Robert had befriended Gilles and Philippe soon after becoming a mercenary; now the three were inseparable. All three were of a similar stripe – loud, greedy, sanctimo- nious, bloodthirsty and no respecters of women.
Eleanor felt badly about the mistreatment Robert had suffered, but did not see it as a reason for his extreme misogyny. Switching her mirror to the present, Eleanor tweaked the nose of the figurine and laughed at Robert’s discomfort. No need to check on his companions; they obviously deserved no consideration since they called him friend. Then it was back to the business of vengeance.
Late on the afternoon of August 1, de Montfort’s host came within sight of Carcassonne. As the purple veil of twilight dropped over the sky, the soldiers made camp. Few of them slept that night, so anxious were they to continue their bloody rampage through Languedoc.
The following morning the crusaders attacked Carcassonne. The defenders held their own until August 7, when the besiegers cut off their water supply. The Cathar forces managed to keep the crusader army at bay for another week, but capitulated when their leader was taken prisoner while under a flag of truce. On August 15 the city sur- rendered. This time the populace was spared, but forced to exit the city naked. Eleanor and her daughters were not among them.
At midnight on July 31, the three had gathered all their elixirs, potions and other witch’s paraphernalia and magically transported them to the vault beneath the cathedral. There they began preparing for the visitors that they expected. The wily Eleanor had conceived of a foolproof plan to gain her revenge on Gagne, LeClair and deHavilland.
First they had to be lured to the cathedral. This was easily done, given the men’s overwhelming lust for female flesh. Elaine and Eustace painted their faces, then dis- robed. Both were fair of skin and fair of form, with blond hair reaching to their waists. Elaine had blue eyes and Eustace had green eyes. Both were coquettish and unafraid of men.
Their mother projected their astral images not far from where the crusader trio was ogling the female residents leaving the city. Rubbing the bracelet that was twin to the one worn by Gagne, she got his attention. Looking to his right, he espied the images of the women, who were smiling sweetly and looking directly at him, and alerted his friends. Smitten by the women’s beauty, the three fighting men set off in pursuit.
Through the now deserted streets they raced, their minds totally focused on their prey. Before they knew it, the trio found themselves running up the steps of the city’s cathedral. Inside, the darkness gave them pause, and they took advantage of it to catch their breath.
A moment later, again catching sight of the two maidens, they resumed the chase.
All the time Eleanor was observing the scene in her mirror. She kept the images just out of range of the men, so that they would be exhausted by the time they reached the vault, and unable to put up a fight.
Around the nave and through the chancery the crusaders chased the phantoms. Finally Eleanor brought the images down to the vault, where she let the men catch them, only to see them disappear in their grasp. So startled that they couldn’t move, the three easily came under Eleanor’s spell of immobility.
Calling to her daughters, the women proceeded to strip and then bind the crusaders with unbreakable bonds.
Leering at them, Eleanor screeched, “So you call yourselves Christians, do you? Perhaps you would like to die as your savior did!”
With a gesture, she made three wooden crosses appear on the floor. Another motion and the crusaders found themselves securely bound to them. A third wave of Eleanor’s hand made the crosses stand upright. Next she separated LeClair from his friends, for his fate was to be different.
“No, you swine are not worthy to die as Christ did,” she said. Stepping back and gesturing again, she made the crosses rotate so that the men were upside down.
Scrutinizing her captives, the witch said, “Something is missing…ah, I have it!”
Eleanor approached the hapless trio, her eyes agleam with an evil spark. With the long nail of her index finger, she cut crosses on their chests, not too deeply, just enough to cause some pain and a little bleeding.
“Now you look like crusaders again!”
The girls joined their mother in her maniacal laughter.
Recovering herself, Eleanor said, “You are probably wondering why you find yourselves in this situation. I shall tell you. Remember the three women you slaughtered in Beziers?” The light of remembrance appeared in the men’s eyes. “They were my nieces!”
A moan arose from the throats of Philippe and Gilles, while Robert remained silent.
“Remorseless as ever, eh, Robert?” Eleanor hissed in his face. “We shall see how you feel once you meet our guests!”
In a corner of the chamber was a great pit that the Cathars believed led directly to the underworld, the domain of their evil god, Rex Mundi. It was toward this that Eleanor now headed, wearing only a magic amulet. Elaine and Eustace, likewise nude, their hair in wild disarray, danced lasciviously before the helpless trio.
Stopping at the edge of the pit, Eleanor grasped the amulet with her left hand and began an eldritch chant, legs akimbo, her right arm stretched high above her head. Completing the chant, she withdrew slowly from the opening. For a moment, there was absolute silence.
Suddenly the sonorous ringing of a hundred gongs and sounds like thunder reverberated throughout the space and a huge figure appeared in a cloud of crimson mist – Rex Mundi was come in response to the call of his followers!
He was an immense bronze-skinned figure, surmounted by a sculpted head. Beneath a wide forehead, eyebrows like thunderclouds beetled over black eyes that blazed lightning. Teeth like knife blades filled his mouth; his jaw was like a steel trap, square and strong.
Eleanor stood before her captives and gloated.
“So you believe we are heretics, do you? Here is proof of our belief - Rex Mundi, the second god, who created this imperfect world.”
Glaring down at deHavilland, Gagne and LeClair, Rex Mundi moved his arms upward; from the depths appeared the evil souls among the Cathars slain by the cru- saders. Their wounds still intact, the wretched throng moved slowly toward the luckless trio. The crusaders strained at their bonds, to no avail. Closer and closer came their victims, slavering, their hands all a-twitch, ready to rend their killers limb from limb.
At a command from Rex Mundi, the hideous horde hurled themselves upon Gagne and deHavilland. Their eyes alight with anticipation of the coming feast, the crowd pulled the crosses to the ground, and proceeded to eat the pair alive. The men’s shrieks were awful to hear as the Cathars glutted themselves.
LeClair remained unmoved, neither flinching nor showing fear, although inwardly his black soul was quivering.
Ceasing their gyrations, Elaine and Eustace approached Robert, just as his companions breathed their last. The sisters ran their hands up and down his body. Elaine nibbled on his ear while Eustace pursed her lips and made kissing motions without touching his lips.
Meanwhile, Eleanor was concocting a brew made from the pulverized skulls of Gagne and deHavilland, for their bones were all that remained of that luckless pair. Adding some mandrake, nightshade, salamander bile and leftover escargot, she stirred the mix vigorously while humming the Dies Irae. When she had finished, she called to her daughters.
“Elaine, bring me a goblet. Eustace, loose his bonds from the cross so that he may sit up.”
The girls did as bade, then pulled the crusader into a sitting position. Their mother forced him to drink her concoction. Robert gagged at first, but managed to swallow it all.
His eyes widened, then closed. When he opened them again, he found himself at one end of a long corridor that curved to the right some one hundred yards distant. On both sides of it was a series of alcoves so dark that he could not discern their contents.
Suddenly he found himself running down the corridor against his will. When he reached the alcoves, a beautiful woman appeared from each one, armed with a l
ong, curved knife. They slashed at Robert, cutting just deeply enough to cause pain and leave a strip of skin dangling from his body. Down the corridor he continued to run, unable to stop himself.
The hall seemed to stretch for miles, and the women were relentless in their fury. When the soldier finally reached the end of the corridor, he stopped moving for a moment. His wounds seemed to miraculously heal and he was whole again. Once more, however, Robert’s legs took off unbidden; he turned and ran back the way he had come, enduring the cutting, slashing blades a second time. Back and forth, back and forth, up and down the corridor the crusader ran, until a red haze appeared before his eyes and he collapsed.
Upon awakening, Robert found himself back in the cathedral vault in the same condition as before, naked and tied upside down to a cross. The figure of Rex Mundi. stood before him. The god looked over LeClair like a bidder at a slave auction.
“So this is what passes for a Christian these days, hmm?”
He wiggled his finger at the bound man and the cross became upright. Mundi stepped to within an inch of LeClair. The crusader found his breath distinctly nauseating.
“So you and your kind do not believe in me, I understand,” said Mundi.
“I believe in one God only,” replied LeClair.
“Is not seeing believing?” shot back the bronze man.
“I see you, but I do not believe you are a god; you are more like Satan.”
Rex threw back his head and laughed loudly and long. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Christian!”
Mundi snapped his fingers and Eleanor and her daughters approached.
“What shall we do with this miserable creature?” asked their god.
Eleanor looked at her daughters and an evil smile overspread her features.
“For his crimes against womanhood, I say make him suffer as he made so many women suffer!”
The light of understanding appeared in Rex Mundi’s dark orbs, while those of Robert LeClair showed stark fear.
“He is your captive, Eleanor; do with him as you will,” said Mundi, as he stepped aside.
The witch gestured with both hands and a table magically appeared. Pointing to it, she ordered her daughters to place LeClair upon it. This being done, Eleanor grabbed her amulet and recited an eerie incantation, which caused chills to run up and down Robert’s spine. He felt himself slowly changing, from within and without. Finishing her chant, Eleanor untied Robert and asked, “How do you feel, dearie?”
LeClair sensed something was different about himself. Looking down at his body, he turned ashen as he beheld a pair of breasts depending from his chest.
“Have a good look, dearie!” cackled the witch as she created a full-length mirror, which she held before the startled crusader. Looking into it, LeClair saw himself with a woman’s body!
He moaned aloud as he realized the import of this amazing transformation.
“ Now you will learn what it is to be a woman, and to be treated as you have treated every woman whom you have ever met.”
Having said that, Eleanor called to the male Cathar souls, bringing their attention to the now-female Robert LeClair. With a shout, they rushed at the transformed crusader, who jumped off the table and ran for her life.
There was no place to go except into the pit, and LeClair knew better than to enter that. Running around it, Robert ran right into the arms of a tall, muscular Cathar, who held the woman’s arms behind her. The others took the opportunity to fondle and probe the soft yet firm flesh that had once been masculine. LeClair squirmed and wriggled, thoroughly disgusted by the attention given his new body by such horrid creatures.
After many minutes of this unwanted treatment, it finally dawned on Robert what his victims had felt like under his handling. He began to wonder what these beings would do next, fearing that it would be the most logical move. No sooner had the thought entered his mind than it happened. The Cathar who had been holding him pulled him to the ground and mounted him. It took all of Robert’s resolve to withstand this violation of his new body. He wondered if he would survive this ordeal, and if he did, what lay in his future? Reading his mind, Eleanor leaned over him and said, “Rex Mundi only knows, dearie.”
R ECALL… REDUX
By Jaime Hudson
· Recall in memory refers to the retrieval of events or information from the past. Along with encoding and storage, it is one of the three core processes of memory.
· Redux is a post-positive adjective meaning "brought back, restored". From Latin reducere, "to bring back".
Jay Thompson clicked off the electric motor of his Mitsubishi Sport-E-Zero car and slowly regarded the large logo-sign of the business where he had come to possibly spend his big bonus bucks. The Web-Ad had got him curious enough to drive over and check out if this Time & Again, Inc. really was on the up and up, or merely just another Hollyweird type fantasy game. He cringed as he recalled the ancient 3-D Laser Tag Combat Sim game room his father had taken him to as a young child. With some significant doubt and an even larger Credit-Wallet balance, he slowly walked up to the lobby entry doors.
“Welcome to Time & Again, sir. Do you have an appointment or wish for a video brochure?” The nameplate of the woman at the lobby desk read Jayne Eaves. Her smile was pleasant, as was her greeting: short and to the point. Thompson, as was his habit, could not help but play word exercises with her last name: Eaves-dropper; or Eaves… the Twins of Eden. That last one brought a quick impish grin to his face.
“No, I don’t have an appointment yet… Just came to see if I want to blow my dough here,” he replied a little anxiously. “I mean, it’s just that I am very curious if this place can really deliver on what your company’s ongoing ads say… You know? Um, sorry…”
“Certainly, Sir, no problem… Just let me get one of the Time-Techs out here for you.”
She punched some buttons behind the counter, and it wasn’t long before a tall, slender man wearing a light blue lab coat and horn-rimmed glasses appeared.
“Hello there! My name is Stanley Weiss. I’d be happy to answer any questions. If you wish, I can even take you on an abbreviated tour of our facility.” Weiss was twentysomething, and quite eager.
“Yes, please, Mr. Weiss,” replied Thompson. “I’d like that very much.”
“Please, just call me Stan”.
“OK”.
After Thompson signed the visitor register, scanned his universal I.D. card, and signed a Non-Disclosure-Agreement for the receptionist, the Time-Tech Weiss ushered him through the first rooms of the shiny-bright, and clean-as-new, facilities. Rooms one and two were not that impressive, but the third room was extremely large, and Thompson immediately guessed that this was where ‘It’ all happened. He was not wrong.
“This is the Hollow-Mirror-Generator room. The main entry portal to all of the past. Your own past, or any other past time and event you care to visit,” said Stan.
“How does it work?” responded Thompson, ever more interested.
“That, Mr. Thompson, would take some time to explain…”
“Is that a joke?”
“Sir, all of us Time-Techs aren’t allowed to joke with clients. This is serious stuff, you see?” replied Stan, in the same jovial manner the best car salesmen try to master.
Thompson and the Time-Tech stood behind a large plate Dynamic-Glass panel, which gave a full view of the main room, which seemed to be mostly empty and not all that mysterious looking.
“Is that all of the working mechanism, and is it working now?” queried Thompson.
“No to both questions,” answered Stan. “The main equipment is inside the far walls, all around the time portal event horizon, so you cannot actually see what creates the portal. Part of that is for guarding the technology, and it really isn’t necessary to see what makes it work… Most clients only care that it does work. It takes a lot of energy to power up the time portal, so it only runs when we have an actual Time-Insertion on the paying docket. Please, Mr. Thompson, if you wi
ll follow me, I’ll try to explain a bit better…”
Stan led the way to a small side room where some obviously well used and worn out odds and ends lay about. None of it looked even remotely like anything Thompson had ever seen, and he had toured the Smithsonian Depository of All Technology, quite thoroughly, with his Grandfather not that long ago. Then Stan picked up a square piece of polished bevelled glass, the kind you'd see in the French doors of a well-furnished home.
“Have you ever peered inside the perimeter of a bevelled glass? If you’ll look down into this one here... Let your focus shift slightly up and down, and you can make out a series of repeating images of the side you’re looking in. It is also much like any bathroom mirror, when you open the adjacent medicine cabinet door, also mirrored, and will then see many copies of your own image, repeating into infinity, as you swing the medicine door mirror back and forth.”
“Yes, I get you, Stan. I did that a few times when I was a kid, back at my folks’ house.”
“Right, Mr. Thompson… The way the Hollow-Mirror-Portal works is much like that. A great amount of energy is focused to open a window and side-slip into the time stream… but only to the past. In theory, the future may or may not already exist, but we only allow access to the past as we know it. Is it something of societal history, or a more personal past event, that you wish to visit?” asked Stan, hoping to better serve a prospective customer.
“Oh, I am not sure just yet. I’ve always been intrigued by my ancestors' past history, and of WW2 battles, and such… But, since you ask, I mainly was hoping to see, once more, an old flame from my high school days…” answered Thompson, more than a bit self-consciously, with a slight blush on his angular, aged, yet boyish-looking face.
Rat-A-Tat: Short Blasts of Pulp Page 10
