They left the small residential area, and the concentration of houses trailed off, replaced by sandy hills and scrub brush. The road twisted up and around a hill, then led to another T-intersection. On the left side, there was only one building, a stately, old two-story with a crumbling sign that read mccormick hotel. On the right side, a dirt road stretched straight and wide between two rows of buildings. Wooden sidewalks, covered by awnings and balconies, studded with hitching posts, fronted the buildings. Signs read guns, saloon, sundries and dry goods. The rotting carcass of a stage coach sat next to a rusted hand-pump and the remains of a water trough.
They walked past a newer metal sign, brown with white letters, which read old prosperity town, ashford mine and ashford mansion state historical park, below which, an additional sign had been added—closed indefinitely due to lack of funding. no trespassing. to donate, please contact the prosperity historical society.
Billings said, “Welcome to Old Prosperity. Back before the state park closed, this was a big tourist setup. They sold beer and sarsaparilla at the saloon, and there was a restaurant and a little show at the theater. There was a souvenir shop down on the corner and even one of those fake gunfights twice a day. There was a mining museum, and they were working on reopening a mine shaft for tours. They even used this as a set for a couple of western movies back in the fifties.”
Atop the hill, Ashford Mansion loomed. The redbrick Gothic structure looked oddly out of place in the desert landscape, with steep, slate-shingled roofs, gables, and carved stone gargoyles. The whole grounds were surrounded by a spear-pointed, wrought-iron fence. The mansion hunched there on the hill like one of the gargoyles adorning it, as if watching the army of zombies with grim satisfaction.
Alex looked up at the mansion and whistled. “Was this guy from Transylvania, or what?”
“New England,” said Billings. “Old money. Rumor was, before he came here, he got run out of his hometown for witchcraft.”
At the end of the block, exiting the other side of the Old West-style street, the buildings ended. The road came to an intersection. One branch went straight ahead into the desert, marked by another brown and white sign that read historic ashford mine. The other branch switched back sharply to the left, beginning the climb up the desert hill. That sign read historic ashford mansion and old prosperity cemetery.
They continued up the switchback to the left, climbing the hill toward Ashford Mansion. As they walked up the slope, Alex turned his head to look back at the old town below them. A sea of zombies filled Old Main Street and stretched out for a quarter mile behind them.
“Shiiiit . . .”
The zombies surrounded them in all directions, leaving just enough room for the captives to walk through the middle. Emily still held the pistol to her own temple. The zombies on either side of her bowed and cringed, wringing their hands as they shuffled along, whispering words of love and devotion.
At the back of the line, the zombies keeping pace with the rest of the captives eyed them hungrily, snarling and snapping their teeth, lunging and pulling back like caged animals.
The road forked again, one path going straight ahead to an old cemetery, the other curving up the hill to the mansion. The cemetery was surrounded by a rusted, waist-high fence. The old marble slabs, carved into crucifixes and weeping angels and sleeping lambs, tilted at crazy angles, corners worn round by time, lettering nearly gone. One giant crypt stood apart from the rest.
“There's the final resting place of the man himself.” Billings nodded toward the crypt. “Or would have been, if there was anything left of him to bury. I heard some distant relatives from back East funded it.” He nodded toward an ancient, gnarled and dead tree. “According to legend, that's where they hung the old man. Or tried to.”
They turned right and trudged up the hill. The great wrought iron gates in front of Ashford Mansion hung open, beckoning them in. Flanked on all sides, the captives marched up the cobblestone drive, between rows of dead trees, past empty brick planters and a dry fountain. They continued on past the front doors of the mansion, great wood slabs with iron knockers in the shape of gargoyle heads holding rings in their mouths.
A herringbone-brick path, covered by a now-bare arbor, led around to the back of the mansion, eventually branching off to weave through what used to be a beautiful garden, but was now just empty planters, dry fountains, and forlorn statues. Desert shrubs and grasses had already gained a foothold in the bare, dry soil.
Ahead, on the other side of the garden, sat the chapel. It was built of the same dark-red brick as the mansion, with a steep roof topped by a narrow steeple. Gray stone steps led up to polished wooden double doors flanked by tall, narrow, stained-glass windows. The procession of zombies stopped at the front doors. Two of the undead stepped up and grabbed one door handle each. They pulled the old oak doors open, grinning hideously, and made a hole for their prisoners to enter.
“Come in . . . come in . . .”
Inside, the stained-glass windows bathed the chapel in deep reds and blues. Two short rows of pews flanked a center aisle, down which a stripe of red carpet covered the hardwood floors. At the rear of the chapel stood a raised dais with an altar, a podium, and hundreds of burning candles. The crucifix was notably absent, evidenced by a discolored spot and few twisted nails still in the rear wall.
At the altar stood two figures—Dan Sinder and the priest. Behind them stood twelve zombies, six men and six women, lined up neatly. They leered at Emily, unconsciously mimicking Sinder's movements.
Sinder wore a black tailcoat over his button-up shirt and sweater vest, topped by a moth-eaten silk top hat that sat on his head at a rakish angle.
The priest was dead. His eyes were clouded, half his face ripped off and hanging loose, revealing the leering, blood-flecked skull beneath. Blood had stained his white collar deep red. He groaned hoarsely. On the altar in front of the priest sat an ancient tome of a Bible, torn in half.
“Before anyone gets any bright ideas,” said Sinder, “or itchy trigger fingers, consider this—you are surrounded by about five thousand of the living dead. They know nothing but blind hunger. My power, my very will, is the only thing keeping them in check at this moment. If you kill me, they'll be on you in an instant. You'd have no hope of surviving.”
Nobody responded. Emily reluctantly stepped forward.
Sinder grinned and spread his hands wide. “Ah, there's my blushing bride. You look radiant, my dear.”
Emily responded by holding the pistol tighter against her own skull.
Sinder continued on, oblivious. “Of course you remember Father Thompson? He and I have had some longstanding theological differences, but I think he's finally come around to my point of view. He's agreed to do the ceremony. Isn't that marvelous?”
The zombies filed into the room behind the prisoners, lining the walls and filling the rear pews. The room filled with the reek of rotting flesh.
“Keep your pets outside, Mr. Sinder,” said Emily, “and I'll put my gun down.”
Sinder looked genuinely hurt. “Don't you trust me?”
Emily laughed hysterically. “Trust you? You lied through your teeth to me for the past four years! You murdered the whole town! You're . . . you're a monster! Of course I don't trust you!”
Sinder's face hardened. He shot a condescending glare at her. “Someday you'll see. I only did what I had to do so we could be together. You weren't ready. You weren't ready for the truth.”
“I swear to God, Mr. Sinder, I'll blow my brains out right here.”
Sinder raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Very well, no need for dramatics. But the wedding party stays.” The undead bridesmaids and groomsmen stood still while the rest of the undead filed back out the front doors. Tom closed the doors and threw the deadbolt.
“I see you redecorated the place, eh, Dan?” Billings eased himself into the front pew on the right.
“You mean the crucifix? Yes, I removed the graven idol of the false
God. Isn't it strange that Belden Ashford even had this chapel constructed? I don't think his religious beliefs exactly fell in line with Christian dogma, either. But I suppose then, as now, one had to keep up appearances.” He gestured toward the rows of empty wooden pews. “Come in, sit down.”
“Weird kind of Christianity you got here,” said Alex, as he settled into a pew.
“That's because it's not Christianity. I obey God, not the Christ. I'm cleaning up the Christ's mess.”
“So, let me get this straight,” said Josh, “you're saying that you're better than Jesus?”
Sinder smirked. “If you want to put it that way, yes. More or less. Like Jesus, I was chosen by God, risen up, given powers beyond those of mere mortals. The only difference is that I am fulfilling my purpose.” Sinder picked up the mutilated Bible from the altar. “Here's my religion.”
Billings nodded. “You tore off the New Testament.”
“Precisely. My God is a God of vengeance, the God that razed the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, that rained down plagues upon Egypt, that drowned the world in a deluge for its sins.” He paused and smirked again. “Besides, I do seem to remember a story or two about Jesus raising the dead.”
Alex added, “I never did much truck with religion, but even so, I can't say I remember hearin' anything about Lazarus eatin' nobody's face.”
Josh raised his hand.
“Yes, Josh?”
“What about, 'Thou shalt not kill?' Isn't that in the Old Testament? How about, 'Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt?'”
Sinder answered, “And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, sayeth the Lord of hosts.”
Josh smiled. “Will ye speak wickedly for God? And talk deceitfully for him?”
Sinder scowled. “I didn't bring you here for a debate. Don't think you're special, that you have the right to challenge the will of God. I'm only letting you live because I made a promise to Emily. But that doesn't mean I'll simply let you go. Not yet. Not that you could stop what I've set in motion, but of course, it doesn't pay to leave loose ends. You'll be fed, sheltered, and cared for until the rest of my mission is done. It won't be a . . . hospitable world for you, a few days from now, but I wish you all the best. You'll have as good a chance as any of the other sinners out there.”
Rachael said, “Dan, I know you had your disagreements with people, but this? This is insanity.”
Sinder gestured toward the stained-glass windows. “Look out there at the world. That's insanity. Look at the state of the world. The people have lost their way. Islam is sweeping the planet. Atheists grow in number every day as people follow the false God of technology and humanism, and turn away from the Lord. Pagans worship their demon gods openly, shamelessly. And Christians? They're the worst. Singing kumbaya around camp fires? Rock concerts? Summer camps? Their churches are more like dance parties, like that filthy festival out in the desert. Hate the sin, not the sinner? Tell that to God, when he commanded the Israelites to destroy Canaan, when his champion gave the carcasses of the Philistines to the fowls of the air. How could I ignore God's command? The world needs to be cleansed. The slate needs to be wiped clean. God called out to me. He commanded me. I couldn't ignore my destiny.”
Alex said, “I gotta say I'm impressed. I mean, don't get me wrong, you're still crazier'n a shithouse rat, but I'm impressed. Hard to believe just one man could do all this. You got all this from a couple library books?”
Sinder smiled contemptuously. “Hardly. The books I found in the library were only the start. Proof of concept, if you will. The best I could manage with them were parlor tricks, glamours, simple things, like the homunculus that little idiot paraded around school.
“But I knew that it worked. I knew then that the rumors about Belden Ashford must be true. The books that I found were tantalizing, but there wasn't enough information there to do the incredible things of which Ashford had been accused. I couldn't understand how Ashford had done so much with so little! I concluded that there must be more. I joined the Prosperity Historical Society, and soon I had unfettered access to his mansion. It took me months of diligent searching, but eventually I found the secret passages in the mansion that led me to Belden Ashford's hidden laboratory. His real library. His tools. Even then, very few people could have done what I've done. The knowledge contained within those books was the start, but even then, it was cryptic. It took me years and years of careful, disciplined study. I didn't have teachers to ask or websites to browse.”
Alex nodded attentively, and Sinder continued. “I figured it all out myself, applying my own knowledge of the sciences. But oh, my excitement! I was rediscovering an entire new branch of knowledge, reuniting it with its long-lost cousin. I can scarcely imagine what the ancient magicians and alchemists, the authors of these books, could have achieved if they'd known just the fundamentals of modern chemistry, let alone the mastery of the subject that I've achieved.”
“Like what sort of stuff are you talkin' about?” said Alex. “I mean, aside from the zombies.”
“The dampening field covering the town, for example, was a trick of my own devising, a combination of ancient knowledge and modern technology.” Sinder pulled a device out of his shirt which hung around his neck by a cord, a bizarre amalgamation of electronics and organics, bone and hair and circuit boards, a crazy mishmash of technologies. “It started its life as a cellular phone, but now . . . now it's something more. The military would give a pretty penny for this sort of capability, don't you think?”
Billings rolled his eyes. “Dan, you know that, in the Bible, they stone people to death for doing magic? I'll never cease to be amazed at your capacity for cognitive dissonance. You just believe whatever makes you feel good, and then you filter reality to meet your expectations. I mean, look at this. You've taken your disaffection, your hatred for humanity, and your obsession with . . . with a teenager, a student, and you've built this fantasy around it that justifies every single thing you want to do. It's pathetic.”
Sinder laughed contemptuously. “Says the man who believes that the earth is fourteen billion years old.”
Billings threw up his hands. “For fuck's sake.”
“I still don't get how you can call this science,” said Tom. “I mean, I believe in aliens and Lizard People conspiracies, and even I think you're nuts.”
Sinder's eyes lit up. “Ah, but it is science! How can it not be? Consistent, repeatable results are the very foundation of science. That's what I found in Ashford's library. Follow the recipe exactly, and you get the desired results. Every time. This . . . this ancient knowledge is exactly the same. Just as surely as a gram of hydrogen contains six-point-oh-two-two times ten to the twenty-third atoms, the systems described in this book hold up to the most rigorous examination. Just like chemistry. It even follows its own rules, its own principles. Arbitrary, sometimes, but no less arbitrary than atomic orbitals or charge states of isotopes. We can't forget that alchemists were the first chemists. This is simply a forgotten branch of the same discipline.
“Why, look at it this way—how can I communicate my wishes directly to one of my servants, with only a thought, over a distance of miles? Magic? Absurd. This isn't a card trick, it's quantum physics. It's particles existing in two places simultaneously . . . the ancient magicians had stumbled onto quantum mechanics without even realizing it, like Ben Franklin and his fabled kite.”
Emily shook her head and raised her arms in frustration. She said, “But what you're doing . . . it's evil, Mr. Sinder. Look outside! If that isn't evil, then I don't know what is! Can't you see that?”
Sinder smirked. “Evil? How can it be evil? It's simply mixing ingredients according to a recipe. It's no more evil than baking a cake. I'm merely harnessing natural principles of which we were previously unaware. This is only science, and science is no more or less evil than the person wielding it.”
Jos
h laughed. “The person wielding it is you, and you're evil.”
Sinder rubbed the red stone on the ring he wore on his right hand. “This power was given unto my hands by God, and I use it to enact his will.”
Josh cast a calculating stare at Sinder's hand. His eyes narrowed. “Wait . . . what's with the ring? That's new. You weren't wearing it last night.”
“Oh, just a bauble,” said Sinder, “a memento of Belden Ashford's. Like the hat, I thought it appropriate, since I'm carrying on his work.”
Josh laughed contemptuously. “It isn't even you, is it? It's the ring. Holy crap, that's the oldest trick in the book. You found a magic ring. You want us to think that you're some kind of super wizard, but all you did was stumble onto somebody else's toys. Somebody better than you. Can you even do any of this without the ring? Did you have it in your pocket the whole time?”
“Don't be absurd,” said Sinder. “My power comes from God Almighty, not some cheap trinket.”
“Then take it off,” said Josh, with a smug grin.
The zombies growled. Sinder said, “Enough of this nonsense. It's time to begin the ceremony. Sit down, Joshua.”
“What if I don't?”
The zombies of the wedding party bared their teeth. Sinder snarled, “It's a little late for heroics, boy.”
“Josh,” said Emily, “please. This is the only way. Just sit down.”
Reluctantly, Josh took a seat.
The minister's corpse looked from bride to groom with a hideous rictus. It spoke in a horrid, rasping voice, hampered by the missing parts of its face, slurring and softening the consonants. Drool dripped from its mouth and onto the ruined Bible.
“Each will be like a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, like streams of water in a . . . dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land . . .”
Sinder beamed proudly and held out his hands. After a moment's hesitation, Emily grimaced and placed her hands in his.
The dead priest droned on. “Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever . . .”
Alex Rains, Vampire Hunter (Book 2): Hell Night Page 21
