But Myron had kept his ears open. Eventually, rooting through a trash can behind a diner in Hell’s Kitchen, he found Kevin Pierce. Pierce told him about a group of people who lived in the sewers and the subways. The Enclave, Pierce called them. Myron spent the day with Pierce. He was hungry and dirty just like everyone he knew. But he seemed calm. Toward the end of the day, Myron thought he had it figured out.
“You ain’t searchin,” he said to Pierce.
“Whaddya mean?”
“Well, ever’body else’s lost ever’thin but they’re tryin to get it back. They’re all bunched up and anxious.”
Pierce threw back his head and laughed, scratching the thick beard on his neck.
Then he told Myron about the Enclave.
And Mama Hodap.
Myron, who didn’t have anything else to search for, followed Pierce down.
So Myron went below and embraced what he knew he had always been. An under man.
He was introduced to Mama Hodap and she told him what he needed to do. He didn’t disagree with her.
She was the closest thing the Enclave had to a spiritual leader. Or any kind of leader. She took him to that disused utility room. She filled it with incense smoke and laughter and a sense of life Myron hadn’t felt in a very long time. Meeting her for the first time, he had been nervous. All the nervousness melted away when he looked into her soulful eyes and felt her calming touch. She had told him how he could be one of them.
You gotta contribute fore you can partake.
And she had told him what he needed to do. He was skeptical at first. He no longer took anything at face value.
She had given him a vision and the vision had become a kind of truth in his heart and he hadn’t doubted her since.
Even now, climbing up this abstract elevator shaft, climbing to a fate that might very well be his death, he didn’t doubt Mama Hodap. She spoke from an under place and that place held a lot more truth than the offices situated quietly in the tops of skyscrapers.
14.
He reached the top of the membranous shaft and crawled out. He hadn’t noticed any other openings along the way. It was designed to take him to this place. It was designed to take all visitors to this place.
But what was this place?
He emerged into a low, narrow hallway. He stayed on his hands and knees. There wasn’t any room for him to stand. There were no windows in this nightmare hallway. The only light came from the glow of that mucous substance. Toward the end of the hallway, he searched for an entrance to Chambers. He saw something that looked like an anus at the far end. That was probably it. He crawled along thinking he should be exhausted after his climb but he wasn’t. He still felt strong. He still felt powerful and he wondered if this was from the gods Mama Hodap had equipped him with or if it was from the woman herself. Or maybe it was something that came from inside him. Maybe his instinct for revenge and survival was stronger than he had given himself credit for.
Drawing closer to the anus door, he noticed the awful stench seeping from it. It wasn’t completely unexpected. When he thought of sliding through it, he gagged. He raised himself into a crouch and placed his hands palms together before inserting them into the center of the anus. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and sprang forward, hoping the sphincter wouldn’t constrict and trap him.
Finally thankful for the membrane coating him, he slid through effortlessly and ended up in a warped version of the previous Chambers reception area.
The same woman was still strapped to the receptionist desk.
Her skin was now a ghostly gray. Her clothes had been stripped off. Her sizable breasts fell to her sides. The ax he had used to chop down the door was stuck into her chest. Her dead eyes were frozen wide open with terror and a black tongue lolled from her mouth. Her legs were spread wide, dried blood crusting her sex. Myron’s stomach sank. It was the ax. He felt partly responsible for this. But he wasn’t the one who held the ax. He wasn’t the one who had plunged it down into the innocent’s chest.
Chambers was.
Would he still be in his office?
He turned to face the door, ready to make his final drive.
It wasn’t going to be that easy.
The door was guarded. Two men, maybe Steiner and Todd, with the heads of the dogs, watched Myron. The one on the left growled at him. The one on the right dropped to his hands and knees, his lean thigh muscles flexing.
Papa Legba opens doors for you.
Mama Hodap’s words came back to him but he still didn’t want to invoke the god to get through this door. He couldn’t help but think she had some other door in mind. This was still just a physical door and he had rapidly come to learn that all physical doors are made to be kicked down. He sidestepped quickly to his right and wrapped his hand around the grip of the ax. He yanked hard but it was firmly planted in the woman’s chest. He grunted and yanked again as the first dogman pounced on him, knocking him back onto the floor and clamping his teeth to his neck. His hand groped for the ax but found only air.
The dog certainly had the killer instinct.
And Myron should be on his way to death right now but knew he wasn’t. He’d made the offering to the Baron. Even better than a regular offering, it was a blood offering, however inadvertently that had been.
So let the blood flow.
Let the bullets fly.
Let the knives plunge and the teeth gnash.
With the dogman’s jaws still clamped to his neck, its head jerking back and forth to rend the wounds even wider, Myron rolled over onto the dogman. He clamped the jaws shut with his hands, squeezing with his new strength. He could feel the blood pumping out of his neck. It was blood he didn’t need. Not here, anyway. Until Papa decided to swing open death’s black door, Myron wasn’t going.
The dogman kicked beneath him, Myron’s blood filling its mouth.
He thought about the stock certificates being shoved down his throat and clamped the dogman’s jaws shut even harder. It gagged and tried to spit beneath him. Blood frothed out of its nostrils.
Myron wondered why the other dogman hadn’t attacked him from behind. Maybe it was afraid. Maybe it didn’t care. If they were Todd and Steiner, Myron figured they had been vicious backstabbers in the real world and didn’t know why they would be any less so here.
The dogman stopped twitching beneath Myron. Its eyes rolled back in its head.
When Myron stood up, he found out where the other dogman had gone. It was sniffing the crotch of the sacrificed woman. Even if it was part man, it still had the brain of a dog.
Good boy, Myron thought, as he finally managed to work the ax out of the woman’s chest.
“Stay,” he said, and barely managed to suppress a laugh.
The dogman continued to lick at the blood caked between the woman’s legs.
Myron raised the ax back over his head. He brought it down as hard as he could. The dogman had a thick neck. The ax severed the half closest to Myron. A torrent of blood sprayed out over the woman, some clinging to her pallid skin, some dripping down the strange bone desk.
15.
It wasn’t a door guarding him from Chambers’ office so much as more membrane. Thick and oozing from the boned frame. Myron clutched the ax tightly and stepped through the opening. The membrane stuck to his skin. He walked slowly into the center of the breathing room. The sensation was almost like being on a boat, rocking back and forth in gentle waves.
The room glowed brightly. It was strewn with cash, gold, stock certificates, and currencies from around the world. He almost didn’t see Chambers sitting on something resembling a throne made from bones roughly where his desk used to be.
Like in a dream, the thing sitting there looked nothing like Chambers, but Myron knew it had to be. He was naked. His skin stretched tightly over his skeleton, pale white but gorged with blood, giving him an almost rosy complexion. Dark red nails grew from his hands and feet. A sickly smooth pouch replaced his genitals. His eyes were smal
l and black.
And, it took Myron a moment to realize it, but Chambers was pulsing, his whole body expanding and contracting with the rhythm of a heartbeat.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Myron almost wanted to touch him just to make sure he wasn’t imagining it.
“What are you doing?” Chambers voice sounded like sandpaper gargling blood, but with the same gruff cadence it had before.
Myron thought about charging him with the ax, chopping him up until there was nothing.
But he couldn’t move. He was rooted in place. The membrane had thickened and become like a rope, clinging to his clothes, reaching into his clothes and adhering to his skin.
“You know what I’m doin,” Myron said. He felt stupid opening his mouth around this man. He felt small. Poor. Dumb. Uneducated. But he knew none of those things made him any less than this man.
Chambers chuffed out a laugh.
“I know what you’re trying to do but let me assure you: Many have tried and many have failed. You don’t know what you’re up against.”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“Is that so? Let’s hear it.”
“A monster.”
He coughed out a laugh again. “You wish it was that easy. You’re a simpleton. You don’t know what it’s like to become.”
“Become what? A monster?”
“A god.”
“You’re hardly a god.”
“You’re right. I can only aspire. But the gods will continue to give me power if I continue to serve them.”
“I don’t serve gods. Any gods.”
“Well, then you are even simpler than I thought. You’re used to the gods of civilization.” Chambers picked up some coins to his right and let them plink back down into the pile. “The gods of this. That’s what makes you so civilized. The gods you’ve known don’t know the meaning of chaos and survival within that chaos. The gods of civilization were made to be housed by churches and books. They are gods of convenience, there to serve the believer when convenient. It makes it easy to deny their existence. I haven’t seen any proof myself. But my gods are the old gods. The oldest gods in the cosmos. And getting some of their power is as close as any one of us will ever get to them.”
“The only god you serve is greed.”
“Greed? Greed for what.”
“Money.”
“Money? Hardly. Although my gods did create money. In order to collapse a civilization, you have to give it the tools to build itself so that people can forget about the old ways. So people can forget what it’s like to live in fear. Fear of their neighbor. Fear of the creatures in the night. Fear of starvation. You have built walls between yourselves and fear. And you let us build these altars to the gods. Our gods. And we found a way to turn currency into souls. We found out how to deaden them, eat them. And with each soul death, we move a little deeper into your world. And people like me, we are the hearts in these altars, moving the blood of our gods from hand to hand and taking it back and hoarding it when we need to. Tell me, Mr. Barnes, how’s your soul doing? Bet you still wish Joanie and what’s her face were around. Don’t be surprised I know all this about you. I knew when you called. I knew how you pleaded with the clerks. But none of that helped. It amused me, sure. I don’t know how many laughs you gave me. You lost your job. You lost your money. You lost your house. You lost your family. I can see inside of you. I can see how small you are inside. Now you’re just a pawn in someone else’s game and you’re trying to turn it into something more than it is. I think you got back to the fear. Might have even found some gods of your own, despite what you said.”
“It’s so much more than that.”
“Is it?”
Myron felt the membrane separate into something like tentacles, reaching up through his shirt and coiling around his neck, around the wound from the dogman. Myron felt no pain.
“Let’s be honest, Mr. Barnes. You’ve said you don’t serve gods so the only things you have left are life and death. You’re alive, playing the game, being a pawn for some nigger who lives in the sewer, or you can die and hope there is some afterlife to reunite you with your family. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Or you can follow me through this door.” Chambers motioned to the door behind him. It was the same door Myron had seen back in the real world, looking strangely anomalous amidst the bones and ooze. He’d wondered what was behind it then and he still wondered.
“What’s behind the door?”
“Behind the door is the world you left behind. So you can go back to that world and I can make you a very rich man. All that worrying about money you’ve done over the course of your life would be over. You can start a new family. You can still remember your old family, but you’ll have to start this new family just to show them how well you can provide for them. And I could give you the means to provide for them. You would have everything you need. You could give them everything they need. Your sense of worth would finally be restored.”
“In return for what?”
“Nothing at all. You will, of course, be serving my gods, but you already said you do not have faith in your gods so, really, what difference does it make?”
“All the difference in the world.” Myron raised the ax.
“You don’t want to do that.”
But he did want to do it. He could stand here and listen to Chambers talk for hours. Promise him things. That was how Chambers had gotten where he was today. Talking. Promises. Getting people to do things for him and offering what in return? Money? For what Chambers was asking for, money seemed a poor compensation.
Myron hoisted the ax above his head and threw it with everything he had before the membranous tentacles could wrap around his arms and restrain him. It sailed toward the pulsing heart of the old gods.
The ax struck Chambers in the shoulder and blood exploded outward. More blood than could possibly have been inside him. It spewed out in a slowly dying fount, covering the room, covering Myron.
The floor tilted beneath Myron. He thought about all those collapsed buildings around it and wondered if this one was collapsing too. Or maybe it was some kind of freakish earthquake.
The building lurched to the other side.
A deafening sound rumbled through the building, up behind the walls.
He reached down to begin tearing the tentacles away. Wrapping his hands around their slimy surface, he could feel the same breathing sensation he had felt since entering the place.
The breaths were further apart than previously.
He continued tearing at the tentacles, not knowing what he would do once he was free.
The building lurched again.
16.
The building was moving. Myron had to find a way out.
With each lurch, the treasure in Chambers’ office jostled around. The paper currency stuck to the membrane and blood while the coins and the gold clattered together with a happy jingle. The thickening membrane moved over Chambers, pulling him against the wall, cocooning him. The ax still jutted from his shoulder. The building moved with a slow gait. Myron wished there were windows. He wanted to see the absurd spectacle of this building lumbering down Wall Street, in between the crumbling ruins, trodding on the piles of dead bodies.
He pulled the last coil of membrane from around his ankle.
He moved toward Chambers. He pulled the ax from him. He looked at the heavy door set into the bones and the ooze. He wanted to open it. He wanted to see what was behind it. Would there be some kind of answer or just more nothing?
Myron chopped Chambers free from his cocoon.
He felt the building lift. The trotting gait no longer disrupted the office. Now he had a plunging feeling in his stomach and a feeling of weightlessness.
Was the building flying?
He slung Chambers over his shoulder.
Again he looked at the door. He turned the handle but it wouldn’t budge. It didn’t turn at all. Myron wondered if the handle was even real
. He thrust Chambers up higher on his shoulder so he could hold the ax with both hands. He drew it back and slammed it against the door even though he wasn’t sure it was made of wood. Wasn’t sure the ax would do any good.
It didn’t.
The ax shattered—metal and wood—and it felt like Myron’s hands shattered along with it. Deep vibrations rattled through his bones, reaching all the way back to his spine.
He would have to take his chances.
If this wasn’t the door Papa Legba was supposed to open then maybe he was making a horrible mistake. But he didn’t have any other choices.
He invoked the image of Papa Legba standing by the door. The deity looked at him as if to ask if he was sure this was what he wanted.
Myron nodded.
The door opened.
17.
What he saw beyond was swirling blackness. A dark night over New York or this other world he had fallen into. He walked to the edge of the door. The building was flying. Black water churned below him. The building had been flying but now it seemed to be descending. Chambers had said the building was an altar but could he have been wrong? Could he have been lying? Could the building have been the old god? Could Chambers have been the heart of the old god? And now the old god was trying to go home, to the depths of the ocean, back to some pre-civilization where chaos was the norm?
There were too many questions for Myron.
Perhaps he would ask Mama Hodap about them some other time.
For now, he had to get out of the building. Away from this dying god. He had to go through the door.
He clutched Chambers tightly and leapt through the door.
He felt himself falling rapidly through the rain, felt the water sting his face, saw lightning flash around him.
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