Zach knew this was all a dream, but it was also not a dream, not just a dream. It was also real somehow. The smell of the sere winter grass was real and the crunch of it under his shoes. The smell of smoke from far off when the wind shifted, and the bright angry life of the fire and the pitiful screaming and the pitiful way the screams ended—these were all real. Each dying woman and each dying child, Zach knew, was just as real as he was. Each was an entire inner world of tenderness and anxiety and yearning. And each was being slaughtered like a beast, cut down by the cold edge of a sword or cooked alive inside one of the burning structures, a point of view extinguished in agony, then gone. More than a dream. This was history.
Zach crested the hill. He reached the waiting man. He could make him out through the thickening nighttime: a man wearing black with a frilly white collar. Zach recognized the bald head, the long face, the sharp gray goatee of the executioner.
“Am I dead?” Zach murmured to him. He remembered the rat-faced monk who had shot him in the wine cellar.
“No,” the executioner said. He gestured down the other side of the hill with his open hand. “They are dead.”
Zach looked and saw a vast field of winter trees with hanged men dangling from their branches. The black dead figures—the trees and the suspended bodies—were starting to blend with the gathering darkness.
Zach stood appalled: all those strangled inner worlds—their longings and their speculations, their love for their mothers and the way cherries tasted on their tongues—flung into the pit of nothingness like so many handfuls of sand tossed down a well. All those lives.
He shook his head, heartsick. “I have my own soul and my own sins,” he said. “I can’t mourn for everyone.”
The vision—the village in flames, the orchard of hanging corpses—threatened to engulf him. He was drowning in the horror of it. He had to get out, but he couldn’t. He was unconscious, he realized. He had been drugged—that was the problem. He fought to wake up. He struggled toward the surface of reality. Whatever waited for him there, he thought it had to be better than this.
But he was wrong about that.
He broke, gasping, into the light of the present. Chained to a metal cot. Lying on a bare mattress. Face and hair sticky with his own vomit. Thighs burning from his own urine. He was wearing nothing but his sodden jockeys. He was cold. He was sick as hell.
He groaned, tried to curl up. Chains rattled. His wrists and ankles were manacled. There were burns on his sternum. His neck ached. That weird little monkish rat had shot him with a stun gun, not the .50-cal, then plunged a syringe into his neck as he lay helpless. Shocked him first, then drugged him.
Where was he? How long had he been here? He twisted his head, trying to see. He was in a small bare room, white walls, wood floors. One door—closed. Heavy curtains on the one window. A skylight showed a square of high leaden sky, no trace of sun. It was much darker than before. Looked like a storm coming. It was chilly too. The chill had eaten into him. He remembered that the monkish, rat-faced killer had come in here at least once, maybe twice or even more—come in and casually jabbed another syringe into his neck, keeping him down.
He’d been here quite a while, in other words.
He was nauseous and uncomfortable in his own filth. His head was swimming in the smells of piss and puke. His eyes sank closed and he spun down woozily into the dusk vision again: the burning village, the screaming women and children, the orchard of hanging men. He could smell the grass and the smoke. His eyes flashed open as he fought back to the surface. The room reeled around him.
Blinking hard, he made his mind work, his cop mind. He tried to put the pieces together. The monk must’ve hidden in one of the crannies in the wine-cellar corridor. Did he and Zach just happen to be there at Sea View at the same time by coincidence? Not likely. Had the monk been waiting for him? Maybe. Maybe he’d been tipped off by Goulart. Or maybe he’d been waiting for someone else, and Zach was just the one who happened to show up.
And now . . . well, now it was going to be bad. Death was the best-case scenario. The worst? He remembered Johnny Grimhouse, flayed and mutilated with the giant waterbugs feeding on him.
Not much chance of getting out of here, but he had to try.
He twisted to get a better look at his chained hands. . . .
That was as far as he got. The door opened. The monk came in. This was Zach’s first clear look at him. What had seemed like a robe before was, he saw now, just a heavy black overcoat, weirdly tented under the man’s stooped shoulders. The stringy, greasy hair framed a preternaturally thin face, sharp nose, reddish eyes. Zach looked into those eyes and saw the sadism of slaves and true believers. Clearly, this was Abend’s acolyte down to his soul. Zach’s heart sank. A man like this—he would just love to lay the hurt on the infidel, to take revenge on the heathen for being free of the chains of devotion he himself was bound by. Zach just had time to think this—then he saw the stun gun in the bastard’s hand and thought, No, don’t! and then the monk shot him again.
The other gunman, the goateed Satan lookalike, was right behind the monk. The two men went to work around Zach’s twitching body. They loosed his chains from the cot frame. Then, the monk at his shoulders and the devil at his heels, they carried him through the door as he spasmed and choked on his own drool. Clouds swam over Zach’s mind as the monk and Satan hauled him into a broad empty room. Vaguely he made out white walls and a huge picture window with a view of ocean heaving beneath the ominous and stormy sky. Muttering instructions to each other in chittering insectile voices, the thugs hoisted Zach upright. They chained his wrists to an iron chinning bar that was wedged into the top of an open doorway. They chained his ankles to a bar wedged into the doorway’s bottom. Zach stood there slack-kneed, head hanging, blinking stupidly at the view of the sea.
Then something seemed to strike him from within himself: a living bolt of blackness. A crash of desolation, a flashing shock of death beyond despair. He remembered this feeling—he remembered the terror of it—from the hallway in Long Island City.
He knew that Dominic Abend was coming.
Now, sure enough, he heard the approach of slow footsteps. Hard boot heels on wood. Zach shook himself like a dog throwing off water, stiffened his legs under himself, trying to get his body more or less upright, trying to get his brain clear, trying to prepare himself for the meeting.
He was not prepared. He could not have been.
Dominic Abend was no longer the man from the photograph of Times Square on New Year’s eve. He was not even the man who had summoned the giant roaches in the hallway in Long Island City. Something awful had happened to him since then. Zach recognized the large powerful body in the long black coat, recognized the shaved head, the bulbous nose and thin lips. But his flesh. . . . The flesh of his cheeks was darkening and wrinkling in patches. It was drawing tight so that the man’s eyes bulged bizarrely and his teeth, no matter what his expression, were bared. An unmistakable smell of rot was coming off him. He was decaying, Zach realized. He was moldering even where he stood.
Zach’s gaze dropped to the sword Abend was holding down by his side, the naked blade pressed against his pants leg. A fearful sight. Zach had to fight off the awareness of his own nakedness and vulnerability. But he had seen the body of Johnny Grimhouse. He knew what was coming.
With effort, Zach lifted his heavy head and met the killer’s eyes. Looking at the photographs, he had always imagined that those eyes would be knowing and cruel. But bulging the way they were, with the skin around them black and sunken, they just seemed weirdly bright and full of a wild preternatural terror.
Abend came to stand in front of Zach. Zach could hear the phlegmy breath of the monk standing to the right of him, the doggish pant of Satan to his left, both of them eager with anticipation of what was coming.
Abend looked the chained cop over casually, without much interest. Zach swallowed hard. He was afraid.
“You are the lawman, yes?” Abend said
briskly—he had a thin voice with a German accent. “You are the one they call the Cowboy. Adams.”
Zach nodded. “I am.”
“Extraordinary Crimes, they call your people, correct? Task Force Zero?”
“Yes.”
“And I am Dominic Abend, the one you are all looking for.”
“I know.”
“Congratulations, then. You have found me. Hm?”
“Yes.”
Abend smiled a little at the irony. “You went to Germany, did you not? To talk to the Dankl woman.”
A thought occurred to Zach, and he spoke it. “Did Goulart tell you that?”
Abend seemed to appreciate the question. He nodded at it. He said “Hm!”
Then he sliced Zach’s chest open.
It was a move so swift, Zach barely saw it—barely even felt it until it was done. Without warning, Abend brought the sword across himself and whipped it backhand over Zach’s breasts. The blade dug deep and ripped a gash from one side of Zach to the other. Zach’s head flew back and he screamed in agony. As he sank forward in his chains, a thick line of blood bubbled out of the wound and spilled down over his abdomen.
“I will ask the questions, yes?” said Abend quietly. “You went to Germany and talked to the Dankl woman, is this correct?”
Zach shuddered and sucked in air through his teeth, fighting down his sobs of pain. His head hanging, he coughed wetly, stupidly watching the blood run over him. The violation of his flesh had hollowed out his spirit on the instant. He felt as if liquid fire had been splashed over his torso, wounding him so deep he’d never heal. Terrified that Abend would cut him again—and he knew he would cut him again—he tried to answer the question before the killer grew angry. He only just managed to gather enough strength to nod and gasp, “Yes. Yes.”
“And so you know about the baselard, in other words,” Abend went on at once.
“I do,” Zach groaned. “I know about it.”
“But of course, you don’t know where it is, do you? No, or you wouldn’t have been out here at Sea View. You talked to Angela, realized she was lying, came back to talk her again, so on and so forth, yes?”
“That’s right,” said Zach. And as his mind began to grind back into action, he realized: this man was smart—really smart—dangerously smart. And how much did he know? About Dankl. About Margo. About him, and the old curse. . . .
Abend paced away from in front of him. Zach was too weak and foggy to watch him go. He lifted his chin from his chest and saw the window across from him. The storm must have been coming fast. The clouds had grown nearly black now. The surf was high, a vexed beast that rose up roaring toward the sky and hurled itself in seeming rage upon the dull sand.
Zach’s head rolled. There was the monk beside him, greasy and unshaven, grinning with his red eyes bright and vicious and submissive. And there, on the other side of him, was the lean, grinning, goateed Satan whose expression was duller and more inward, as if no outward brutality could give him as much hellish pleasure as what he saw in his own mind.
Abend paced back in front of Zach again. The bulging eyes and slowly mummifying features tilted as he studied the blood-soaked investigator with that same musing disinterest.
“Did she follow you here—Dankl? Is she in the United States?”
Zach shook his head. “I don’t know.”
In what seemed a sort of arbitrary experiment, Abend lifted the sword again, jammed the point into the gash in Zach’s chest and twisted it back and forth.
Zach thrashed in his rattling chains, shrieking mindlessly: “I don’t know!” After a moment, Abend lowered the sword. Zach slumped in his manacles, bleeding.
“Skin for skin,” said Abend softly. “Do you know this saying?” When Zach slumped there silently, too weak to answer, Abend put the sword point under his chin and pushed so that Zach had to raise his head. “Hm?” he said. “Skin for skin? You know this?”
Zach began to shake his head no, but then remembered. “It’s in the Bible somewhere. In the book of Job.”
“Very good. Very good.” Abend took the sword away and Zach’s head fell forward. “Do you know what it means? It means a man will give anything to save himself, his own skin. He will give anything to make pain stop, anything.”
Abend studied the blade of his sword. Zach’s blood ran along the shiny steel and dripped off it, falling to the floor. Abend seemed mildly amused by the sight, a break from his general boredom.
Zach couldn’t look at it. It sickened him. He looked past Abend instead, to the window again. It was even darker out there now—much darker, in fact. The far waters were sinking into the obscurity of the cloud-covered horizon, gray blending with gray and the whole scene beginning to turn a thick blue-black. Zach licked his lips. Some small, fine something—wonder or maybe hope—ignited in him: a tiny particle of light in the blackness of his tortured spirit. Wait, he thought, that’s not a storm coming, is it? That’s nightfall! Could that be right? Could it be nightfall? Already? Had so much time gone by while he was drugged?
“I would rather corrupt you than kill you, you know,” Abend said thoughtfully. “You don’t have any information I need. There is nothing to torture out of you. Dead, you are only a headline. Which means publicity from the media—until my media can distract them. Pressure on officials—until my officials can form a committee or call for a study. Policemen manfully swearing to catch me—until my lawyers baffle them into impotence. All not very helpful—or very interesting, really—commonplace, in fact. Just a great waste of time for everyone. But if you were to work with me, become one of my people, I could find uses for you, I’m sure. Skin for skin, yes? Then I do not have to hurt you anymore or kill you—as long as you remain loyal. To the public, you will be the hero who escaped my clutches. You will sleep at home tonight with your wife and children instead of dying here in bloody bits and pieces. You would like that, wouldn’t you? To sleep at home with your wife in your arms.”
Zach’s head had fallen forward again, nausea and pain and weakness overcoming him. But he knew he had to answer Abend or suffer more, so he lifted his head. He saw the decay creeping under the gangster’s skin like maggots. He met the gangster’s bulging eyes.
And instantly Abend saw into him, into the heart of him. He saw what he was. And he chuckled. “Never mind. I understand. You are incorruptible. Yes?” But as his chuckling faded, a small hint of intense feeling—a brief contraction of the lips—momentarily darkened his expression. In a musing tone, he said, “Why, though? Hm? Why are you incorruptible? Do you know what I will do? I will let them torture you, these two.” With apparent nonchalance, he waggled his free hand at Satan and the monk. “I don’t need anything from you and haven’t the time or interest to do it myself, but they. . . . They are madmen and will do it for the pure pleasure. And so you will know it is useless—your incorruptibility—useless and troublesome—and then you will be dead. And do you know why I will do that to you? Hm? I will do it because it offends me. For you to think there is a reason to resist me. For you to think that you are better than I am in some way. This offends me. It does.”
For a moment, Abend seemed ready to leave it at that and walk away. He lifted his chin to the monk as if instructing him to begin Zach’s slow annihilation. His body leaned toward the exit. But he hesitated.
“Do you know what I have seen?” he said—more forcefully than before, with more emotion. Somehow Zach seemed to have reached him, angered him, without even meaning to. Zach glanced from him to the window. He was sure now. That was no storm out there. That was night, full night, past dusk already, full darkness. Let Abend keep talking, then. . . .
“Hm?” Abend said. “Do you know what I have seen? I have seen the doctors of the Third Reich dissect children—living children—little children mild as Christ. And do you know what else I saw? When it was over, what I saw? They died. Both. The doctor and the child. They both died, and there was no difference—only one died sooner than the other and in mor
e pain. No difference between what happened to one and what happened to the other in the end—none. And so why? Hm? Why are you incorruptible? You will suffer and then die when you could have gone on living—and so: why?”
Zach stared at his tormenter, his body slack in his chains, his mouth hanging open, his spilled blood soaking his jockey shorts and dripping pat pat pat upon the wooden floor.
“ANSWER ME!” Abend shouted suddenly, his rotting face twisting in its rage. He raised his sword across himself and slashed it downward slantwise so that the new gash on Zach’s chest tore across the first. And as Zach howled out his agony, Abend shouted in his face, “ANSWER ME WHY!”
His chains rattling, Zach fell forward, hanging limply from the bars. Through misted vision, he saw his blood spattering the floor between his bare feet and Abend’s black boots.
“Because . . .” he tried his best to appease the German with an answer, but his throat was too dry.
“Hm? What? What?” said Abend.
“Because,” Zach croaked. “I can’t believe that. That there’s no difference.”
“Hm? No . . . ? Oh. . . .”
“Between what happens to the Nazi and what happens to the child.”
“Oh-ho.” Abend laughed, and a piece of gray flesh fell from the corner of one eye socket. “Can’t. Can’t believe.” He straightened his shoulders beneath his dark overcoat, smiling thinly. “Well. You should, you know.” He laughed again. “Oh yes. You should. You will, by the time these two are through with you.” Again, he made as if to leave. Again, he stayed. “You are afraid of hell, then? That’s what you are saying.”
Zach shook his hanging head.
“Hm?”
“No,” said Zach. “It’s not that.”
“Well, I will show you hell.” Abend checked his watch. He seemed annoyed by something. The lateness of the hour? The fact he couldn’t stay? “I will show you hell,” he repeated.
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