Comes a Horseman

by Robert Liparulo

  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, Alicia thought.

  His hands moved rapidly from one IV flow knob to another. “The drugs must be constantly adjusted,” he explained. “I’ll ask a few questions to make sure our subject is in the proper state of mind. Then you can have a go.”

  Alicia felt her stomach tighten. She’d seen several of these, what the Bureau called Amytal interviews. But she had never conducted any herself. She knew the questions had to be worded precisely or the answer could come from anywhere, including the subject’s memories of childhood. So a question like, “Did you attack that man?” might yield an affirmative response, but what the subject was admitting to could be throwing an eraser at his fifth-grade teacher.

  She reached for a small digital voice recorder on the bed and pushed a button. Hyena’s head rolled up on its neck, then down again. As if startled, he snapped his head up. His lids were at half-mast.

  “Uhhhhh . . . ,” he said.

  Apollo’s voice boomed from behind the chair. “Listen to me! What is your name?”

  “Uhhhh . . .”

  Apollo’s hands jumped to a knob, then another.

  “What is your name?”

  The man’s eyes flicked open. He stared directly at Alicia. The skin on her arms and at the nape of her neck tightened as the hairs bristled. She realized he was looking past her, at something only he could see.

  His lips formed a silent word. Another.

  “What is your name?” repeated Apollo.

  The man’s face revealed an aha moment. He said, “Me`nya za`vout Malik.” His voice was girlish and gravelly at once. A chain-smoking Girl Scout, Alicia decided. Coming out of that evil-looking body, it severely creeped her out.

  Brady whispered, “Is that Russian?”

  Alicia shrugged.

  “Speak English,” Apollo demanded.

  “Ang`liskam?”

  “Da,” Apollo answered.

  “Hara`sho. Uh . . .” Long pause. “English, yes.” Accented and slurred.

  “What is your given name?”

  “Malik.”

  Malik, Alicia thought. She wanted to think of him by that name. Somehow, it made him less frightening, more human.

  “What is your complete name?”

  He groaned in confusion or possibly distress.

  “Malik, what is your whole name?”

  “Malik . . . Ivanov.” His accent stretched out the first part of each word before clipping it off with the last syllable.

  Apollo leaned around the chair, signaled with his head for her to approach. She knelt beside him.

  “I’ve interrogated Russian subjects before,” he whispered in her ear. “Ivanov is Russia’s most common surname. Like Smith in America. I can’t tell if that’s his real name or one he’s making up. Malik is less common, so it’s probably right.”

  She nodded, rose, and stepped back next to Brady.

  Apollo asked, “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  He appeared ten years older.

  “Where are you now?”

  Malik appeared confused by the question. He looked around the room, fixing on Alicia and Brady for several seconds each. Slowly, the lids closed.

  “Are you in your home?” Apollo clarified.

  “Hotel,” said Malik, without opening his eyes.

  “Did someone tell you to come here?”

  Both Alicia and Brady stiffened.

  “Yes.”

  Apollo nodded at Alicia. Her turn.

  She looked at Brady. He gave her an encouraging smile.

  “Who told you to come to the hotel?”

  Malik frowned, grimaced.

  “Who?”

  The scratching of the EKG pens became higher pitched—moving faster. Malik’s breathing became labored, as though he were trying to draw wind through a towel. He whispered, “Scary movie.”

  “I may have lost him,” Apollo said. “Just a sec.” He adjusted each IV knob. It made Alicia think of fine-tuning into a channel on an old television.

  “Scary movie!” Malik yelled.

  “Try a different line of questioning,” Apollo suggested.

  Alicia’s shoulders slumped. Who had sent him was what she wanted to know. She tried to think of something else to ask.

  Brady said, “What do you know about the man with the dogs? The killer with the dogs?”

  “Nice doggie.” Malik’s hands moved in a gesturing motion. “Here, doggie.” Suddenly his face twisted into a savage beast’s. His hands formed fists that he pumped up and down as much as his restraints would allow. He laughed, a chilling stutter of short breaths.

  “I think in his mind, he’s bludgeoning an animal,” Brady whispered.

  Malik’s fists stopped. His head stretched forward, his tongue came out, and he began licking the air. With each upward stroke, his tongue slid into his mouth, his lips closed, and he slurped.

  “He’s . . . ,” Brady said, but he did not finish. His face registered his disgust.

  Alicia’s hand covered her mouth. Malik was lapping the blood of some remembered kill.

  “What do you know about Father McAfee?” she asked quickly.

  The licking halted. The tongue ran greedily over the top lip, then the bottom. “Mac-Aff-eeeeeeee?” he questioned in a singsong tone.

  “Yes. What do you know about Father McAfee?”

  “A pig. He is a pig. He thinks he can hide. He hides behind his God. God . . . is . . . nothing.” He sneered, scrunching his nose wolfishly.

  “Malik, have you been frightening Father McAfee?”

  The laugh again. “Ohhhhh. Malik makes Mac-Aff-eeeeeeee understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “His God is nothing. No protection, does not care.”

  Apollo held up a hand, wanting to interject. “That’s good, Malik. Yes, Father McAfee’s God is nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Malik repeated.

  She knew Apollo had felt an infusion of sympathy was in order. He provided it as he would have a shot of morphine.

  “What are your plans for Father McAfee, bad Father McAfee?” Apollo nodded, giving her control.

  The noise Malik made was of a starving man set before a banquet. “Ooooooohhhhhh. Bad Mac-Aff-eeeeeeee.” He leaned his head back as if scanning the ceiling, but his eyes remained closed. “So high, the sanctuary. Sanctuary.” Sheer disdain. “Mac-Aff-eeeeeeee will hang from its chandelier.” A lecherous grin twisted his lips. “By his bowels he will hang.”

  Ice water dripped down Alicia’s spine. She shut her eyes, swallowed. Her arm throbbed. She had no doubt this was indeed what Malik planned for Father McAfee, that dear old man. When she opened her eyes again, the room seemed dimmer. She turned to check the floor and wall lamps. Both were burning.

  She asked her next question with her eyes fixed on Apollo; she could not bring herself to look at the creature in the chair. “Malik, did you steal Father McAfee’s papers?”

  His head lolled lazily.

  “Hold on.” Apollo fiddled with the IV knobs, all the while watching the EKG. Satisfied, he gave her a nod to continue.

  “Did you steal Father McAfee’s papers?”

  Malik’s head snapped up. “Of course! Who said Malik did not? ‘Get the files, Malik. Bring them all to me.’ Who said Malik did not?”

  “No one said Malik did not. Malik did well. Who told you . . . who told Malik to get the files?”

  “The priest.”

  She eased her breath out. “Yes, the priest, but who—”

  Brady touched her arm.

  “Malik,” he said. “The priest told you to steal the files. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is the priest’s name?”

  “Randall.”

  Adalberto Randall, the priest who had claimed to represent the Vatican archives. She glanced at Brady and nodded.

  “Where is Father Randall now?”

  “Home.”

  “Where is home?�
��

  “Not here. Home.”

  “Malik, where is Father Randall’s home?”

  Nothing.

  Brady: “Where is your home?”

  Pause. More ragged breathing. When he spoke, his voice was an octave lower. The gravel in his throat became stones. “The pit is Malik’s home. Black . . . dark . . . so hot!”

  Alicia glanced at the voice recorder. Someone listening to the recording might not realize the voice was Malik’s.

  “Why hot?” Brady asked.

  “Fire. Burning. Blood.” He began rocking at the waist. He opened his mouth in a wide grin. His gums were black, studded with those awful teeth. He let out a long, airy hiss. His breath hit her, rank and putrid. Hamburger gone bad.

  She took a step back. The backs of her legs hit the bed, and she sat.

  “Blood!” he called as if ordering a beer. “Let the child’s blood flow! Cut it! Cut it now!”

  “Malik!” Apollo’s voice reverberated against the walls. His face reflected the same distress Alicia felt.

  Malik jerk his head around. “Master? Master, is that you?”

  Alicia leaned forward. “Who is your mast—”

  “Master! We have the children! More children for you!”

  His hands began flexing. His head rolled in a circle.

  “He’s in a trance,” Brady whispered, bewilderment straining his voice.

  “Our bodies are yours. Our minds are yours. Our children are yours. We are naked for you, Master! We bare all. Take all!”

  They were losing him.

  Alicia came off the bed to crouch beside the chair. She gripped Malik’s straining forearm, searched his face for answers.

  “Malik,” she said, pleading, “where is Father Randall’s home? Who does he work for? Who is your master?”

  “Scary . . .” He worked his mouth, snapping and stretching. “Movie.” A cackle pealed from his gaping mouth.

  Brady scowled and stepped back, repelled by the sound.

  Apollo hunkered lower behind the chair. The puppet master wanted nothing to do with the behavior of his puppet. Only obligation kept him wiggling the strings, as his hands fluttered from one IV bag to another.

  Malik froze, as if listening to words only he could hear. Suddenly, he cried, “I do! I eat their flesh. See? See?” His head shot out, and his teeth clicked. He chewed, flashed his tongue, chewed. “I eat their flesh!” The cackle, more wicked than ever.

  His feet kicked out. Bound at the ankles, the movement was nevertheless enough to tip the chair back. It would have crashed to the floor had it not hit Apollo first. Apollo heaved it back with his shoulder.

  Too late, Alicia saw Malik catch the IV bag with his teeth. His jaw twisted and his neck strained as he jerked the bag from its hook and shook it furiously, the way a shark rips at its food. Liquid sprayed everywhere.

  It splashed into Alicia’s face. Droplets scalded her eyes. She tasted something bitter. A citrus-alcohol tang assaulted her nostrils, her sinuses. She shot up, staggered back, and fell to her knees beside the bed.

  50

  The chemical in the IV bag Malik had torn open stung her eyes and burned her tongue.

  Blinking in pain, she forced herself to orient on Malik—if more danger was coming, it would come from him. He was staring at the ceiling, slack-jawed. Then she saw it: a black coil of smoke rising from his mouth. It formed a swirling cloud above him, enlarging as she watched. Tendrils of the oily smoke lashed out from it like striking snakes, then pulled back into the churning mass. Heat vapors radiated from it, rippling the ambient light, toasting her skin. It sucked in her breath, leaving her heaving for air.

  This isn’t real, she told herself, but her heart leaped at the thought that it was.

  She rubbed her eyes, feeling a sandy grittiness move under her lids.

  “Slice the children!” Malik called. “Eat them up!”

  Alicia gasped.

  She saw children! Their faces were pushing out of the swirling cloud as though from inside a balloon. Small heads; frightened, innocent faces.

  She clamped her eyes closed, but the children followed her. They formed from the shadows in her mind—boys and girls, toddlers to prepubescents. They took perfect shape and perfect color. They turned and floated across her mental landscape like a movie montage. Their expressions were twisted in distress, as if caught in the grip of unseen hands. In unison, all the young faces started to scream.

  Alicia snapped her eyes open. Brady rushed toward her, calling to her, asking if she was all right.

  She looked past him, saw no faces trying to escape the gathering storm hovering over Malik.

  Brady reached for her. She reared back. His hands were blackish-purple with reptilian scales and claws. Light fingers touched her face. Not reptilian. She realized that the scaly hands she saw must be from something behind Brady, something reaching around him for her.

  Brady blew away, as if by a heavy wind, and she was gazing at Malik in the chair. Although the room lamps cast light on his surroundings, he was in shadow; the edges of his silhouette were indistinct, hazy, as though he were becoming the substance of the smoky cloud. She saw that this, in fact, was true. His face was elongating, blending into the funnel that rose from his mouth to the gathering storm above him.

  Yet somehow he found his voice.

  “See! See!” he said. “He is here!”

  Bile rose in Alicia’s throat. “Make him stop!” she yelled, thinking someone . . . someone was here with her, someone who could help. Who? Who was she calling to?

  “Open yourself to him!” Malik ordered.

  His shadow-form was stretching into something else. He was slipping his bonds because they had bound human limbs and he was no longer human.

  “Take me, Master!”

  Every word he issued increased the thickness of the rising funnel, added to the breadth of the cloud. Their utterance sliced at her mind, crimped her heart. She did not believe they were mere words anymore. They had become tangible tools of chaos, and she understood: he was speaking destruction into existence, creating evil from breath and sound. Something—not children—was in the cloud after all, taking shape. What might have been an elbow protruded, moved, and pulled in again. Then something larger—a knee, a head—appeared and was gone. She was witnessing a hideous imitation of fetal movement beneath the taut belly of a pregnant woman.

  She tried to rise, but moist pressure held her down, pushing on her face. Brady . . . back with a cloth, wiping at her. She pushed him away.

  “No!” she screamed. “Can’t you hear him? Can’t you see it?”

  “Yes, Master! I have the blood! I saved it for you!”

  A chorus of voices spoke the words. Blackness continued to pour from between Malik’s lips and rise to the cloud. The room was getting darker, the lamps powerless against the vortex of evil. A stench hit her, and she snapped her head away. For an instant she remembered the putrid odor that had billowed out of a black trash bag when investigators had cut it open to reveal the decomposing corpse of a woman who had been kidnapped three weeks earlier. And in that instant she was sure, absolutely sure, the corpse from that bag was in this room, stashed under the bed or behind the love seat, stirring with malevolent animation. She wanted to bolt from the room, to run and run and run.

  But she couldn’t. The movement of her muscles was sluggish, constrained by air as thick as water.

  What . . . ? she thought. What . . . ? Nothing more of her question came to mind. The word was enough, however, to convey her confusion and horror. She wanted to scream it—and did.

  “WHAT?”

  A bead of sweat trickled off her forehead, snaked over her cheek. She wiped at it. Her face was soaked in perspiration—or something; she had a vague recollection of being splashed, by what she had no clue.

  Blood, she thought. The blood of children.

  She held her hand up and saw it drenched in dripping crimson. Then the color faded, leaving only clear fluid on her open hand. />
  What is happening?

  Her heart raced as possibilities—none of them good—flashed against her psyche: Malik was a warlock or a demon . . . she was already dead . . . she was stuck in the most vivid nightmare of her life . . .

  But all of this was real—she knew it!

  A change in the room drew her attention. Reluctantly, she turned to the roiling cloud. A taloned hand was pushing out from it, straining to tear through a veined membrane. She trembled at the conviction that when it did, everyone in the room would perish . . . then everyone in the hotel . . . in the city . . .

  She had to do something . . . had to . . . She turned and saw it resting on the nightstand: her pistol. She had retrieved it from Malik’s waistband after she subdued him in room 522.

  Was that today? Was that me or someone else?

  Without another thought, she dived for it, landing flat on the bed and scurrying up to lunge again. She vaguely realized her sluggishness was gone now that she had decided to fight and not flee. In one swift motion, she gripped the gun, slid off the bed, and rose with the weapon extended out from her face in two hands. She took aim at the shadowy Malik form, transmogrifying in the chair.

  A creature rose from behind him. Like the thing in the cloud, it was all black and humanoid. It challenged her.

  “Alicia,” came its voice. It was familiar. She shifted her aim to center on this new creature’s head.

  “Where’s Apollo?” she asked. “What have you done to him?”

  “I’m right here,” the creature said slowly. “The scopolamine . . . you . . .”

  “No!” She shook the gun at the creature, emphasizing its presence. The cloud was growing; soon it would be above her and most of the room. The taloned hand was still pressing out, joined now by another, both reaching toward her.

  Sudden exhaustion fell on her like a blanket. She felt dizzy and took a step to steady herself. The edges of her vision dimmed. She shook her head. She could not pass out with these creatures . . . these demons in the room with her. But she knew she could not hold on to consciousness much longer. Only thing to do: be the last one standing before she collapsed. Bracing for the recoil, she tightened her finger over the trigger.