by Edward Lee
“That’s it, yeah, that’s it. Harder.”
The prostitute sucked, literally, for her life. Steve wouldn’t kill her; there was no need. She sure as shit wasn’t going to go to the cops with his description, and she didn’t have shit if she took his tag number because Steve was always sure to put phony plates on his car whenever he was going out on a stake or a job—
Aw, shit! he thought at just that moment. I forgot to put on my phony fuckin’ plates!
Oh, well…
He let her get down, thrusting up into her mouth. And when he thought about all the things he was going to do to Alice…well, that was all she wrote.
He grunted, moaning. The spasms triggered…
“All of it,” he panted. “Come on, all of it, you little shit, right down the hatch…”
Yeah, he thought.
A moment later he let her raise her head. She was shaking. She looked like she was going to puke, she was so scared.
“Please don’t kill me,” she begged, her crooked teeth chattering.
“Aw, relax, honey. I told you I wouldn’t kill ya if it was good, and it was good.”
“Can—can I go now?”
“Sure, after you give me all your money.”
She dug frantically into the tiny pocket of her shorts. She handed him three twenties.
“That’s it? Sixty bucks?” Steve shook his head. “Honey, you’re gonna have to hustle better than that. What about inflation?”
She was shaking like a live wire. “Pl-pl-please don’t kill me…I-I-I gotta three-month-old baby I gotta take care of.”
“Hey, don’t worry, Mom.” Steve started the car. “Take off.”
The girl’s lungs gusted in relief. She opened the car door, leaned forward to get out, and—
Steve squeezed off two shots, one in the back and the second in the back of her head as she fell against the side of the open door. He pushed her the rest of the way out, then floored it. The car’s forward motion promptly sucked the door closed.
Yes, murder was that easy.
He couldn’t take the chance of her having spotted his plates. Shit, what a bonehead move!
He pulled off down the road, made two quick turns, and was back out on West Street.
Your little crack baby don’t need a welfare whoremother anyway. Best to let it die in the closet…
The way Steve saw it, he’d just done society a favor, eliminating a prostitute as well as a drughead baby who’d surely grow up to be a welfare recipient and criminal.
I just saved the state a lot of money!
The nut was just what he needed to take the edge off. Steve was geared up, nearly giddy with excitement. He’d already seen the house twice on drive-bys. Tonight was the night.
One more little gander can’t hurt, he reasoned.
He turned through the Circle and was there, just like that.
Federal Street.
Two blocks down, on the left, he reminded himself, and there the joint was.
Steve idled by, peering.
Yeah, it was a funny-looking little place, one level, kind of squat. Nice small yard, some kind of shed in the back, and a great view of the bay. The lights were on.
And in the front window…a figure blurred.
Steve eased on the brake. He didn’t want to be conspicuous but, well, he had to see her.
Alice…
And there she was. Just a momentary glimpse, but that was definitely her in the front window. Jeans, it looked like; a nice light blouse. Her short blond hair seemed to give off light—
Then she moved off, rather quickly.
Getting around on the peg leg pretty good, I see, Steve thought, and drove on.
He remembered how the whore had been shaking with fear, like someone had plugged her into the wall. Right now, though, Steve was shaking himself, but it wasn’t from fear.
It was excitement. It was elation.
Yeah, tonight was the night.
Alice, darling, Steve thought. I’ll be stopping by a little later.
Look forward to seein’ ya.
««—»»
The Scrimm had been hauled ashore and scrapped, dismantled in place. Its tons of ballast rock had been offloaded, its hull and mastpoles taken apart, to be used for local construction. The first construction job was obvious. A distributor and landowner named Taylor, who had overseen the haulage, had for a pittance contracted the rebuilding of the watch house. The new city dock would not be completed for a year, so the watch house needed to be put back into commission for the time being. Hence, the first thing that was constructed from the remains and the shipping ballast of the H.M.S. Scrimm was a new watch house.
Inquiry was made as to the whereabouts of the gold consignment aboard the Scrimm, by liaisons of the Court of King George. But these liaisons were told a slightly different story—that the Scrimm had sunk.
Nevertheless, the enterprising Mr. Taylor died within a year, reportedly murdered by ruffians one night…
And as for the strange name left in the captain’s cabin— Dessamona—the librarian had only the faintest of clues:
“A demon of some sort, worshipped before Christianity. Before the Druids…”
Holly was drunk now, fully drunk, as she wobbled into the West Street library. Thank God it was summer and school was out; the library was only sparsely occupied. Holly had been here many times in the past, but now, close to inebriated, she lost her bearings. It took her a good ten minutes just to remember where the reference section was.
The new computerized “card file” was difficult to operate, but eventually she was able to enter the subject:
OCCULT
Several texts were spewed out. After some stumbling she found them and, bleary-eyed, scanned their pages. The first few books contained no reference whatsoever to any demon or even person named Dessamona. But the last text, The Morakis Compendium of Witchcraft and Demonology…
Here it is! she thought.
dessamona (obscure) [also known as Amon]: A Brythion demon, pre-Druidic, worshipped actively by the Urlocs and other nomadic tribal subcultures centuries before the initial Saxon and Friscian invasions. The demon can be thought of as being possessed of a dual personality; Dessamona appears to the possessed as a beautiful woman, a seductress, promising wealth and beauty to its unfortunate victims. Yet the demon’s actual gender is male, and he is called Amon.
A tertiary demon of lower orders, Amon was a “subcarnate,” bidding sacrifice in efforts to remain partially incarnated on a perpetual basis. Typically, Amon, masquerading as the beautiful Dessamona, would seduce the physical desires of women, tricking them to do his sacrificial bidding. If such a woman was married via proper matrimony, her husband often served as an unknowing accomplice—
Holly stopped reading for a moment, thinking back. The fifteenth man, she speculated. Strangled on the deck. He must have been the woman’s husband…
And next:
Amon’s favorite ploy was to create a false belief in his subject, the belief on the subject’s part that she had, through Dessamona’s kindness, been reborn into a self-realm of beauty and desirability. Undesirable traits and physical defects were soon dismissed, as if they had never existed at all.
What had Alice said just the other day? That she no longer even thought about her prosthesis? That she even had begun to forget she had it?
Dessamona/Amon’s manner of seduction came craftily through dreams; the demon would falsely inspire confidence into the mind of the subject. The sacrifices were committed during “somnambulic” states—
Again, Holly halted. How could she not find this information harrowing, after witnessed having with her own eyes Alice’s recent somnambulism?
—also known as sleepwalking. Eventually Amon would grow tired of a subject, having deceived her sufficiently and would then abandon her after inspiring suicide. Amon’s subjects, in fact, were typically abused and previously suicidal.
Another shocking parallel. Previously suicidal.
Scarcely more than a week ago, Alice had attempted suicide.
Amon’s male appearance is not known. Historical excavations in the early 1900s, particularly those sponsored by the Academy of London’s Archaeology Department, uncovered many hidden caverns along the English coast, probably occupied as temples in the demon’s homage, for Amon, according to pre-Druidic record, was routinely worshipped in caves, caverns, and grottos, a demon whose spirit was condemned by God to spend eternity enslaved in the rock of the earth.
— | — | —
37
ST. BRIDE’S BAY, ENGLAND, 1793
(Katelyn! You must be careful!)
But Katelyn didn’t understand as she walked briskly across the moonlit field, her white nightdress flowing wild. Be careful of what? she wondered.
(You mustn’t come to the grotto tonight!)
“But why?” Katelyn asked aloud, to the gorgeous night sky, to the summer breeze, to the moon.
(There are people there…) the angel’s voice lamented.
“People?”
(Men…soldiers, Katelyn. They’ve…they’ve found out. They’ve found the back chamber…)
Katelyn ran then, through the field, past the pond in which she liked to bathe. And when she rounded the last hillock she saw the lights.
Lantern lights, dozens of them. Katelyn hid behind a tree and looked on…
The mouth of the angel’s grotto was clustered with soldiers, a dozen of them probably, each holding a lantern. Several soldiers rested on one knee, their foreheads in their hands, as if they’d just seen something terrible. Then another soldier rushed from the grotto to some bushes and vomited.
“Never seen anything like it, Captain Nutman,” one soldier, a sergeant, remarked to a ponytailed officer. “Nothin’ so devilish in my life. Worse than when we captured that prison barge of Napoleon’s, back when he was tearing up Norway. ”
“How many did you say, Hodge? Did I hear you right?” the captain asked.
“Practically the whole blamed nightwatch, sir. Ketchum, Sallee, Damon, Chizmar, oh, and Rainey, too, and at least a half dozen more.”
“And-and you say they were— ”
“All…cut open, sir. Cut open like sheep at an abattoir, innards yanked right out of their bellies and tossed all about. Blood all over the bloomin’ place, too, like nothin’ you could ever in your life imagine, sir. It’s surely the devil’s work if it’s anything. It’s like a church back there.”
“What’s that, Hodge?A church, you say?”
The sergeant’s face twisted. “Yes, sir. Lots of candles and oil lamps. And an altar and pews even, but made of slabs of rock.”
“Good lord,” the captain croaked.
“Lot of the men had wives, sir. Kids, babies.”
The captain’s face paled as he looked on then. Naked bodies were being brought out on litters, one after another. Each body sallow in death, badged with dried black blood, eviscerated.
“And where is this…other?” the captain asked with a hard-set jaw.
“Wayne and Edwards are bringin’ him out now, sir.”
A scuffle arose, and shouting could be heard from within the grotto, and lanterns began to bob. Then two more soldiers appeared, holding a third man between them, a man in civilian clothes.
“This him?” the captain inquired, with disdain burned into his features. “This the evil devil’s bastard son who did this to my men?”
“That’s right, sir. He was louting about in the back. Caught him bloody-handed, too, and drunk up to the gills. No jury on the King’s Court’d tell you he wasn’t guilty.”
The captain eyed the captured civilian. “And no jury will have to, son. This is a military district. I’m the jury.” The captain’s locutions stopped as he paused to swallow his disgust. “Take him back to camp and lock him up. We’ll shoot the slimy bloke come sunrise.”
“You heard the captain!” the sergeant yelled. “Off with him to the stockade!”
The two soldiers hustled the civilian off around the bend, onto the trail that led past the quarry to the army camp.
And it was then, the figures now turned toward the moonlight, that Katelyn recognized the civilian prisoner—
Her husband.
“Are all the bodies out now?” Captain Nutman asked next.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then fill up this hellhole with blackpowder and blow it up. Have the goddamned scarvies cart the pieces down to the dock and upload it all for ballast. I don’t want a bloomin’ single stone left here. Load it up and take it to goddamned America; let those bleedin’ arses have every single piece of this devil’s lair.”
“Yes, sir! Right away, sir!”
Katelyn scurried away behind the hillock, then waited for the two soldiers to pass along the trail with her husband. She followed at a distance. The lighted docks could be seen now, the huge merchant ships moored to the piers.
And as she passed the quarry, she could see the night crews working steadily by great lanterns, loading ballast rocks into horsedrawn carts, to be taken to the ships.
Shortly before the army camp she heard shouts and commotion up ahead, and when she looked she saw the figure of her husband fighting the two soldiers. Two quick shots were fired.
Then silence.
Katelyn saw her husband running away, his two captors dead in the trail. He was running for the docks…
(Follow him, Katelyn!) the angel’s voice quickened. (It’s your only chance—)
But then the angel’s voice quieted as the sound of explosives erupted from the grotto. The demolition seemed to rupture the sky with its terrible sound and white-orange light.
Katelyn caught her breath, wiped tears from her eyes.
Then she ran, just as the angel had told her to.
She ran along down the trail, her hand to her bosom, her heart hammering.
She ran as if being chased by killers.
Katelyn ran straight for the docks…
— | — | —
38
Midnight.
Steve waited for the lights to go out.
He parked on a lot down the street, in a gulf of shadows where huge trees blocked out the streetlights.
Well, here you are, he thought. Are you really going to do this?
Then he chuckled to himself.
Who are you kidding?
The hot night seemed to sit beside him in the car, a companion, a coconspirator.
A friend.
Oh my God, how I’ve waited for this, he thought in a dreamy kind of wonder.
He checked his gun, patted his pocket to make sure his knife was there, and his glass cutter and red-lensed flashlight.
Ready, Stevie?
He was ready, more ready than he’d ever been for anything in his life. His erection beat in his pants. He couldn’t stop thinking—
Christ—
—about everything he’d do to her.
Alice…
The street was quiet, dead. Crickets chirruped, an almost liquid sound.
Steve pulled on his jersey gloves, pulled on his mask.
Then he got out of the car, slipped quickly through the bushes in the next yard, and crept up toward the back of Alice’s house…
««—»»
“Miss? Miss?”
Holly’s eyes seemed to ooze open.
“Look, miss. You’d better let me call you a cab.”
Eventually Holly’s head rose from the bartop. My God, she thought. I passed out. Good job, Holly. Face-first right down on the bar.
“I’m sorry,” she drawled, her head throbbing. “Could I get some coffee?”
The tall bartender nodded and brought her a hot mug.
Another day, another dollar—that’s how it is for most people, she thought. But with me it’s another hour, another bar. It took her several minutes to remember where she was: The T.G.I.F. on Route 2. The small bar next to the main dining rooms. Now it was going on one in the morning. I’ve been here for hours, she realized.
She’d come here after leaving the county library, after reading about—
Dessamona, she thought.
And then more words surfaced in her mind, behind the steady headache.
Condemned by God to spend eternity enslaved in the rock of the earth.
The rock of the earth.
The Scrimm’s ballast rock was unloaded, used for building materials. Used to—
Rebuild the Taylor Watch House…
And how could Holly forget, that first night she’d gone down to the basement and found the board in the rock-and-mortared walls? The basement wasn’t lined with bricks; it was cemented together with uneven slabs of rock.
One of Amon’s grottoes? she wondered.
How could she ever really know?
Moreover, how could she really believe any of this? Holly was a clinical psychiatrist, an objective person who didn’t believe in ghosts, demons, the supernatural.
Ghosts? she wondered. Demons?
Perhaps Alice had found out about the legend herself. Was that so absurd? She’d found out about it just as Holly had, and in her dementia, in her split-personality syndrome, she had believed it. Why not?
Holly sipped the coffee. It scalded her mouth, but she barely felt it. She needed more proof before she’d believe something so far-fetched. Besides, the myth had made a clear reference to sacrifices, hadn’t it?
“It’s just—it’s just…so horrible,” a woman’s voice drifted from behind. “I still can’t believe it. He was just so nice, such a sweet person.”
Holly glanced up. Two young waitresses stood by the halfboard of the bar, lamenting something. One was in tears.
