The Impaler sm-2

by Gregory Funaro

  Damn right, crazy OCD bitch. Talking to yourself in your car at four a.m.—

  “Out, out, damned spot!” Cindy screamed, her hands clawing at her tangled black hair—when suddenly in her mind she heard George Kiernan shout, “That’s it!”

  Chapter 58

  The General thought Edmund Lambert handled himself very well with Ereshkigal; for if in fact Cindy Smith was Ereshkigal, the General mustn’t allow himself to be seduced as the Prince had been all those years ago. True, that had been the beginning of Nergal’s love (if you could call it that) for the goddess; but it had also been the end of his rule in the land of the living. And it was to the land of the living that Prince Nergal wished to return; to once again take his throne in the sun and be worshipped.

  But the Prince needed the General to return as much as the General needed the Prince. The General was the last of the doorways, and through him not only would Nergal become a living, breathing god again but also the General would be able to travel back and forth through the doorway to Hell. The General still wasn’t clear how it would all work in the end—such things were still beyond him—but it would work. He was sure of that. The Prince had revealed it to him in his visions; and before that, the equation had told him so, too. 9:3 or 3:1, depending on how you looked at it.

  Yes, it was how you looked it that was the key. And thus, in order to determine exactly how Ereshkigal fit into the equation, the General figured that the answer must lie in how he looked at her as well. He thought about this long and hard during the ride home from Greenville; but only when he pulled past the crumbling fieldstone columns at the head of his driveway did the answer, in a flash of insight, finally come to him.

  Of course! he thought. Ereshkigal had to be part of the equation if one were to look at things from the other side of the doorway! Only with Ereshkigal could the equation of 3:1 be balanced in Hell—the General, his mother, Ereshkigal on one side of the colon, the Prince on the other. And perhaps the colon itself was a symbol for the doorway, which meant the numbers indicate their relative positions after the Prince’s return.

  But how would this work out in the end?

  No need to worry about it now, the General thought giddily. No, the most important thing was that Ereshkigal did fit into the equation after all. Indeed, the answer was so obvious that the General actually began to laugh at how stupid he’d been for not seeing it earlier.

  “But I still need to be careful,” he whispered to himself as he entered the farmhouse. The concept of careful was inherent to the equation itself. The General already knew, for instance, that he would need to bring the throne through the doorway for his own protection. That was part of the legend. And so, he thought, he would also need the throne to protect his mother and carry her back while the Prince was busy with his return. That was the plan; that would be tricky enough—but now there was Ereshkigal, too. He would need to keep his meetings with her and his mother secret until the very last moment. The Prince was jealous of anyone talking to his princess; but even more so, the Prince was jealous of allegiance to anyone but him.

  After all, wasn’t that why the Prince took Edmund Lam- bert’s mother from him in the first place? So there would be no one left for the boy to worship other than the Prince?

  At first, when the General began wearing the lion’s head, he’d hoped that—once the Prince saw how loyal he was—he would eventually grant Edmund Lambert’s mother freedom from Hell. Prince Nergal had never done such a thing be-fore—no, he was greedy and covetous of his souls—but perhaps, just perhaps, he might make an exception in the General’s case.

  But as time went on, more and more the General began to think that the Prince would never allow such a thing. He needed an alternate plan; and even though he still wasn’t sure how it would all go down in the end, with the introduction of Ereshkigal the General felt confident that the Prince would have to yield to the 3:1 himself.

  Perhaps that was written in the stars, too, the General thought. Perhaps that was why the Prince never wanted to talk about Cindy Smith.

  “No use getting ahead of myself,” the General whispered, and he went upstairs and showered. It would be daylight soon, and the Prince would be sleeping if he wasn’t already. The General had consulted with him before heading off to the cast party, upon which the Prince gave no indication that he was aware of Edmund’s secret meeting with his mother and Ereshkigal. Quite the opposite, the Prince’s visions indicated that he was excited about the cast party, and wanted the General to report back to him.

  And so, once he was clean and dry, the General sat naked by his bedroom window until the sun was up and he could see no more stars in the sky. That meant the Prince was asleep. The General wanted to sleep, too, but first he needed to consult with his mother and Ereshkigal; needed to look for them in the swirling colors and confirm that his reading of the 3:1 was correct.

  He went down into the Throne Room and stood before the lion’s head, listening until he felt like Edmund Lambert again.

  Mama? he called out in his mind. Mama, are you there?

  “Yes, Edmund,” he heard her say after a moment. “I’m here.”

  Edmund removed the Prince’s head from the shelf and slipped it over his own. For a moment nothing happened; then all at once he felt as if the air was sucked from his lungs and his body was surging forward.

  Thhwummp!—a rush of brightness—and the doorway was open.

  There she was again! Radiant, floating in the swirling colors. She was alone this time, coming toward him, arms outstretched and smiling.

  “C’est mieux d’oublier,” she said.

  “I’ll never forget,” Edmund replied, taking her hands. He was about to kiss her when—flash-flash—his mother’s face changed. A low moaning seemed to rise up all around him, and suddenly Edmund realized he was staring into his grandfather’s eyes. “C’est mieux d’oublier,” the old man said, deep and guttural. Edmund was about to speak when—flash-flash—everything became the god Nergal.

  “WHERE IS SHE?” he roared—hovering, wings spreading, teeth gnashing.

  “No!” Edmund cried—flash-flash—and the moans became screams, louder and louder as Nergal grew until he filled the entire sky—a black orange sky above hordes of chanting soldiers; a smoking battlefield with lines of the impaled stretching as far as the eye could see. Edmund could smell it and taste it and feel it—

  “WHERE IS SHE?”

  Now Edmund could see the souls of the sacrificed rising toward Nergal’s mouth, snaking and twisting their way around his monstrous fangs like tendrils of cigarette smoke. And there was his mother among them, screaming and pleading for help!

  “Mama!” Edmund cried—but she could only call her son’s name one last time before slipping through the god’s teeth and disappearing into his throat.

  “You can’t take her again!” Edmund screamed, but the Prince flapped his wings and knocked the young man backwards onto—

  The cellar floor? Something hard and cold on his naked back. A glimpse of the throne through the lion’s mouth, of the headless body seated before him and—

  No, he was up and moving now. Through a maze—a dark maze that brought him to the temple doors at Kutha.

  “WHERE IS SHE?”

  Now a whirring sound and wind—the god’s breath! Edmund could feel it and smell it! A hot smell like burning pennies—

  And then he was in the workroom, staring through the lion’s mouth at the grinder on the workbench.

  It was turned on to high.

  “Please, no!” Edmund screamed, his voice coming back to him in echoes both hollow and deafening.

  “WHERE IS SHE?” the god bellowed inside the lion’s head, and Edmund was suddenly both at Kutha and in the workroom; could feel his hands on the temple doors and on the workbench at the same time as he stared through the lion’s mouth in disbelief.

  “Please, no,” he sputtered—his actions not his own, the scene before him terrifying in its inevitability as he saw the tem
ple doors crack open and felt the wind of the grinder’s wheel against his skin. He was hovering above it now, his chest only inches from its spinning steel bristles.

  “I’m sorry, please, I—

  The temple doors swung open as the grinder bit into his flesh. A bright burst of pain passed before his eyes, and Edmund howled in agony—his cries matched only by the Prince’s incessant “Where is she?” and “C’est mieux d’oublier.” It was all one now inside the lion’s head, as was the white liquid fire squirting from the abyss beyond the doorway. It splattered him like acid milk and then turned red as the grinder tore open the flesh between his pectoral muscles. The blood spattered everywhere, and Edmund felt a hot wetness run down the backs of his thighs. And as the spinning bristles, like thousands of little teeth, chomped farther and farther down the center of his torso, incredibly, amid his pain Edmund registered somewhere that he’d shit himself.

  Thhwummp!—a rush of darkness and yellowy light, and now there was only the workroom through the lion’s mouth. The grinder continued to whir somewhere behind him, but Edmund was moving again—legs trembling, chest screaming as the blood ran down his stomach and soaked his geni-talia. The cellar began to spin; and in what seemed like a leap forward in time, Edmund found himself on the cellar stairs, sobbing and panting uncontrollably as the shit and blood trailed off behind him. He felt weak, but at the same time as if he was being dragged upstairs by an unseen hand.

  He ended up in his grandmother’s parlor, kneeling beneath the mirror that hung above the fireplace. The General had recently tilted it downward so he could sit naked on the floor and admire the doorway.

  But now it was Edmund Lambert who gazed up at his reflection. And when he saw himself kneeling there with the lion’s head atop his shoulders; when he saw the 9 and the 3 that Billy Canning had so intricately tattooed on the temple doors split apart by a thick red gash, the young man knew with chilling certainty that the General had severely underestimated the Prince.

  “WHERE IS SHE?” Edmund cried in the voice of the Prince himself—but, in the gaping bloody maw that was to be his doorway to Hell, the young man could not find his mother anywhere.

  Chapter 59

  It was almost 2 p.m. when Andy Schaap emerged from the wooded subdivision in Wilson. He drove about a half mile then pulled into a Bojangles’ parking lot, where he crossed another name off his list and rested his head back, wondering what Sam Markham would think had he known what he was up to.

  Indeed, all day he’d been expecting his partner to call him. Schaap had decided not to lie to him; would say that he was following up on his lists but wouldn’t go into detail unless Markham asked him. Of course, Schaap had no way of knowing that Markham had fallen asleep in his childhood bedroom early that morning and would sleep a vampire’s sleep until the sun went down. But Schaap would’ve understood; he was tired, too. The last couple of days had been exhausting for both of them.

  Names.

  Christ, there were so many from the cemetery—over three thousand that his computer program had linked to Iraq War veterans living in and around the Raleigh area. The program had already weeded out servicemen who still lived on base; and thus Schaap focused first on men not only who had served in units with lions or lionlike creatures as their symbols but also who lived in areas remote enough for the Im-paler’s operation.

  Schaap gazed down at the list in his hands—just over one hundred names. A much more manageable number, yes, but still daunting for one person. And so far he’d come up empty—had knocked off only nine names that day and met the tenth with a groan when he saw the address was located over an hour away near Fayetteville.

  Schaap thumbed through a series of pages and found another list the computer had generated by cross-referencing the cemetery records with a list he’d received that morning from the U.S. Army. The program had also ranked the names by unit symbol and location.

  He ran his finger down the page until he found a name in the city of Wilson.

  “Here we are,” he said. He leaned over to the passenger seat and checked the address against the satellite imagery on his laptop. “Sergeant Edmund Lambert. 101st Airborne, 187th Infantry. Eagle and a seal-tailed lion. Nice, Wilson boy. That’ll make you number ten and then we’ll call it day.”

  Schaap programmed Lambert’s address into his GPS and drove away—decided against a snack of Bojangles’ chicken and biscuits and vowed to treat himself to a Dubliner steak when he got back to Raleigh.

  After all, he’d earned it.

  Chapter 60

  The General awoke on the parlor rug. He’d collapsed there on his stomach, unconscious for hours inside the lion’s head. He pulled it off immediately and sat up, the gash on his chest crying out as he tore himself free from the caked blood and shit beneath him. His wound began to bleed again, but the General only sat there, staring up at himself in the mirror amid the mess that Edmund Lambert had created.

  Oh yes, the young man had certainly made a mess of things. But how could he have guessed that the Prince would’ve awakened during the day? And how could he have guessed that the Prince would find out about his plan?

  No use wondering about it now, he thought. The Prince was powerful, and he found out. That’s all that mattered. And now it was up to the General to prove his loyalty once again and set things right.

  However, as the General sat there thinking, it occurred to him that in all of the Prince’s ranting and raving he never showed him visions of Ereshkigal. Perhaps he was still unaware of how she fit into the equation. Perhaps, because she too was a god, she had the power to cloud—

  Again, no use wondering about it. He needed to square things with the Prince. The Prince had shown him mercy and allowed him to live, which meant perhaps he saw Edmund’s communication with his mother as a temporary slip. Yes, the General thought; the Prince still needed him as much as he needed the Prince. He could still hide his thoughts about his mother and Ereshkigal. And as long as he didn’t communicate with them through the doorway again, perhaps there was still hope.

  The doorway.

  The General looked down at the bloody gash between the numbers 9 and 3. The doorway was cracked open, but something was wrong now; something needed to be fixed. The General could feel this instinctively. He picked up the lion’s head and went back down into the cellar. The grinder was still whirring, and he stepped in the workroom and shut it off before heading into the Throne Room.

  The smell of rotting flesh was strong in here today, but it did not bother the General. He stood there, gazing down at the headless corpse on the throne, then back and forth between the carving of the temple doors and the bloody tattoo on his chest. Impulsively, he slipped the lion’s head over his own and waited for the rush of light that told him the door was open.

  Nothing happened.

  It was as he suspected, the General thought, removing the head. The doorway was broken now. It had lost its power, most likely from a combination of Edmund’s use of it during the day and the Prince coming through it to control Edmund’s actions. But the General couldn’t be sure. There was still so much about the doorways that he didn’t understand. The gash on his chest told him so. It was a message from the Prince as in the old days. A wound that needed to be healed between them; a gap that needed to be closed between the 9 and the 3.

  Yes, the General thought. The Prince required a new doorway. That would heal the wound between them and set the equation right again. That would prove to the Prince that the 9 and 3 were together again.

  As the General returned the lion’s head to its proper place, he felt a wave of remorse pass through him. He hoped the Prince, wherever he went during the daytime, could feel how sorry he was. He assumed he could; for the Prince and the General were tied together in the stars. Always had been, and both of them were in too deep to turn back now.

  What was the line from Macbeth that Bradley Cox said so poorly? “I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as
go o’er.”

  Macbeth. Bradley Cox. Part of the equation? Everything connected?

  There was something there.

  Flash-flash—A memory? A dream from the night before?—and suddenly the General understood why the Prince had wanted him to go to the cast party.

  Bradley Cox.

  The Prince had wanted Bradley Cox—the self-worshipping actor, the vain and promiscuous sinner. That had to be it. But the young man named Edmund had let his recklessness and his obsession with Ereshkigal get in the way. And now it was too late. Now, if he were to take Cox as a soldier, because of their public confrontation, the authorities would focus on Edmund first.

  Or would they?

  The General knew from his previous consultations with the Prince where he desired the next soldier to be sacrificed. And surely, the authorities would never find him there. Plus, the General could make it look as if Cox had disappeared; could make it look as if he committed suicide or perhaps drowned in the Tar River while swimming drunk. Yes, the General thought, as long as the authorities didn’t find Brad- ley Cox’s body they might never connect his death to Vlad the Impaler. And even if they did, the General and the Prince would be long gone by the time they figured it all out.

  It made sense—but the General needed to think about this. It was all coming at him too fast. He couldn’t be sure anymore—he had grown too dependent on the doorways for confirmation of the Prince’s messages, needed time to sort it all out. Perhaps Cox should be the doorway itself. Perhaps—

  The gash on his chest cried out, and the General understood. He was wasting his time guessing. First things first: he needed to begin with cleaning up his mess.

  The General left the cellar and went up two flights to the upstairs bathroom. He turned on the shower and stepped inside. His wound stung painfully under the hot water, but the General gritted his teeth and took it—washed himself thoroughly, then stood there thinking until the hot water ran out. The cold felt good on his skin, helped numb the pain in his chest and stomach. And when his mind had cleared somewhat, the General toweled off and bandaged himself with some gauze and medical tape he’d originally purchased to help his tattoo heal. How ironic.