Incubi - Edward Lee.wps

by phuc

  She's never going to call you again. She's too busy with what's his name. Khoronos.

  He left the flat. Dusk was descending; it was warm out, pretty. Main Street was alive with lovers and clean salt air. The purity of the vision depressed him. His long hair was still wet. He walked up toward Church Circle, toward the Undercroft

  but at the corner he stopped. Was he sick? He felt dizzy at once; he backed up against a MOST

  machine to keep from falling. When he closed his eyes he thought he saw fire.

  Something skittered across his mind. Something a thought. A red thought.

  No, a word.

  Aorista.

  «« »»

  "I knew I should've locked the door," Craig said.

  "What, and keep out your best tipper?"

  "I'm not into coin collecting, Jack. I've told you dozens of times."

  "Just keep hocking in my Scotch like you've been doing for the last five years. I'll get the message eventually." Jack took his usual stool at the end. Several regulars raised their glasses in greeting. Jack liked the bar's appointment. The rafters bore hundreds of beer coasters from around the world. Banners from breweries as obscure as Felinfoel, Tennent's, and Tucher covered the front wall. Craig piped Fine Young Cannibals through the sound system while an Orioles game with the sound turned down progressed from the high TV. Jack was happy to see that the Yankees were using the O's for toilet paper.

  "What do you call three cops up to their necks in sand?"

  "What, Craig?"

  "Not enough sand." Craig twirled a shaker cup full of ice perfectly over his shoulder, then poured equal volumes from four bottles at the same time, holding two in each hand. Bar tricks were something he'd honed to an art.

  "Poor man's Tom Cruise," Jack commented.

  "What's that make you? Poor man's Columbo?"

  "I'll drink to that. And speaking of drinks, do I have to fire warning shots to get one in this joint?"

  "Keep your liver on." Craig put a shooter before him. "Try that. It's a tin roof."

  "What?"

  Craig rolled his eyes. "It's on the house. I call it the Piss Shooter."

  It looked like urine. "If your fly was open, I'd be leery." Jack downed the shooter. "Not bad.

  You're learning."

  Craig ejected the shaker's ice over his shoulder. The ice landed directly in the sink. Craig was famous for never missing. "Couple of your boys were in today, giving me the business."

  Randy's men, Jack deduced. "They show you pictures?"

  Craig nodded and grabbed the Glenfiddich bottle without looking at it. He had the exact location of every bottle memorized.

  "You know her?"

  "I've seen her around, but I didn't know her. Shanna something. She's got a rep downtown as a monster rack."

  Craig's terminology never ceased to amuse, along with such gems as Mr. Meat Missile, Killer Mammalian Carriage, Body by Fisher, Brains by Mack Truck. Craig also had the ultimate last call: Everybody get the fuck out of the bar! A "monster rack" was a girl with whom not much effort was required to get into bed.

  "You know anyone who ever jammed her?"

  "No one by name. I've seen lots of guys pick her up at Fran's and the Map Room. Sounds like something heavy went down."

  "I'll spare you the details. Ever see her in here?"

  Craig shook his head. "She only hangs out at dance places."

  Not hangs, hung. And she ain't dancing now.

  Craig brought him a Fiddich on the rocks, then raised a brow a few minutes later when the glass was empty. "First one always goes fast," Jack excused himself.

  "I'll bet that's what you tell all the women."

  "Just your girlfriend."

  Craig guffawed. "I don't have a girlfriend. I have a harem."

  Jack had to fake going along with the jokes; the first drink was already bringing him down.

  "Another, Craig." Watch it, don't get shitfaced again. Then the latent fact hit him like a fist. This was the same stool he'd been sitting on the night he met Veronica.

  Khoronos, of course, would be strikingly handsome, older, mysterious. He would be different.

  He would be the kind of guy who could offer her a different experience.

  Experience, she'd told Jack that last night.

  The second drink went nearly as fast. "Riding the black train again, huh?" Craig asked.

  Jack lit up, slouching already. "I'm its favorite passenger these days." The alcohol and memory formed a whirlpool. He was flotsam in it, wreckage. He was going down.

  "Let me tell you something." Craig flipped a Marlboro in the air and caught it in his mouth.

  "You're not the first guy in the world to get sacked by a girl."

  "I know," Jack said.

  "You gotta tighten up the bootstraps and move on. Remember what we were talking about today?

  Every day you spend boo-hooing about it is another day down the drain."

  Jack shrugged. He didn't need lectures.

  "Here's another way of looking at it, and stop me if I'm getting on your nerves."

  "You're getting on my nerves."

  Craig grinned. "First, look at yourself. You're drinking too much, you feel dismal, and you're depressed. Since the minute Veronica broke up with you, you've been miserable."

  "I don't need to hear this, Craig."

  "Yes, you do. Okay, we've established that you're miserable." Craig paused, probably for dramatic effect. "Is Veronica miserable?"

  The question sunk deep. Was Craig trying to make him feel worse? The answer was obvious.

  Veronica is not miserable. Right now she's partying it up with Khoronos. I'm miserable and she's probably having the time of her life. She's happier...without me.

  "See?" Craig said, pouring a Betsey Bomber and Bloody Mary at the same time. "It hurts, sure.

  It's the last thing in the world you want to think. But you have to face it, and get on with your life."

  "I know," Jack whispered.

  "And you're better than all that shit."

  Craig walked away, taking beer lists to some newcomers. Am I really? Jack thought.

  He went upstairs to the men's room, where the walls proved more of the Undercroft's diversity.

  No phone numbers or cuss words the 'Croft sported highbrow graffiti only. "Loss of love equals loss of self," someone had written. Jack frowned as he whizzed. "The sleep of reason breeds monsters." Better, he thought. "The test of will is man's ultimate power," read another.

  I don't feel very powerful today. He went back down with full intention of ordering another drink.

  "Captain Cordesman?" Craig was inquiring. "See that guy there, with the long hair and off-duty gun in his pocket? That's him."

  A girl, either timid or annoyed, came around the bar. There was some kind of plainness about her; she was attractive through no overt kind of beauty. Her roundish face lent her a cast of frayed innocence; her gray eyes seemed extant. She was neither fat nor skinny in simple faded jeans. A plain print blouse accommodated a plenteous bosom, and a straw-colored ponytail hung nearly to her waist. She was carrying a briefcase.

  "Captain Cordesman?"

  "At your service."

  "I'm Faye Rowland. Lieutenant Eliot said I might find you here."

  "Jack lives here," Craig cut in. "He sleeps on the bar after we close. We let him shave in the men's room."

  Faye Rowland frowned at the jokes. "I'm an information systems technician for the state public service commission."

  "Oh, you must be my researcher."

  "That's right. Someone named Olsher made the arrangements with my department head. I'm on loan as long as you need me."

  Jack had hoped for an associate prof or at least a T. A. from the university. Instead they'd sent him a systems jockey.

  "All I know about your case is what your office faxed me this morning," she went on. "They said there's a big rush on it so I thought maybe you could brief me tonight. Save time."

  Jack wasn't
used to people hunting him down in bars on business. At least she was dedicated. He took her to a corner table. From her briefcase she withdrew color dot-matrix prints of Shanna Barrington's walls, and Jack's initial 64 summary.

  "The very first thing you have to do is find out what aorista means," he told her. "That's the "

  "Aorista is an exclamatory form of the noun aorist. It indicates an intransitive verb tense. It's in the Oxford dictionary."

  Jack felt dumbly impressed.

  "Denotatively, it's a grammatical inflection from Greek and Sanskrit, a set of inflectional verb forms which denotes action without specific reference to duration. In this case, though, I think you're probably looking for the common connotation."

  "Which is?"

  "A process which doesn't end."

  The possibilities pricked him at once. He ordered another drink and a pint of Wild Goose for the girl. The girl, he thought. What did she say her name was? Faye? Faye something?

  "A process," he said. "Could it be a ritual that doesn't end?"

  "Sure. It's a connotation. It could apply to anything."

  A ritual that doesn't end, Jack pondered.

  "How was the girl murdered?" Faye Rowland asked.

  "You don't want to know."

  "No, but I need to know once I start digging into current U.S. cult activities. Any detail you can give me might help make a tie."

  Jack hesitated. It was one image he'd never clean from his head. "She was eviscerated," he said.

  Faye Rowland didn't flinch. "Was her heart missing?"

  "No," Jack replied with raised brow.

  "Were any of her organs missing?"

  "No. Some of her organs were removed and placed around her on the bed. But none of them were taken."

  "What about her head? Was her head missing?"

  Jesus. "No. Nothing was missing. Why?"

  "Organs and heads are big with several devil-worship cults in this country, particularly heads.

  They believe the heads of their adversaries give them power. Was the murder victim baptized?"

  "I don't know. What difference does it make?"

  "Unsanctified sacrifices are big too. There was one group in Texas a few years ago they murdered six unbaptized babies before the FBI busted them. They'd make good-luck charms out of their fingers and toes. Severed pudenda, particularly those of infants, were considered a supreme protection from enemies."

  Jack ordered yet another drink. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night.

  | |

  CHAPTER 8

  "What is this shit?" Ginny whispered.

  Veronica didn't know. Gilles and Marzen served "dinner" at the long linened table. Khoronos sat appropriately at the head.

  "It's sashimi," he said.

  Plates of pale strips of meat were placed before them, white pieces, reddish pieces, and yellow lumps. A smell wafted up.

  "This is raw fish," Veronica whispered.

  Ginny nearly spat out her Evian. "I refuse to eat r "

  "Optimum sustenance for the artist," Khoronos explained. "Eka, toro, and uni rich in nutrients, amino acids, and omega lipids. Recent studies have concluded that sashimi increases intelligence, memory and creative thought."

  "Yeah, but it's raw fish," Ginny complained aloud.

  "Try it. The ika, the squid, is particularly good."

  Squid, Veronica thought. Jolly.

  Marzen and Gilles began to eat, wielding chopsticks like experts. The servings were huge.

  Veronica plucked at her pieces, then chose a red slab, looked at it leerily, and ate it.

  "Toro," Khoronos told her. "Fatty tuna belly. Good toro costs hundreds of dollars per pound."

  "Tuna shit could cost hundreds of dollars per pound too, but I wouldn't eat it," Ginny said under her breath.

  "Be polite," Veronica whispered. "Actually it's not bad."

  "Sashimi increases the sex drive," Gilles pointed out, then inserted two pieces at once into his mouth.

  Marzen looked at Veronica. "Increasing zah ability to orgasm."

  Veronica blushed.

  "In that case," Ginny ventured. She fumbled with her chopsticks and raised one of the yellow collops. It looked like a lump of snot.

  Khoronos smiled. "Go ahead."

  Ginny ate it, paused, then swallowed. "It's kind of mushy but not bad." Then she put another piece in her mouth.

  "What you are eating," Marzen defined, "iss called uni."

  Gilles: "It is the raw gonad of the sea urchin."

  Ginny wailed close-mouthed. She transferred the uni from her mouth to a napkin, then fled the table.

  Khoronos, Marzen, and Gilles laughed. "Not adventurous," Khoronos concluded. "The human aesthete must never falter at a new experience."

  What does raw sea urchin gonad have to do with the human aesthete? Veronica wondered. She tried a piece herself. It tasted...funny.

  "Tell us about love, Ms. Polk," Khoronos abruptly bid.

  "Pardon me?"

  "Love."

  All eyes turned to her. She could not fathom an answer.

  "What is truth?" Khoronos asked next. "What is truth really?"

  "I don't understand," Veronica said.

  "It's love, isn't it?" Khoronos suggested.

  "I've never thought of it that way."

  "Love is in zah heart," Marzen offered.

  Khoronos again: "Real creativity is rooted in the heart. Be transitive."

  Right, Veronica thought. These people are nuts. "Okay. Real creativity is rooted in the heart.

  Truth is love. Therefore, creativity is truth."

  "Exactly." Khoronos turned to the Frenchman. "Gilles, go and see if Ms. Thiel is all right."

  Gilles left the table. Khoronos went on, "Creativity is all we can be; that is, if we want to be real.

  Those below us are too subject to the frail externi of the world."

  "You're saying that most people are false?"

  "Yes. Indeed. It's only the artists who preserve the real truth of humanity."

  "Vee are zah heralds," Marzen added. "Vee are zah portents."

  Then a pause, as finely placed as a brick in a vast wall. Khoronos asked: "Ms. Polk, have you ever been in love?"

  Heralds, she thought. Portents. She sensed a point, but Khoronos' last question bushwhacked her.

  "I was once," she answered. "At least I think I was."

  "You confuse physicality with spirit," Marzen said.

  "To know love, you must bring them together. One without the other is a lie, isn't it?"

  "I guess," Veronica said. Already the conversation darkened her. It brought up ghosts of Jack.

  "You don't love yourself enough to love someone else."

  God, he was rude. "How do you know?" she challenged.

  "I'm merely being substantive. It's clear, though, that you lack something within yourself."

  "What about you?" she dared. "Have you ever been in love?"

  Khoronos' piercing eyes seemed to float before the question. "Many times," he said in a lowered voice.

  All the while, Marzen, the German, had been eating, as if he'd heard this discussion repeatedly in the past. A brief glance from Khoronos, then, commanded him to leave the room.

  Now Veronica felt more on guard. She tried to change the subject. "Isn't Amy Vandersteen coming?"

  "In the morning," Khoronos said. "Don't change the subject."

  "I'm uncomfortable with the subject."

  "Why?"

  "Because you make me feel like I've made a mistake."

  "In coming here?"

  "No."

  "Why, then?"

  He was putting her against herself, making her fight her own twin. Where the hell had Ginny gone? Why couldn't she come back and save her from this...interrogation?

  Instead of responding, Veronica stared Khoronos down.

  "I love anyone who is true," he said. "I want you to be true."

  What did that mean? He must know of the power he had over her. Was i
t really truth that compelled him, or cruelty?