Cindy took the back roads and turned onto Route 264 just outside town. She already knew the way to Edmund Lambert’s house—had unconsciously memorized the directions from all the time she spent staring down at his property on Google Earth. If she hurried, she figured she could make it in about half an hour.
But what would she do once she got there? And what was it about this Edmund Lambert that made her act so crazy; made her drive out, uninvited, to his house in the middle of nowhere so late at night?
Again, Cindy had no answer. Only a scene from an imaginary movie: a modern-day Gone with the Wind in which she saw herself rushing down a flight of stairs into Edmund Lambert’s arms—spinning kisses and rustling petticoats, then mad, passionate lovemaking on an Oriental rug as the music swelled around them.
The Led Zeppelin song fit perfectly.
Led Zeppelin? asked Amy Pratt in her head. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler doing it to Led Zeppelin?
Impulsively, Cindy changed the station—old school hip-hop, Naughty By Nature’s “OPP.”
Cindy let out a laugh and pumped the volume louder. It had to be fate, she thought—Bradley Cox, the explosion, Scarlett O’Hara all at once a distant memory of a role she once played back in Greenville.
“You down with OCD?” Cindy sang. “Yeah, you know me!”
Oh yeah, Cindy Smith was beyond obsessed.
Chapter 83
The General laid Markham on the kitchen table, pulled back his eyelids, and studied his pupils. Still unconscious—Will be for a while, he thought—but best to bind his hands and feet and leave him in the workroom while he attended to Cox.
True, the young man hadn’t been in the chair as long as the other soldiers, but the General hoped he would understand and be ready to accept his mission nonetheless. If not, the General would have to make him understand. Unlike the others, there wasn’t enough time now to indulge his limited intellect.
The General smiled as the song transitioned beneath his feet, and set his handgun on the kitchen counter next to the pair of Glocks he’d taken from the FBI agents. Then he tied Markham’s hands and feet together with the length of clothesline he’d set on the table before leaving.
Be a good boy and carry that rope for me, okay?
C’est mieux d’oublier….
Everything was going according to the Prince’s new plan; and when Markham was secure, the General washed his hands and splashed his face with cold water. He could feel the wound on his chest had split open again; could see that it had bled through the gauze and was beginning to spot his light-blue button-down shirt. There would be more blood, yes, but still he would have to change into his priestly robes. The ceremony of things demanded it.
The General toweled off his face and crossed to the cellar door—a heavy, steel door with recessed hinges and two dead bolts that he had installed himself. He unlocked them, the music instantly louder as he opened the door—but something was off; something about the light on the stairs was—
And then the naked man was coming for him.
Bradley Cox, smeared with sweat and blood, rushed up the cellar stairs shrieking like a cat—his left hand outstretched before him, his right holding a small ax high above his head. The General backed away at once—didn’t have time to wonder how Cox escaped and found the ax in the workroom—and moved his head just in time to avoid the downward strike. But the blade caught him on his right pectoral muscle—sliced through his shirt, the gauze, and took out a nice chunk of the tattooed 9 underneath.
The General let out a grunt but kept moving—ducked a sideward swipe to his head and then brought his fist up hard on Cox’s jaw. The young man cried out and staggered backwards—tried to swing the ax again—but the General caught his arm and hyperextended it at the elbow. A loud snap echoed through the kitchen, and Bradley Cox dropped the ax, howling in pain. The General grabbed him by the face and slammed him against the wall.
“I’m gonna kill you, Lambert!” Cox cried, slumping hysterically to the floor—but before he could recover, the General picked up the ax and swung it down hard. Cox raised his left hand just in time, and the General caught him on the forearm with the wooden handle. Another snap as the bones shattered, and the General brought down the ax again, this time on the young man’s right shoulder—chopped through his trapezius and split his collarbone like it was a stick of kindling wood.
Bradley Cox’s screams shook the entire house, both his arms useless now as he flailed about on the floor—but the General did not pause. He pulled out the ax and tossed it onto the kitchen table, the blood from the young man’s wound spraying his jeans as he picked him up by the hair and threw him headfirst down the cellar stairs.
Bradley Cox was barely conscious when the General reached him—but conscious enough, the General thought, to understand what was coming next.
“You will know him when he comes for you,” the General said as he dragged him down the darkened hallway. “You are part of the nine, and there is no turning back from your mission now.”
Chapter 84
Music—that song, “Dark in the Day”—and screaming. No. Not real. Something from a dream. Can’t see the pictures. Only silence now and big gaps of black behind me. Time. Moving forward. I have returned, but it’s raining….
Markham’s eyes fluttered open to a haze of yellow light. He was on his side; felt something hard beneath his right shoulder, and could hear the sound of running water.
Crappy hotel mattresses, he thought. Someone in the shower—Michelle?
He licked his lips and swallowed hard. His throat was parched and his mouth tasted like chemicals. He was about to reach for the glass of water on the nightstand, but in the next moment the pain kicked in at the base of his skull. He couldn’t touch it; couldn’t move his arm—his wrists for some reason felt glued together.
Groggily, he turned his head, and the yellow haze blurred into movement—into what looked like an arm and pair of buttocks pulsing out at him from the shadows.
What the hell is going on?
Then in a rush his vision cleared—his heart pounding instantly at his ribs as everything came back to him. The call from Schaap, the voice on the other end, the blow on the back of his head when he foolishly rushed out to his car.
He remembered it all.
Schaap, Markham thought. Where the hell is Schaap?
More body parts from the shadows. Yes, there, in the far corner of the room about fifteen feet away, Markham could make out a man’s muscular back; could see the water reflected on his flesh in the dim yellowy light.
The Impaler, Markham said to himself. The Impaler tricked me—
Suddenly, the man in the corner threw his head back and turned. Markham’s heart leaped into his throat as his eyes blinked shut. Surely he’d been caught, he thought—but the water continued to run and the sounds remained the same. He cracked open his left eye. In the shadows, he could see only a small portion of the man’s profile, the rest of his face obscured by his arm. He held a garden hose above his head, the water washing over him and down his chest. There was a large tattoo on that chest. Markham could see it clearly—what appeared to be two elongated rectangles, standing upright and side by side, one decorated with the number 9, the other with the number 3.
“His body is the doorway,” the Impaler had said on the phone.
The tattoo—a pair of doors! Nine stars in Leo, three in Leo Minor—
“I am the three, but you are the nine.”
His body is the doorway!
“Will you know him when he comes for you?”
Schaap! Markham cried out in his mind—but then the doorway on the man’s chest seemed to ooze something black—a thick line of goo between the 9 and the 3 that dis- appeared under the water, only to return again when the man hosed off his head. Markham could see a smaller gash through the top of the 9, too.
He’s wounded, he thought. Bleeding badly.
The Impaler turned his back again.
Daring to move only
his eyes, Markham scanned what little he could. Yes, he had to be in the Impaler’s workshop. The tools, the unfinished two-by-fours propped against the wall. And he was elevated—Tied down on some kind of workbench—but still dressed. That was good. That meant the Im-paler hadn’t started on him yet. That meant—
Then Markham saw the chains. He followed them from the pulley that dangled above the Impaler’s head, up through the ceiling beams to a winch on the wall next to the slop sink. The sound of the water traveling down the drain seemed suddenly amplified, and Markham understood all at once what the chains were for—felt his stomach flip when he imagined Andy Schaap dangling upside down, his blood draining into the floor. He’d seen it before—the Morales case, pictures of what the drug cartels did to their enemies—but that might not have happened. Schaap might still be alive. There was nothing in the autopsy reports about the Im-paler bleeding out his victims—
I’ve got to find Schaap!
Markham told himself to stay calm; if the Impaler knew he was awake he was a dead man. And as if reading his mind, the Impaler shut off the water and began to turn toward him. Markham closed his eyes—could hear movement, the Impaler toweling himself off, he assumed—then silence, followed by what sounded like masking tape being peeled and snipped from a roll.
His wound, Markham said to himself. He must be bandaging his wound.
More movement now—the Impaler dressing—and despite his terror Markham had to fight the urge to steal a look at the man’s face. Oh yes, he wanted to get a good look at that face so, so badly!
Markham felt a cool breeze rush past, and after a moment heard a clanging sound coming from another part of the cellar. He cracked open his eyes and quickly scanned his body. He was tied up, but not down to anything; he could roll over onto his back if he wished. Yes, he had to be in the Impaler’s cellar—the cement walls, the trickling sound of the blood and water running down the floor drain.
But what to do, what to do?!!
Footsteps approached again and Markham shut his eyes—another cool breeze and the sense of movement behind him. His mind spun furiously; he was starting to panic, felt as if at any second he would open his eyes and try to bolt—when all of a sudden he felt the Impaler’s arms slipping underneath his torso.
Markham’s muscles tensed. He thought surely the Im-paler had to have felt them tense, too—but a moment later he was being lifted off the workbench.
I’m to be next, he thought. Whatever the Impaler did to the others before he skewered them he intends to do to me. I’ve got to make a break for it!
No! cried the voice in his head. Stay calm! The Impaler kept the others alive for days. He will undress you to write on you—will most likely untie you, too. The window will be short, but you can surprise him if you—
Out of nowhere came a loud buzzing noise, like an old alarm clock, echoing throughout the cellar. Markham flinched, but at the exact same time the Impaler flinched, too. That’s what saved him, he realized, and the two of them froze together.
Nothing—only the Impaler listening, breathing—and then Markham felt himself being lowered back down onto the workbench.
Movement again, behind him, and after a brief silence Markham thought he heard talking coming from another part of the cellar. He cracked open his eyes and cocked his ear, straining to hear.
Another loud buzz, this one longer, and Markham flinched again.
“No!” a voice cried. “The nine is not complete!” A brief pause, then, “No, please, the doorway is not healed! You must not come through!”
Something else, inaudible, and Markham’s mind began to race with what to do next. He’s hearing voices, he said to himself. Paranoid delusions, borderline schizophrenic—the god Nergal behind the doorway on his chest! The temple at Kutha, the doorway to Hell!
Then came the sound of an animal growling, passing close, and quickly trailing off into footsteps—distant, hollow, bounding up a flight of stairs. The slam of a heavy door, then silence.
Markham didn’t waste any time. He sat up, wincing at the pain in the back of his head, and glanced around the room. As he suspected, he’d been lying on a large workbench; saw racks upon racks of more tools on the wall behind him—saws, chisels, all kinds of cutting instruments—but using them would be slow work with his hands tied together. Across the room, he spied another workbench covered with bottles and jugs and twisted tubes—distillery equipment, it looked like—as well as piles of books and an old phonograph with a stack of old records on top of it.
Then Markham spotted something on the other end of the workbench: a large mechanical grinding wheel caked with blood. Impulsively, he made toward it—didn’t pause to ponder where the blood came from—and jumped off the workbench. His feet were all pins and needles—he felt as if his ankles would buckle at any moment—but he steadied himself and reached the front of machine. He found the switch, but couldn’t feel it with his fingers—numb and unrespon- sive, wouldn’t have been able to grasp any of the smaller tools even if he had time. Markham had a fleeting premonition that the grinder was not going to work, followed by another that it would make too much noise if it did.
“Fuck it,” he whispered, and flicked the switch with the back of his hand.
The lights dimmed in the power drain, but the soft whirring was music to Sam Markham’s ears. He carefully laid his wrists across the spinning bristles and the rope began to shred. He hoped he’d be able to feel the wheel against his skin when it broke through. He was certain he could get his hands free, but what good would they be if he couldn’t use them when the Impaler returned?
Chapter 85
Cindy waited—stood listening on the porch for an entire minute—then rang the doorbell again. Her trip had taken her a half hour longer than she expected; she’d missed the driveway in the dark and drove fifteen minutes out of her way before turning around. Her fault—stupid mistake—but now she was sure she had the right house. She recognized Edmund’s old pickup and saw a light in the upstairs window when she pulled up the driveway.
He has to be home, she thought. The inside door was open a crack, and Cindy pressed her nose against the screen. Maybe he didn’t hear the doorbell.
How could he not hear it? asked the voice in her head. Such a strange sound, too. Like a buzzer on a game show or something.
Then she heard what sounded like a door slamming somewhere inside, and Cindy waited a moment longer.
“Edmund?” she called out, knocking. “It’s Cindy.”
Nothing. She took a deep breath, opened the screen door, and entered.
“Edmund?” she called again, her voice coming back to her in echoes as she closed the inside door behind her. The house was dark—the top of the stairs ahead of her, the rooms to her right and left, pitch black. But Cindy could see a dim light emanating from a room farther down the hall—at the rear of the house, just beyond the large staircase. Must be the kitchen, she thought.
“Edmund?” she said, heading toward the light. She got about halfway down the hall when suddenly a figure stepped out of the lighted doorway and into the shadows.
Cindy gasped, startled. “Edmund, is that you?”
A heavy silence—the figure just standing there, head jutting forward, shoulders hunched. Cindy could barely see him, but could tell it was a man. He stood looking at her sideways, his face completely obscured beneath the silhouette of his massive frame.
“Edmund isn’t here,” the man said finally, his voice deep and guttural. “And neither is the General.”
“I’m sorry,” Cindy said, confused. “I’m a friend of his—Edmund’s, I mean—from school. Do you know when he’ll be back?’
A burst of laughter—harsh and terrifying in its sudden-ness—and instinctively Cindy began to back away, her hand feeling along the wall.
“C’est mieux d’oublier,” the man said, and Cindy’s fingers found the light switch. Impulsively she flicked it, and the hallway sprang to life.
She took in everything in less tha
n a second: the yellowed wallpaper, peeling in spots; the handful of bright cream squares along the stairs where pictures once hung; the thick trail of what looked like red paint stretching out from the man’s feet and running up the staircase. And then there was the man himself. He looked like Edmund Lambert—his build, his jeans, his blue button-down shirt—but at the same time he looked like a completely different person. Edmund’s brother? Cindy thought for a split second. His hair was wet, matted and messy; and his face was twisted in a maniacal expression that had to be—
A joke. Yes, a voice in the back of Cindy’s head told her this had to be some kind of joke. Of course it was Edmund she was looking at, and in one moment she felt relief, in the next, terror when she saw the pistol in his right hand.
“What have you done?” she whispered absently—but her legs were moving again, backing her away toward the door.
“Ereshkigal,” Edmund said, stepping forward and baring his teeth.
Cindy’s eyes darted from the pistol to the trail of blood on the stairway then back to Edmund’s face. His eyes, she thought—those eyes that had once licked her own—No, she realized with horror, those eyes aren’t the same!
Edmund laughed again—a laugh that sounded to Cindy more like a growl.
“Ereshkigal will help us,” he said, tucking the pistol into the small of his back. He was coming toward her now, and Cindy could feel her heart pounding in her chest; could feel the fear there welling up from her stomach.
“But where is the boy’s mama now?” he asked, taking off his shirt to reveal a bloody white bandage on his chest. “Where is she?”
Edmund tore off the bandage and tossed it on the floor. Cindy froze when she saw the tattoo and the fresh blood running from his wounds to his stomach.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
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