by Edward Lee
“The Ardat-Lil is already here,” he was saying through the haze of her quandary. “But certain things have to take place before she can be incarnated through the host.” He paused, looked right at her. “That’s why I escaped. To make sure those things don’t happen.”
Ann felt slick in the sweat of her own dread. Melanie, her mind tolled again and again. That’s what the dream meant: Melanie’s birth was the birth of the host. They want my daughter to serve as the physical body for this…thing.
“Your daughter’s a virgin, isn’t she?”
Ann nodded.
“She wasn’t born in a hospital, was she? She was born here, in Lockwood. Wasn’t she?”
“Yes!” Ann shrieked.
Tharp loaded several rounds into the shotgun. “We have to find her and get the two of you away from here. We have to do it now. The doefolmon is tonight.”
Martin, Ann thought. “What about my fiancé?”
“Forget him. He’s one of them now. Forever.”
Tharp roughly grabbed her arm, yanked her toward the steps. “They’re all at the cirice now—”
“The what?”
“The church. They’re getting ready.” Tharp paused on the stairs, as if pricked by the palest vision. He was staring at nothing for a moment, or perhaps at the ghost of what he used to be. “Come on,” he said next. He was thumping up the stairs, with Ann in tow. “If we can prevent the incarnation rite itself, or even the kin sacrifice, then they’ll be ruined. They won’t be able to do this again for a thousand years.”
Ann huffed up the dusty wood steps. What did he say? “The kin sacrifice? What’s that?”
“It’s like a trigger for the whole ritual,” Tharp’s ragged voice grated on. “The final offering to the Ardat-Lil. Proof of faith.”
Kin sacrifice, Ann was still thinking. Suddenly on the stairs her joints locked up. Her mind blanked, and—
slup-slup-slup…
The vermilion vertigo embraced her again, like a desperate lover. The vision of the great blade plunging down again and again into the squirming naked abdomen…
“Come on, come on!” Tharp was commanding. He slapped Ann hard in the face. She blinked at him, numb. Then he was leading her up again.
Now Ann understood it, the vertiginous visions and how they related to the nightmare. Kin sacrifice, she realized more fully. She tried to assimilate. They want Melanie to be the host. For the host to become the Ardat-Lil, she must first sacrifice her own kin. Me.
That’s what the vertigo was trying to show her.
Melanie must murder me before she can become the demon.
Again, Ann’s thoughts cloaked her. They were on the landing now; Tharp was leading her to the kitchen. “We’ll go out the back. We’ll follow the woods to where I got the van parked. You’ll wait there while I go look for Melanie.”
But at the end of the paneled hall, Tharp stopped, oddly turning to her. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Ann said, diffused.
His eyes twitched. His shredded voice croaked on, “I could’ve sworn I heard—”
Ba-BAM!
Ann screamed. A chunk of the entrance molding exploded into splinters. Tharp was pushing her backward as a dark cackle issued from the kitchen. Then came another loud ba-BAM! as they dove across the foyer. A hole the size of a fist blew into the wall.
A figure stepped into the hall, holding a huge revolver.
“Surprise! I’m back!” Duke Belluxi announced to them.
«« — »»
As Fredrick put away the books he’d gotten down, Dr. Harold was remembering, for no real reason, the odd coincidence. Erik Tharp was from a town called Lockwood. Yes, that was odd. One of his private patients, Ann Slavik, the lawyer suffering night terrors, was from the same town.
Coincidence, he thought. How could it be anything else?
“I’m afraid that’s all I have for you,” Professor Fredrick said, and sat back down. “The Ur-locs were a very obscure society; there’s simply not that much information available about them.”
“But enough for Tharp to discover.”
Fredrick shrugged. “I’ve spent my entire life pursuing the remnants of civilizations whose beliefs were rooted in superstition. I’ve been from Nineveh to Knossos. From Jericho to Troy to Rhodes. And do you know what I’ve discovered? In all those places, over all those years?”
“What?”
“There are no superstitions. No credence to any subjective belief that has ever been asserted. They’re just stories, fables, people making fables in order to explain themselves.”
“Of course,” Dr. Harold said. “But it is interesting: Tharp’s escape in conjunction with an equinox that occurs only every thousand years.”
“He’s no doubt a very good researcher, that’s all. Do you suppose you’ll catch him?”
“We informed the state police that Tharp would most likely return to the geography of his delusion, but they didn’t put much stock in it. The most recent murders indicate that he’s actually moving away from the seat of his original crimes.”
“That could be a ploy, couldn’t it? Tharp’s intelligence quotient is quite higher than average.”
“I know. That’s what bothers me.”
“Where exactly do you think Tharp is returning to?”
“A little town up on the northern edge of the county,” Dr. Harold answered. “It’s called Lockwood.”
Professor Fredrick subtly laughed, fingering a tiny stone statue of Xipe, the Aztec god of the harvest. “You’re kidding me, right? He’s from a town called Lockwood?”
“Yes. What’s so funny?”
Fredrick’s eyes suddenly appeared huge in their amusement. “It’s almost a joke—the name, I mean.”
“I don’t under—”
“Lockwood,” Fredrick said. “Simply break it down. Lock for loc. Lockwood, ‘wood of the loc.’ Wood of the—”
“Succubus,” Dr. Harold realized. More coincidence? “That is strange. And you’re sure there’s no way an actual Ur-loc cult could be in existence today?”
“I don’t see how. Unless the bloodline really did remain intact, as the legend indicates. The Ur-locs dispersed themselves a millennium ago, after the last supposed incarnation. They disappeared without a trace, quite like Christ’s disciples after his death. The demon incarnate supposedly blessed them all, then sent them out into the world to spread her influence for the next thousand years.” Fredrick again chuckled, a sound like creaking wood. “But of course to believe that, you’d have to believe the original myth.”
This latest abstraction didn’t set well with Harold. Actually, none of them did. I do not believe in demons, he reaverred. He began putting Tharp’s transcripts and sketchpads back into the big leather bag. One pad slipped from his hand and fell open. When he picked it up, a page slid off the other. They’d been stuck together somehow; he’d never noticed it.
His eyes fixed down. It was a sketch he’d never seen.
“What is it?” Professor Fredrick asked.
“I…” Harold replied. He paused. “Impossible.”
Fredrick leaned over and looked. The pointillistic sketch showed a cloaked figure standing between a pregnant woman’s legs. The figure’s hands formed a cradle, as if to receive the newborn. Beneath, Tharp had written the single word:
Dooer!
And behind the figure, the symbol seemed to hover:
Ann Slavik’s nightmare, Harold realized. To the last detail.
“It’s just more of the same thing,” Fredrick said, not realizing Harold’s shock. “The symbol is the nihtmir, the night-mirror, and the word, dooer, is part of the incarnation litany. It’s the final acknowledgment of the birth of the host.”
“What’s it mean?” Harold croaked more than asked.
“Denotatively it’s a concrete noun, meaning, essentially, door. But the religious connotation goes quite a bit further, not a noun but an elliptical statement of welcome. The mother of the host was c
onsidered the door through which the host of the Ardat-Lil would come among them.”
The revelation seemed to collapse, like a bombed building. Dr. Harold’s eyelids felt peeled open.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. He got his coat, his keys, and made quickly for the door.
“But it’s almost midnight,” Professor Fredrick pointed out. “Where do you have to go at this hour?”
“To Lockwood,” Dr. Harold replied.
—
Chapter 32
“Upstairs! Quick!” Erik shouted as three more bullets punched holes along the wall of the drawing room. Ann screamed after each heavy, concussive shot; her senses dispersed like confetti. Laughter black as char rattled from the hall as Erik and Ann pounded up the stairs. The shadow turned below. A sixth bullet exploded the mirror at the top of the landing, raining glass.
Impulse had caused him to flee upward; a high vantage point was easier to defend. He’s reloading, Erik thought. He dragged Ann to the floor around the corner and brought up the shotgun.
Sweat and hysteria glazed Ann’s face. “Who is that!”
“My former traveling companion,” Erik replied, understanding none of it yet. “Stay behind me, stay down.”
Duke, Erik thought. His hands shriveled against the shotgun. The fucker followed me here. But how?
“Hey, buddy-bro!” erupted the familiar voice from downstairs. “Thought I’d come back for some of that dandy head! Ain’t ya pleased to see me?”
Erik replied with a stray shot down the stairwell. Even the 12-gauge report sounded feeble against the Webley’s mammoth .455 concussion. “I killed you, you sick fuck!” Erik grated to yell.
“Must be that dandy head you give,” Duke Belluxi replied. “Brings a fella back from the dead, ya know?”
Did I miss all those times? Erik wondered in spite of his prickling, bare-eyed terror. The fact smashed into his consciousness: Duke was back. Duke was here, now, just downstairs. And he’d definitely be wanting some revenge. Plus he still had that giant revolver, which didn’t lighten the matter. But Erik was sure he’d put several shotgun rounds into Duke’s chest back at that second Qwik-Stop…
This is not going to be one of my better days, Erik realized.
He fired two more stray shots down the stairs. “Just get out of here, Duke!” he attempted to bargain. “If you don’t get out of here right now, I’ll have to kill you!”
Duke belted out a good, hard laugh. “You already tried that, didn’t ya, faggot? But just to show you I’m a fair guy, I’ll give you another chance. How about that?”
What the fuck? Erik still couldn’t see his enemy, but in a moment, he could hear him.
He could hear him coming up the stairs.
He must be crazy, Erik thought, and then frowned. Considering where Duke had spent the last decade, his state of mind was not even debatable. But the guy was coining up the stairs, knowing full well that Erik was armed…
Wait, wait, he told himself. Ann quivered, clinging to Erik’s shirt. Not…yet… The footfalls continued to ascend, each fat thump! inducing a different image of atrocity. If this guy gets me, I’m…but Erik didn’t even bother to contemplate the rest of the conjecture. What Duke would do to him was bad enough to ponder. But what he would do to Ann was significantly worse by comparison.
Erik paused another second, then rolled out on the landing. He had two rounds left in the shotgun. He raised the bead, touched the trigger…then paused. Memory drew his stare out like elastic.
Duke stared back, halfway up the steps. His plump, sociopathic face grinned almost childlike, all big teeth and chubby cheeks.
“Hey, fairy. Long time no see, huh?”
Erik’s finger depressed. The gun bucked behind a spew of sparks as the spread of 12-gauge rammed into Duke’s chest.
Duke tumbled like a bag of stones down the steps.
That was too easy. Erik, bewildered, stared down at the Remington’s bead, then raised his head. Shooting Duke had been no more complicated than spearing a fish in a bathtub. It seemed almost as if he’d let himself be gunned down…
Gunsmoke drifted. Duke’s bulk shape lay limp at the bottom of the steps, sprawled across the fine slate foyer.
Ann crawled forward, her hair in strings. “Did you—”
“I got him this time. Christ…”
Erik, regrettably, did not weigh the incongruities. Who would? The task ahead summoned him: getting Ann away, finding her daughter, breaking the maleficent thousand-year-old chain of the Ardat-Lil. He helped Ann up, brushed her hair out of her face, and tried to calm her down. She shivered in his embrace. Probably half in shock, he concluded, not that he could blame her. How could she possibly deal with all that had happened and all that she’d learned in the last handful of minutes? Erik did not expect her to.
“Come on, come on.” He led her back down the stairs, keeping the Remington tipped toward Duke’s motionless bulk. The wifmunuc, no doubt, was already starting the preliminaries to the rite. But they still didn’t have Ann, a fact which only thickened the grimness of the circumstances. They needed Ann, and that could only mean…The wifhands are out looking for her, Erik concluded.
“We still have time,” he tried to console.
“Time?” Her voice sounded shattered and hoarse. “You said the doefolmon is tonight.”
“Yeah, but not till four in the morning or something like that. I’ve been dreaming about it for months, and you have too, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Ann replied.
“And haven’t most of the dreams occurred around then?”
Ann’s terror-drained face tightened in reflection. “Yes,” she repeated. “Almost every time, I’d wake up, and the clock read 4:12.”
“That’s why. The dreams were really portents.”
They stepped over Duke’s body and made for the kitchen. “Same plan,” Erik informed her. “We’ll go out the back. I’ll take you to the van, then I’ll go look for your daughter. She’ll be at the cirice—the church—now. Getting her out shouldn’t be too risky. Most of the wifhands won’t be there.”
“Why?”
“They’re looking for you, and so are the wreccans. Giving them the slip is the hard part. The rest’ll be easy.”
Ann didn’t look convinced.
Erik stopped at the kitchen entrance.
“What?” Ann asked. “Let’s get out of—”
Bullets, Erik thought. None of it would be easy if he didn’t arm himself more effectively. He only had one round left for the shotgun.
Duke’s revolver, he reminded himself.
“Wait here. I’ll need Duke’s gun too.” He went back to the dim foyer and peered down. The giant revolver still lay in Duke’s grubby, squab hand. Erik knelt, fished around in his adversary’s jacket for bullets, the—
Holy sh—
What he noticed in that fraction of a second was all that his destiny would ever amount to. Duke’s plaid flannel shirt lay in tatters, but there was no blood. Through the holes he could see smudged, pocked white and several balls of buckshot that clearly had not penetrated Duke’s torso.
Bulletproof v—
In one split-second motion, Duke’s left hand grabbed the shotgun barrel, and his right hand snapped forward. Erik froze.
The revolver was aimed directly at his face
Duke leaned up, grinning proudly as ever. “Fooled you again, huh, fairy?” he remarked.
«« — »»
Ann stood in the entry, letting the pulse of her thoughts slow down in time with her heart. The sweat of her fear sucked her clothes to her skin. Then the thought replayed:
Kin sacrifice. Melanie must murder me before she can become the demon…
Time seemed to congeal before her face; all motion, even the world’s, seemed to freeze. Ann sensed something but didn’t know what. She stepped down the short hall to the foyer. Erik Tharp knelt at the body, rummaging for bullets. Suddenly, he seemed poised, his joints locked up. Then—
—his skull divided into three segments
She never even seemed to hear the sound of the shot. She felt concussion, and heat, then Tharp’s head simply burst. Wet hanks of brain slapped her in the chest. It all happened so fast she couldn’t even react. Tharp’s body collapsed before a fine gray cloud of smoke…
And through that smoke, the figure rose: Duke Belluxi grinning behind the giant revolver pointed at Ann’s face.
—
Chapter 33
“So you’re the one,” the madman observed. The end of the gun barrel looked big enough to admit a thumb. “You’re the one he came back for.”
Ann stood taprooted in her terror. The chunks of Tharp’s brains fell off her blouse, leaving glistening stains. A piece of scalp, tufted with white hair, stuck to her forearm. Duke’s hair was the same strange color. He took a step forward, his grinning face broad as a carved pumpkin. Behind the closely set eyes, Ann saw sheer, raging madness.
“The cocksucking little fairy set me up,” Duke informed her. Old bloodstains streaked his pants. “He used me to help him bust out, thought he was smarter than me.” He veered the mad grin down and laughed. “How smart are you now, fucker?”
Ann’s mind swam. If she tried to run, he would kill her. But somehow she also knew that if she didn’t run—if she tried to placate him, bargain with him—he’d also kill her. She could see that fact. She could see it in his eyes.
“Tharp kept talking about destiny, like he was put on earth to do something special. He wasn’t shit. But me, I got a real destiny. Know what it is?”
Ann couldn’t reply, couldn’t even move.
Duke was all over her at once, wielding his massive body with a nearly eloquent finesse. Ann screamed as he dragged her to the floor by a handful of hair. As his weight sidled onto her, so did the meaty, fetid stench of him. He straddled her chest; she could only squirm within herself. His mad eyes focused down. Chuckling, he tore open her blouse, snapped off her bra. Then the chuckle shrank into a demented stare. Ann gagged when he drooled into her mouth. His breath grew short as he traced her nipples with the revolver.
