the base of the ladder, listening to soft grunts coming from above. He really, really didn’t want to go up there. But what if someone were in trouble? He wouldn’t put anything past Kingman and his brain-dead troops. What if they’d kidnapped some woman? Some kid?
That did it. He put his foot on the lowest rung, grabbed the sides of the ladder, and cautiously climbed up.
When he got to the top, his head slowly lifted above the attic floor. Rafters, cobwebs, and cardboard boxes blocking his view. A weird green-and-blue light played against the slanted beams of the ceiling. He now could hear a strange metallic creaking noise as well.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh…
His heart pounding, Matt hoisted his knees (ouch) onto the planked floor, then rose to his feet. A rack of old clothes was in his way. He walked around it, toward the green light.
Stopped.
What the hell?!
An old bed on a metal frame was set up against the far wall. And someone was tied down to it—but not the damsel in distress that he’d pictured. No damsel he knew had arms as big as his thighs and a basketball-sized head…
But Jasha did.
Matt stared in bewilderment at the huge Russian, whose face was flushed and whose eyes were clenched shut. Sweat beaded his brow. His arms and legs were handcuffed to the iron bed frame, and he tossed and turned feverishly, groaning in his sleep.
Matt looked for the light source, found it, and wished he hadn’t. On a small table next to the bed frame, five greenish-blue flames flickered from the tops of a weird black candle. It had a misshapen base and five curved tapers, one thicker and shorter than the rest.
Matt’s eyes got big. Could that be…?
He took a step closer.
Yep. No doubt about it.
Sig’s hand. It had been dipped in pitch, laid in a ceramic bowl, and set on fire. The greenish witch-flames that rose from it bathed Jasha’s writhing in a sick, unsteady light.
CHAPTER TEN
“Matthew?”
Matt jumped about a foot off the ground and spun around to see Roma standing by the clothing rack, a plate of food in her hand.
“Roma! What…?”
“So sorry.” With eyes downcast and the faintest of smiles on her lips, she eased past Matt and sat herself on a crate between Jasha and the slow-burning hand. “Did Jasha wake you?”
Matt said no, but that he’d come up to investigate the noises he’d heard. Roma didn’t seem to be paying attention. She leaned over the huge man and whispered
softly in a language Matt didn’t recognize. Then she took a damp napkin and wiped Jasha’s eyes, his brow.
Matt felt a tinge of jealousy. Maybe more than a tinge. “Some candle you’ve got there,” he said. “Not sure if your lighting system’s exactly up to code.”
She didn’t acknowledge the joke. Which made it seem all the lamer.
“Is difficult time for him,” she said. “For Jasha. Every autumn is so, like you see. But it passes.” She lifted his head with effort and put a glass of water to his lips. He drank a little, coughed, and drank some more. His eyes never opened.
Matt stepped closer. “So, if he’s this sick, why isn’t he at a hospital?”
She flexed her lower lip in a way that was at once a shrug, an acknowledgment, and a deferral. “Because he is not sick, Matthew.”
“Not sick? Look at him! He’s fighting something.”
“His nature,” she said. And took some blueberries off the plate and pressed them between his thick lips. He ate them greedily, gnashing them between his oversized teeth.
Matt couldn’t figure out what she was talking about, but for some reason it reminded him of his conversation with Kingman.
“I had a talk with your husband,” Matt said.
“Oh?” She didn’t seem interested.
“He’s fond of you all right, but half the time I can’t tell what he’s talking about. He seems quite taken with the fact that you were married to a bear at some point.”
“Ah. Yes.” A smile flicked across her full lips, and her eyes edged in his direction, almost—but not quite—making contact. “An old custom in our village. Every May. A young girl, picked by—how do you say—lottery? Wearing a crown of flowers? And given to Urso, the spirit of the woods. To wed the Great Bear. For to bring luck and good crops to the village, you see?”
“Sure. But what’s the bear get out of it?”
“Someone to love,” she said, again ignoring the joke.
“So what, do they have a trained bear?”
She laughed. “No, Matthew. Is a boy pretending to be a bear.”
“Aha. Sweet. Though I guess it’s proof that magical marriages don’t last much longer than real ones nowadays.”
She looked at him, raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, you’re obviously not still with him. The boy, whoever he was.”
“But”—placing the last blueberry between his sharp teeth—”it was Jasha.”
Matt felt a little lightheaded. He felt like there was something going on that he should be catching but wasn’t. His mind wanted to tell him something, but his brain kept getting in the way.
He shook his head. He couldn’t think of anything clever to say, so he just said what he’d been wanting to ask for the past hour. “Roma, why are you with these people?”
A pause. Now she slid a chunk of something silver and shiny between Jasha’s lips. “Have you ever been to Kamchatka, Matthew?”
“No.”
She nodded, easing another slick piece into the big guy’s maw. “Then you would, I think, not understand.” She gave him a third.
Matt looked closer. “Are you feeding him raw fish?”
She flashed him a nervous smile. “Is a delicacy, where we come from.” She wiped her hands quickly, as if to hide the evidence. “But to answer your question? Jasha and Arkady were in trouble with…some people. People of influence. Coming here as I did, through the matchmaking service? It was the only way to protect them, to provide a new life for them. And for my child.” And here she placed her hand on her belly.
Matt hadn’t realized. Then he remembered the baby formula that she had been buying earlier. He had to ask: “Is Charles the father?”
She gave him a looked that needed no interpretation: No.
Chewed on that.
She gestured around them, seemed eager to change the subject. “This room we are now in? Will be the baby’s nursery. Charles gave me a little money to decorate it and buy some toys.”
“Nice.” Matt looked around. It wasn’t nice. Kingman could apparently pay three thousand dollars for a bazooka, but when it came to providing for his child, it looked like he’d given Roma whatever change he’d found between the cushions of his White Aryan Caucasian couch.
Still, she had obviously tried to do the best she could. She’d gotten a third- or fourth-hand crib with white spots on the headboard where stickers had been applied and peeled off by the previous owners. It was also missing vertical slats in two separate places, and she’d replaced these with what looked to be pieces cut from a plastic broom handle. On the wall above the crib she’d taped pages from a parenting magazine that showed letters from the alphabet, a smiling baby’s face, and a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh.
A faded Detroit Tigers comforter lay on the floor, next to a cardboard box of plastic toys so old that they could have been hand-me-downs when Matt was a baby. For lack of anything better to do he fished around in the box, lifting a few pieces out as he did. There was an old Fisher-Price garage, and a wood-and-plastic vacuum cleaner that would make a popping sound when pushed. There were several plastic dolls with blank eyes and no clothes, and a threadbare sock monkey. Then he pulled out what looked like an orange clock with a drawstring. It had a ring of animal pictures on its face instead of numbers.
“That one, I don’t know what it does,” Roma confessed.
“This?” Matt looked closer at it. “This is a Mattel See ‘n Say. I haven’t seen one of these since I was really little—like, four, maybe—and it would have been old then. Who knows? It might actually be worth something. Maybe you could sell it on eBay.” And use the profits to leave this shithole for good, Matt thought.
“Yes, eBay, sure.” Roma looked away from Matt as if she’d read his mind. “But how does it, ah, work?”
“Oh, right. I’ll show you.” He pulled back the drawstring. With a click-click-click-click, the plastic central arrow swung around until it pointed to a picture of a horse. A warped recorded voice from within said, “This is the sound a horse makes: Neigh! Neigh! Neigh!” He pulled the string again. Click-click-click-click. Again the arrow spun, until it pointed to another picture. “This is the sound a dog makes: Rarf! Rarf! Rarf!”
“Yes, I see,” Roma said.
“You could do shadow puppets to go along with the See ‘n Say, using this.” Matt pointed to a dusty 1970s slide-show carousel that was sitting on a box. He took the plug, found an outlet.
“Shadow puppets?”
“Yeah, like, with your hands. But you need a projection.” Matt hit the on button. The carousel clattered and came to life.
Clack. Its bright eye projected a slide on the wall above the crib: it showed the lodge in happier times—three pit bulls sunning themselves and chasing their tails in the grass.
“I didn’t realize there were slides in here,” Matt said.
Roma clapped her hands together, said that her child might like the picture and to leave it there.
Matt nodded, moved by her simplicity. “Sure.” He sat down across from her, at the foot of Jasha’s bed. He had to take action to protect this woman, her unborn child, and himself. “Roma, I need your help. I want to leave this place tonight. Charles told me there was a secret opening in the electric fence. Do you know where it is?”
She hesitated, then gave a short nod.
“I want you to show it to me. And I want my ax back, and my backpack. I’m not sure who took them when I was reeled back onto the deck, but someone did. I can’t leave this place without them—especially my ax. Can you help me?
A moment of indecision, in which the carousel again clacked and showed more pictures of romping dogs under a darkening sky.
“Roma! Roma, where are you?” Charles Kingman’s quavering voice came wafting up from below and shattered the stillness.
Roma stood immediately, gathered the plate and the glass. “Of course, Matthew, I will help you. I know where they took your ax, your bag. After I attend to Charles, I will get them for you and put them
in your room.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“Let me go down the stairs first, to make sure no one is there.”
“No problem.”
She moved past him, around the clothes rack, to the trapdoor. He caught her scent as she passed: sweet and strange and somehow feral, like lavender mingled with the faint musk of the wet earth in spring…
Clack.
He turned. The slide show had changed again, showing the pit bulls playing in the grass from a different angle. From the new angle, Matt could see picnic tables set up, and militiamen and their fat girlfriends sitting at them, drinking beer and eating off paper plates while smoke wafted lazily through the darkening evening air.
Jasha groaned and twisted fitfully. The black hand sputtered in its bowl, making shadows bend. Downstairs, Matt could hear Kingman’s quaking agitation and the low sound of Roma’s soothing response. Matt wondered if it was too soon to get out of the creepy attic.
Clack.
The slide-show carousel clicked again, this time showing a scene at nightfall. No more plastic plates, but plenty of beer in evidence as dozens of militiamen stood laughing in front of a bonfire at full blaze, lifting their cans in salute. The fire was at least twelve feet high and so bright that the white-hot heart of it caused the picture to overexpose, reducing the fire image to a blinding patch of white with a few indistinct shadows at its center.
Matt looked away from the photo. Something about it made him uneasy. Roma’s newborn could probably do without that slide projected over the crib.
His hand itched for his ax. Downstairs, he could no longer hear any voices. Roma had probably retrieved his stuff by now. Definitely time to head down.
Clack.
Keep going, a voice in his head said, but Matt couldn’t help but glimpse back.
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