The Way of Sorrows

by Jon Steele

  “You don’t think Krinkle sees that? You don’t think I saw it when I met you on the Paris-to-Lausanne train?”

  “Then why?”

  “You think we’re trying to kill you?”

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the game?”

  Karoliina leaned into him. “Look into my eyes, monsieur, and listen to the sound of my voice. Krinkle does what he does because he has no choice. Me? I do it because I believe in your kind, I will die for your kind. Perhaps it might be best if you get beyond being as fucked-up as you are from your undefined metaphysical bullshit and realize I’m trying to help you.”

  “To do what?”

  “To not fall under the weight you are carrying, to not give up on the world. Because without you, every soul on this planet will be lost forever.”

  Harper laughed a little. “Bit of an epic stretch, isn’t it, mademoiselle?”

  “Is it?”

  “I’d say so. Besides, giving up on anything would require my making a choice. I can’t do that.”

  “Krinkle says you made a choice once, that you changed the course of human history by making it. It’s why you were resurrected before the cathedral job.”

  Harper took a long hit of radiance. “I believe the term is ‘awakened,’ mademoiselle.”

  “I meant ‘resurrection.’”

  “There’s no such thing.”

  “And you thought there was no such thing as Hell until you went there and rescued Katherine Taylor.”

  Her voice registered as absolute truth. He looked up at the sky. There were fast-moving clouds coming in from the west and crossing the face of the moon. Each time another cloud passed, there was another face looking down on him.

  “How much does Krinkle know about me?”

  “More than most.”

  “How?”

  “He got into Astruc’s files on you long before HQ got ahold of them during the Paris job. He read through your apparitions in paradise all the way back to 70 anno Domini.”

  That one hit Harper like a .416—crack.

  “That’s funny,” he said.

  “Funny how?”

  “Because earlier tonight he failed to mention it while briefing me on all things anno Domini from 67 to 73. Oddly enough, year 70 fits dead in the middle.”

  “So?”

  “Nothing’s a bloody accident in paradise, mademoiselle.”

  “Then I guess you’ll have to ask him.”

  “I guess I will.”

  Harper stared at her. He couldn’t get a read on the manner of the dream catcher’s thinking. Where the hell was she going with this drip, drip, drip of intel? Was she going rogue? Was she trying to warn him of a setup? Was she a traitor? He checked over his shoulder, scanned the locations where snipers were holed up. So far there were no laser threads lining him up. He looked back at Karoliina.

  “Does Inspector Gobet know the state of play just now?”

  “It’s Inspector Gobet’s world, we only live in it.”

  Harper smoked, ran her intel so far. One: The cop in the cashmere coat and the roadie were working a clandestine operation almost two thousand years old. Two: The roadie was the agent provocateur; the cop was pulling the strings from behind a door marked “Plausible Denial.” Three: Harper was the sleeper in the middle without a clue, and just now the dream catcher was staring at him as if he were a thing of wonder. He put it together. This meet wasn’t about spilling intel from the cop or the roadie; it was intel from her.

  “What about you, mademoiselle? What do you know about me?”

  “As of tonight, the works.”

  “The works.”

  “Joo. And I wanted to tell you before I reported it in. I figure you deserve to know. And I had some interesting help receiving the intel.”

  Harper nodded toward the belfry. “The new one, Ella, she was your interesting help.”

  “In part.”

  “Sorry?”

  Karoliina tossed her japa mala beads at Harper. He bounced the beads in his gloved hands, caught a scent of sandalwood.

  “They’re warm.”

  “You should have been here a few hours ago—they would have boiled water.”

  “I take it that is unusual.”

  “You could say that. Those beads are older than dirt. How they found their way to me is a wonderful tale, but maybe we’ll do that one later. Bottom line: When a dream catcher needs to explore someone’s dream, that someone breathes over the beads as they sleep. Different dreams affect different beads, combinations and sequences of how the beads are warmed reveal the dream to the catcher.”

  “And when the beads boil water?”

  “Beats me, it’s never happened before. But I have a theory. It has to do with the nature of reincarnated souls, one soul in particular.”

  The words popped hot.

  “Those are my words.”

  “That is so. You said them to Krinkle on the altar square of the cathedral after Ella saved Astruc with the lantern. You wanted to ask Ella about one particular soul she said was in the nave, a soul she said was talking to her from the shadows.”

  Harper ripped back on his timeline. He saw the girl holding the lantern, refusing to surrender it to him, telling him he was too weak to say the words, telling him that’s what he said . . .

  “For Christ’s sake, Ella, no one is here. No one is talking to you but me.”

  “Not you talking . . . Marc Rochat.”

  Harper blinked himself to nowtimes. His eyes locked on the patch of stones to the right, just under the belfry, where the lad hit the ground and died two years ago. For half a second, Harper saw him lying there.

  “She imagined the lad was in the cathedral, she imagined the lad was talking to her.”

  “He was.”

  Harper shook his head. “The girl was juiced.”

  “Wrong.”

  Harper tossed the beads back to Karoliina. “Bollocks.”

  She hooked the beads with the index finger of her right hand and they looped in a circle. She kept them looping, faster and faster. There was an undulating sound, like ancient voices speaking in all the languages of the world. It spread over the esplanade, reflected off the stones of Lausanne Cathedral, rose into the dark; next stop, the stars. The dream catcher grabbed the beads tight, and the ancient voices stopped cold. Harper was impressed.

  “You know, in another age you would have been burned at the stake for a stunt like that.”

  “I was. A few times.”

  “All those voices?”

  “Me, down through the ages.”

  Harper thought about it. “The lives of your soul were never redacted from one incarnation to the next. You’re the same consciousness you’ve always been. Lucky you.”

  “Not really, but that’s what makes me a dream catcher,” Karoliina said. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s a big secret.”

  Harper took one more hit of radiance. He dropped the electronic fag into his coat, rested his gloved hands in the pockets.

  “All right, mademoiselle, seeing as you’re an expert on mystical experiences beginning with the letter r, what’s your theory on the nature of reincarnated souls? One soul in particular?”

  She looked up, scanned the predawn firmament above Lausanne Cathedral. She pointed to a bright point of light rising in the southeast.

  “A binary star equals two stars bound by a shared gravity while orbiting a common center. Like that one over there, that’s Sirius.”

  “I know what it is. What’s it got to do with Ella?” Harper said.

  She looked at him. “Binary star, binary soul.”

  “You’re not seriously suggesting—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything, I’m giving you a fact. Marc Rochat’s soul is alive and well within Ella. And he’s got another message for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Via Dolorosa.”

  “The Way of Sorrows.”

  “Joo.”r />
  “What about it?” Harper said.

  “He says you need to walk it one more time.”

  ii

  The bearers raised the container high as they entered the Great Hall of the Two Hundred. It was draped in a black sheet and appeared to float cloudlike through the immense interior of the hall. The gilded gothic vaults and rows of supporting marble pillars sparkled with the candlelight of ten bronze chandeliers marking the procession’s path to the throne. Members of the court standing to either side of the hall bowed as the bearers passed. Two rows of priests came next, chanting in low tones:

  “We call to You, Oh Lord of Earth, God of our Souls;

  We submit to Thy will and beseech You to receive us.”

  A muffled bell tolled nine times, and the priests chanted:

  “You who have come from the ages beyond the ages;

  We worship You and we pray, Do as Thy wilt with us.”

  Their voices echoed through the hall and circled the pillars and were consumed by the nine bells again. At the end of the hall, beneath a scallop-shaped dome holding the Star of All Knowledge, was Komarovsky. He sat on a throne of gold atop a marble dais of six steps. He watched the procession approach from behind his dark glasses. At his knees were the four women of Vladivostok, abducted to pleasure the Rus. Komarovsky had found the women pleasing and of good breeding stock, so he took them for his own amusement instead. The four women were dressed in black chiffon gowns, sheer enough to reveal their nakedness beneath. They licked and sucked at Komarovsky’s potion-laced fingers. The potions rushed through their blood and washed over the dopamine receptors in the nucleus accumbens regions of their brains. Waves of rapture came over them; they murmured and begged:

  “So good, never so good.”

  “More, give us more.”

  Komarovsky dipped his hands into the jade fonts standing to the sides of his throne. He soaked his fingers in a viscous liquid, then held his hands above the women. Fresh drops of supreme pleasure fell into their mouths. They received it as communion and shared it with one another in ravenous kisses. When they felt their souls begin to separate from their flesh, they licked and sucked at Komarovsky’s fingers again. The women gazed upon him from the depths of the trance that bound them together as one wanton being. When Komarovsky blessed them with a glance, the women were overcome with gladness and cried out:

  “Lie with us and devour us,

  oh magnificent Lord!”

  “More, give us more.”

  Then did the new chief physician enter the Great Hall of the Two Hundred. He was dressed in resplendent robes of red and gold as he carried the scepter of his office before him. The court bowed to him, too, for they feared him greatly. He alone had survived the night of long knives by slaughtering the entire privy council to assume the role of Komarovsky’s most trusted advisor. The chief physician was followed by fifty virgins abducted from around the world as his personal gift to the court. They swirled and swayed and their sheer white gowns flowed about their forms. Like the four women of Vladivostok, the fifty virgins were chosen for their beauty and had been induced into the same state of rapture; their lips were wet with mating potions. They carried silver trays holding hypodermics for the members of the court, who received them with quivering hands. Through these needles flowed the Divinity’s gift of supreme pleasure. For this was the Sacred Night of the Frost Moon, when the sacrament of communal mating would be offered to them. Then would they ravish the flesh of the virgins and implant their seed into them. Receiving the hypodermics, the court prayed.

  “So shall our seed mingle with our Lord’s;

  And a new race shall be bred among men.”

  Then came the chanting voices of the priests.

  “For thou art worthy, our Lord and God,

  Of all glory and honor; For by Your will

  Is the world made ours, now and ever after.”

  Then the nine bells and all the court calling out their praise again.

  “Lord, we salute the Highest!”

  As the procession came closer, Komarovsky nodded to his chamberlain, who was nearby. The servant stepped down to the main floor and stopped at the marble altar set in the middle of the Great Hall. The altar was sloped at an angle of 120 degrees, and when the bearers rested the container on it, all the court watched with much anticipation. There were rumors throughout the court that the time of their Divinity’s judgment upon the world was near. Another gesture from the chamberlain and the fifty virgins fell to the floor.

  Komarovsky raised his left hand and there was the howl of four winds and shadows rushed from the corners of the hall. They engulfed the virgins and they were swept away to the place of mating. The priests knelt before the throne in two rows, creating a passage of honor to the altar. They chanted in low tones.

  “Thy name is holy.

  “Thy kingdom is come.”

  “Teach us, Lord, that we may do as Thou wilt.”

  Silence veiled the hall as Komarovsky rose from his throne and approached the altar.

  “Very soon we will set the beasts of ignorance and fanaticism loose in the world, and they will mate with the beasts of fear and greed. Then there will be born such monstrous creatures to feast on the blood of the innocent that all the world will be terrified.”

  The court was breathless. Ages upon ages they had worshipped him, and he had favored them with untold wealth that yielded unimaginable power over the minds of men. And now, he would favor them with the fulfillment of an ancient promise. A promise first sworn to them when they first took the forms of men two and a half million years ago. And he said to them in those days: “Behold, we will choose for ourselves wives from among the children of men. We will beget for ourselves children, and they will be the instruments of our power over the souls of men.”

  Komarovsky pulled the black sheet from the container. The lid was opened by an unseen hand, and the court saw the small boy inside. He lay as if sleeping, still connected to the breathing apparatus, still clutching the small toy hammer in his right hand. Sighs and whispers echoed through the hall . . . the child of the prophecy, the child of the prophecy . . . Then perfect silence as Komarovsky touched the glass lid, lovingly, as if touching the face of the child within.

  “Behold the child delivered to us by the womb of the whore who rots in Hell. Behold her benefaction to us. It is a good gift, a fruitful gift. For as her child is slaughtered on the Place of the Skull, so will all hope of human salvation in paradise be lost. There will be no new life, there will be no evolution for these creatures. We will sit in final judgment over a world that we have fashioned in our own image; a perfect world of gods and slaves. Now come the days when we will glean the wheat from the chaff. Those who have loved us according to our pleasure will drink from the tree of our knowledge. Those who have sought that forbidden knowledge from beyond the stars will be cast down with the whore and condemned to our eternal torment. Oh, we will hear them cry out. Oh, we will hear them call for the man of signs and wonders to save them. And their cries will delight us . . . for the man of signs and wonders will be no more!”

  A roar of praise filled the Great Hall of the Two Hundred.

  “Lord of Earth!

  He will not rise again to poison the world with the virus of his heresy!

  Lord of the universe!

  He will not deny us the triumph of our divine creation!”

  As one, the members of the court ripped open their robes and injected themselves with the Divinity’s gift of supreme pleasure. They trembled, their eyes rolled to the backs of their heads . . . so good, never so good . . . They fell to their knees and prostrated themselves before their One True God.

  “Lord, we salute the highest!”

  EIGHTEEN

  i

  Harper climbed down from the train at Vevey station and walked outside. He stared at the buildings and road beyond the parking lot. Having never made his way to the clinic on his own, he had no idea which way to go. He didn’t even know whic
h street the clinic was on. He was scheduled for a ten-thirty appointment to have the bioskin gloves on his hands changed. He was to be collected at his flat in Lausanne and driven to the clinic by Inspector’s Gobet muscle, Mutt and Jeff. That was the plan; that’s the way it was always done. No one was authorized to enter the clinic of their own accord. But after his predawn meet with the dream catcher on the esplanade of Lausanne Cathedral, just after she turned back to the belfry with “I should get back to Ella” and left him standing there with a no bloody way expression on his mug, Harper thought, Sod this for laughs. He marched down Escaliers du Marché, double-timed it through Lausanne, and caught the 05:46 Intercity to Vevey. He had arrived four hours, forty-two minutes early for his appointment. The bloody sun wasn’t even up.

  “Swell.”

  He flashed previous trips to the clinic. Driving the lake road from Lausanne into Vevey, passing the Vevey station on the left and continuing on the main road until reaching the intersection of Hôtel des Trois Couronnes and whatever street it was. Go left one block to a small square. There was a small church on the corner. Next to the church was a nondescript five-floor building that people wouldn’t notice unless they were looking for it. Mutt and Jeff would drive into an underground parking lot and, Bob’s your uncle, he was there. It was just a matter of going up a lift to the second floor and being delivered into the hands of men in white coats.

  “Got it.”

  He headed for the main road. Rue du Simplon it was. He walked at a fast clip, passing closed shops and offices. Somewhere a boulanger was at work and there was the smell of freshly baked bread. He came to the Trois Couronnes. It was a nice-looking joint set behind a high wrought-iron fence. A doorman in full, five-star regalia stood on the portico. He kept an eye on the Mercs, Ferraris, and Bentleys arranged around a neoclassical fountain that made gentle splashing noises. Harper took a left, found the church on the corner. Église Sainte-Claire it was called. But it wasn’t a working church anymore; it was a performing arts center. Currently onstage: Samuel Beckett’s En attendant Godot. Une pièce de théâtre de l’absurde, the advertising placard read. Harper stared at the words.