The Covenant Of The Flame

by David Morrell

  'Of course. Too much salt. Too many preservatives. The taste is synthetic.'

  'No offense, but I hope I never have to eat your cooking.'

  'Don't jump to conclusions, Lieutenant. I cook very well.'

  'I'm sure you do, but if I don't get a steak now and then-'

  'You'd have less cholesterol,' Tess said. 'And maybe less weight around your belt.'

  Craig squinted, then chuckled, then coughed. 'I suppose I could use a few less… Never mind. As I said, we're just getting started. Let me show you the living room.'

  Tess followed, leaving the kitchen, proceeding down the corridor.

  And faltered.

  Except for thick open draperies at the windows, the room was totally empty. No carpet. No lamps. No chairs. No sofa. No tables. No shelves. No television. No stereo. No posters. No reproductions of paintings. Bare floor. Bare walls. Not even a-

  'Phone,' Craig said, seeming to read her mind. 'Not in the kitchen. Not here. And not in the bedroom. No wonder Joseph didn't give his employer his phone number. He didn't have a phone. He didn't want one. And my guess is he didn't have any use for one. Because the last thing he wanted was a call from someone or to make a call. Your friend had reduced his life to bare necessities. And don't tell me that's typical of a vegetarian. Because I know better. I've never seen anything like this.'

  Trembling, Tess opened a closet and stared at a jogging suit on a hanger next to a simple but practical overcoat. No boxes on the upper shelf. Below, on the otherwise barren floor, she saw a solitary pair of Nike jogging shoes.

  Trembling harder, she clutched the edge of the closet door to steady herself and turned. 'Okay, I'm convinced. This isn't… No one lives like… Something's wrong.'

  'But I haven't shown you the best part, or I should say the worst.' With a stark expression, Craig nodded toward a door. The bedroom. What you'll see in there…No, don't cringe. It won't make you sick. I've promised you that several times. But I need to know. What does it mean?'

  His footsteps echoing, Craig crossed the room and opened the bedroom door.

  As if hypnotized, Tess stepped forward.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The bedroom was almost as empty as the living room. Plain draperies but no carpet. There was something in the corner, but here the draperies had been shut, the room too shadowy for Tess to be able to identify the murky shape.

  She groped along the inside wall and found a lights witch. However, when she flicked it, nothing happened.

  There's no lamp,' Craig said. 'And the overhead bulb doesn't work.'

  Then how did Joseph keep from stumbling around in the dark?'

  Instead of answering, the lieutenant pulled the draperies open.

  Hazy sunlight flowed in, making Tess blink as her eyes adjusted. Abruptly she blinked for another reason, because what she saw in the room bewildered her.

  The murky object she'd glimpsed dimly in the corner was a mattress on the floor. No. Not even a mattress. A pallet, six-feet long, three-feet wide, one-inch thick, made of woven hemp.

  'Joseph didn't exactly pamper himself,' Craig said. 'No pillow. No sheet. Just that one blanket. I looked. There aren't any others in the closet.'

  Tess's forehead pounded. With mounting confusion, she noticed that the blanket the lieutenant referred to had been folded at the bottom of the pallet with the same meticulous care that the towel and washcloth had been hung so neatly on the rack in the bathroom.

  'And there's your answer for how he kept from stumbling around in the dark,' Craig said.

  The pain in her skull increasing, Tess frowned toward where the lieutenant pointed and shook her head. Next to the pallet, a dozen candles stood in saucers.

  'Somehow I don't think he was just trying to save on his electricity bill,' Craig said.

  To the right of the pallet, Tess squinted at a plain, pine, three-shelved bookcase. Feeling pressure in her chest, she walked toward it, examining the titles. The Consolation of Philosophy, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Holy Bible: Scofield Reference Edition, Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Art of Courtly Love, The Last Days of the Planet Earth.

  'I guess he never heard of the New York Times bestseller list,' Craig said. 'Philosophy, religion, history. Heavy. I'd hate to have spent a weekend with him. Not many laughs.'

  'He wasn't boring,' Tess said, distracted, continuing to examine the shelves. 'Several books about the environment.'

  'Yes. That's something else you and he shared in common.'

  Trembling no matter how hard she tried to control it, Tess drew her index finger past a book called The Millennium and noticed a title that wasn't in English. The volume was bound in well-worn leather and looked very old.

  'Can I take it out?'

  'As long as you put it back exactly where you found it,' Craig said.

  With care, she removed the book from the shelf and examined its dry, cracked cover. El Circulo del Cuello de la Paloma.

  'Looks like Spanish,' Craig said.

  'Right.'

  'I'm still working on English. Can you read it?'

  'No.' Tess exhaled, frustrated. 'I took a few courses in high school, but I don't remember the vocabulary.'

  'Below the title,' Craig said. 'Abu Muhammad 'Ali ibn Hazm al-Andalusi.' He stumbled over the words. 'I assume that's the author's name. It barely fits across the cover. Muhammad? Sounds Moslem.'

  Tess nodded, wrote the title and author's name on a notepad, then opened the book. Its pages were brittle, the entire text in Spanish. Impatient, she returned her gaze to the bookshelf, in particular toward the Scofield Bible. Earlier, something about it had troubled her. It didn't look right. She cautiously replaced the Spanish book and withdrew the Bible, finding that its covers slanted inward. With a frown, she stared inside and discovered, shocked, that most of its pages had been removed. A straight line showed where a knife or scissors had been used to cut out the pages.

  'Why would-?'

  That's one of many things I want to know,' Craig said.

  Tess read the names of the sections at the top of the heavily underlined, remaining pages. 'He cut out everything except the preface and… " She flipped more pages. 'John's Gospel, John's Epistles, John's Book of Revelation. I don't understand.'

  'You're not the only one. And this…' Craig pointed.' Whatever the damned thing is. On the bookshelf. This is the weirdest of all.'

  Tess raised her eyes. She'd noticed the object when she walked toward the bookshelf, but it made so little sense that she'd postponed examining it in the hope that the other things in the room would help her interpret the grotesque image.

  The object was a statue, or to be exact a bas-relief sculpture, one foot tall and wide, fashioned out of white marble. It depicted a long-haired, muscular, handsome man straddling the back of a bull, jerking the struggling animal's head up, slashing its throat with a knife.

  Blood cascaded from the wound toward what appeared to be wheat growing out of the ground. At the same time, a dog lunged toward the blood while a serpent sped toward the wheat and a scorpion attacked the bull's testicles.

  To the right and left of the grisly scene, torch bearers watched. The torch on the left was pointed upward, the torch on the right pointed downward. And above the torch bearer on the left, a bird -

  – an owl! hard to tell -

  – stared with fixated eyes toward the slashing knife and the cascading blood.

  'What does it mean?' Craig asked. 'Since I first saw it this morning, the thing's been haunting me.'

  Tess had trouble speaking. Her mouth tasted bitter. Her shoulder blades felt frozen. 'It's… Horrible. Repulsive. Disgusting.'

  'Yeah, just your ordinary everyday decoration around the house.'

  Attached to the wall behind the statue, imitating the torches that flanked the eerie grotesque scene, were candles in holders, one facing up, the other down. A saucer had been set beneath the latter candle to catch the melting wax when it fell.

  'Joseph didn't have a lot of respect for the f
ire code,' Craig said. 'If the landlord had known about all these candles, your friend would have found himself and his few belongings out on the street. It's a wonder he didn't burn down the building.'

  'But this is crazy.'

  'It sure as hell spooked me.'

  'Look, there's no way I can borrow the Bible and the Spanish book, right?' Tess asked.

  'Homicide would have my ass if I let you.'

  'Well, can I at least take pictures?'

  'You've got a camera?'

  'Always. A reporter's habit.'

  'Okay. But I want you to promise,' Craig said. 'You won't publish the photographs unless you're given permission from Homicide or me.'

  'Agreed.'

  'Then be my guest,' Craig said.

  Tess removed a small 35mm Olympus from her burlap purse and took several closeup photos of the statue from different angles. Then she opened the Bible and photographed the most heavily underlined pages. Next, after putting the Bible back on the shelf in the spot where she'd found it, she photographed the entire bookshelf and finally the pallet flanked by candles.

  She put away the camera. 'All set.'

  There's one other promise I want you to make,' Craig said. 'If you learn anything from those photos, I want to hear about it in case it's something we haven't already discovered.'

  'Word of honor.'

  Craig fidgeted.

  'That look on your face. You're doing it again,' Tess said. 'Holding back.'

  The thing is…'

  'What?'

  'Are you ready for another shock?'

  'You mean, there is more?'

  'In the closet.' Craig opened it. 'Notice he had few clothes. A pair of clean jeans. An extra shirt. A spare – only one – cotton pullover. A few pairs of socks and underwear on the shelf. And this.' Craig reached to the right, toward the inside wall of the closet.

  'Whatever it is, I don't want to see it.'

  'I'm sorry, Tess. But it's important. I have to show you.'

  The lieutenant pulled an object from the closet. The object was a foot-long section of wood that seemed to have been cut from a broomstick handle. A half-dozen three-foot-long pieces of rope were attached to one end.

  Tess shuddered. 'A whip?'

  'With dried blood on the ropes. He… I believe the term is… flagellated himself.'

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Tsavo National Park. Kenya. Africa.

  The hunter waited patiently, clutching his long-distance, high-powered rifle, hunkering with practised discipline in a shelter of scrub thorn next to a cluster of baobob trees. His view of the water hole was unobstructed. At mid-day near the equator, the heat was so severe that the targets would soon lumber into view, forced to seek water. Although his wide-brimmed hat and the bushes around him provided some shelter from the glaring sun, the hunter sweated profusely, his khaki hunting shirt dark with moisture. But he didn't dare raise his canteen and drink, lest his motions reveal his position. After all, his quarry was extremely cautious, vigilant against intruders.

  Still, the hunter's patience and determination had been rewarded many times before. He simply had to maintain professional conduct. Later, when his hunt was successful, he could afford the luxury of drinking.

  His nerves tingled. There! To his left! He sensed more than heard the approaching rumble of huge plodding feet. Then he saw the dustcloud they raised, and finally the massive animals emerged from a stand of flowering acacia trees, warily assessing the open grassland, nervously judging the water hole.

  Elephants. The hunter counted ten. Their wide ears were flared, straining to detect unfamiliar threatening sounds. With disappointment, the hunter noted that four were tuskless children and that the adults had tusks that were barely – hard to tell from this distance – four feet long. With greater disappointment, he remembered a time, twenty years ago, when the curved tusks had been six, eight, and sometimes ten-feet long. On average, the weight of each tusk had dropped from eighteen pounds to nine. As a consequence, it required much more killing to achieve the quota demanded by ivory merchants. Twenty years ago – the hunter mentally shook his head – forty thousand elephants had roamed this plain, but last year, he'd estimated that only five thousand remained, and that figure didn't include the two thousand carcasses he'd come upon during his increasingly determined expeditions. Soon the ivory trade wouldn't exist. Because the elephants themselves would no longer exist. Twelve tons of tusks, the harvest from thirteen hundred elephants, were worth three million dollars. But smaller tusks meant less weight and more killing in order to achieve the quota.

  His fingers rigid on his rifle, the hunter watched the reluctant elephants finally overcome their nervousness and approach the water hole. They were so magnificent. He focused his intensity, clasped his rifle's trigger, and slowly, angrily, swiveled his vision, scanning the grassland around the water hole.

  Again the hunter's nerves tingled, instincts quickening.

  To his right, he saw motion. Figures rose from the shelter of waist-high grass. These figures, too, held rifles.

  Men! Dressed in camouflage khaki, the same as himself!

  Other hunters!

  But he and they weren't competitors. Not at all. Quite the contrary. They existed in a complex deadly condition of symbiosis. Their purpose demanded his purpose, and with angry resolve, the executioner swung his rifle toward those predators.

  Even from a distance, he could tell that they weren't using hunting rifles but automatic weapons – M-16s and AK-47s. He'd stumbled upon the evidence of their slaughter too many times before. Entire herds destroyed, riddled with bullets, their carcasses rotting in the sun, their tusks grotesquely hacked from their faces, their meat – which could have been used by starving natives – left for ravaging jackels and swarming maggots.

  God damn those other hunters.

  To hell!

  Which was exactly where this hunter intended to send them.

  Careful not to reveal himself, he slowly stood, raised his rifle, braced it against his shoulder, intensified his vision through the rifle's high-enlargement sights, steadied his finger on the trigger, and with enormous satisfaction, squeezed.

  Without removing his gaze from the rifle's sights, he saw – in closeup – the predator's skull blow apart.

  Nothing like explosive bullets.

  At once, the hunter saw another predator surge upward from the grass, recoil in horror, raise his hand to his mouth, and stumble back, fleeing.

  No problem.

  With a slight shift of angle and focus, the hunter shot yet again.

  And blew the second predator's chest apart.

  So how does it feel? the hunter thought. When you died, did you feel like… did you identify with… did you imagine… and regret… and feel sorry for… the agony you caused so many of God's magnificent irreplaceable creatures? The elephants?

  Shit, no. You're incapable of emotion, except for greed.

  But you're not feeling that now, are you?

  You're not feeling anything.

  Because, you bastards, you're one less curse on the planet.

  Native bearers scrambled from the waist-high grass and fled toward a distant ridge. Their panicked outlines were tempting, but the hunter restrained his trigger finger and lowered his rifle. His message had been delivered. He understood – although disapproved of – their motives.

  The native bearers needed employment. Yes.

  They needed money. They needed food.

  But no matter their desperation, they shouldn't help to destroy their heritage! The elephants were Africa! The elephants were…!

  The hunter's anger diminished. His churning stomach made him want to vomit. As the native bearers scrambled below the curve of the distant ridge, he stood with professional caution, assessed the grassland around him, regretted that the elephants had been spooked by his gunshots and had retreated from their desperate need to drink from the shallow, muddy, water hole, but he felt tremendous pride that he'd done his duty.
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  It took him five minutes to reach the first of his executed predators. His dead antagonist looked pathetic, the robust man's skull blasted open, his blood soaking into the dirt. But then -

  – the hunter reminded himself -

  – the dead elephants looked even more pathetic. Because when alive, so magnificent, the elephants had been a triumph of creation.

  An example had to be made.

  The hunter removed a pair of pliers, knelt, propped open the corpse's mouth, and began the necessary but repulsive work of reinforcing the example.

  'Ivory,' he muttered, his voice choked. 'Is that what you want? Ivory? Well, here, damn it, let me help you out. I mean, unlike the elephants, you've got all the ivories anybody needs.'

  With torturous effort, the hunter began to yank out each and every one of the corpse's teeth.

  He set them neatly in a pile beside the sunken-mouthed corpse.

  He then proceeded toward his other victim.

  By every means necessary…

  Examples…

  Reprisals…

  Had to be made!

  The slaughter had to be stopped!

  TWENTY-FOUR

  'I'm sorry,' Craig said.

  'For what?'

  'Really, I didn't mean to upset you this much.'

  'It's not your fault,' Tess said, 'I had to… I needed to see that apartment. Earth Mother Magazine won't go out of business because I'm not there. I wouldn't be much good to them anyhow. I've got some thinking to do.'

  With a troubled expression, Craig double-parked on the noisy, crowded street outside Tess's loft in SoHo. 'Well, while you're thinking, remember your promise. Homicide will investigate thoroughly, but if something occurs to you that might help explain what we found in Joseph's apartment, let me know.' The lieutenant gave her a card. That's my home telephone number at the bottom. If it's important, don't wait to call me at the office.'

  'Hey, don't worry. If I have to, I'll call you in the middle of the night.'

  Craig grinned. 'That's fine with me. I'm a very light sleeper.' He coughed. That is, when I sleep at all.'