Another fifty feet and the whitewalls threatened to dig their own graves in the softer sand. I pumped the brakes and the Caddy slid to a stop. As far as I was concerned, one spot was as good as another for a funeral.
Outside, the rain had returned to a steady rhythm. Beach grass clawed the cliff like angry fingers, whipped by a wind that promised more violence.
It seemed inevitable. Violence, leaving pain in its wake So far I’d gotten off easy, with a rack of sore ribs and a bullet crease on one arm. But I wasn’t out of the woods just yet.
The undertaker’s trench coat wasn’t much of a fit, but at least it was dry. I slipped it on as I climbed out of the hearse. Then I opened the rear door and pulled Whistler’s coffin off the rolling slab that held it in place.
The coffin thudded onto the sand. It was heavy, but I managed to drag it around the front end of the hearse. There, in the glow of the Cadillac’s headlights, I opened it, glad that the whipping wind spared me the stink of Diabolos Whistler’s remains.
As far as I could see, the trip hadn’t done the old boy much good. Whistler still wasn’t showing any signs of life. His body lay twisted—knees cocked south, shoulders hunched toward the north. But Whistler’s head was the big problem—it lolled on his neck, frayed as a worn doll’s.
Parsons’s unfinished stitchery lay in a tangle on Whistler’s Adam’s apple like some horrible spider-web tie, while the undertaker’s threaded needle speared in the dead Satanist’s cheek as if it were a meaty pincushion.
I jerked the needle free and set to work. After all, a deal was a deal. I intended to keep my end of the bargain. I could only hope that Whistler’s shade would do the same.
Whistler’s corpse didn’t so much as twitch while I worked. I glanced at up at the bottle house, looming on the cliff like the last loose tooth in a skeleton’s jawbone. The bottles twinkled weakly and an orange glow was slowly swallowed by the blackening entranceway—a trick of light as the fire I’d built earlier died in the hearth.
Diabolos Whistler’s ghost was up there somewhere. I was sure of that. So were his daughters—Lethe and Circe—at least the part of Circe that I cared about.
I finished my preparations. There was no way I could drag Whistler’s heavy coffin up the twisting trail. Anything that was going to happen would have to happen here on the beach. I tried to rouse Whistler’s shade. My shouts rang in the night, but the wind brought me no answer.
I wondered if Whistler waited in the temple he had helped build with his own hands, watching for the first sign of the dark miracle he saw as his destiny. I didn’t doubt that Whistler truly believed his own prophecy, as did Spider Ripley and so many others who had surrendered themselves and their faith to the old man.
But faith could only take you so far. No matter what you believed, no matter what god you worshipped. Sooner or later you had to trust your eyes and not your heart.
For Diabolos Whistler and his followers, that moment was now. Whistler’s remains lay in a coffin like any other, a big metal box with a heavy lid designed to hide the truth. But the lid of Whistler’s coffin was open, and the rain beat down and made puddles of his hollowed eyes, spilling trickles that traveled his deeply lined cheeks like tears.
Behind me, I heard a sob.
I turned and saw Whistler’s ghost, that spiked collar of shadow still holding his severed head to his body like a twisted crown.
Our eyes met. For the briefest moment I saw everything Whistler hid there—the wounded pride, the hurt, the shame and the anger. All of it roiling inside a body that was as substantial as a child’s breath lost on the wind.
By the time the next raindrop struck my face, Whistler managed to mask his pain. He stared into the box that held nothing resembling a miracle, and his voice rang out as if he were preaching from his iron pulpit. “I have spent a great many years waiting for the dark one to choose His moment,” he said. “I can wait a little longer, if need be.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I kept my end of the bargain. Now it’s your turn.”
“Very well.” Whistler’s tone was dismissive. “Take what you’ve come for.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I grabbed a flashlight from the hearse and slammed the door, but Whistler only had eyes for his corpse. Even now, his faith refused to die. “It won’t matter what you do,” he said. “Very soon, it won’t matter at all. Take the child, if that is what you want. Take her and be done with it—”
“No!”
It was a single word, but it sounded like a scream, and it came from a thicket of beach grass near the trail. Lethe Whistler’s ghost crossed the hard wall of light thrown by the hearse’s headlights, a nightmare of bone and gore on stark display.
“He takes nothing,” Lethe said. “Not until we have what we want.”
Whistler’s gaze did not stray from his casket. “Satan will choose His own time, daughter,” he said.
Lethe stared at her father’s corpse as he rambled on. She was dead and I was alive, but we saw the same thing when we looked into Diabolos Whistler’s coffin—the rot, the haphazardly stitched neck—all the cruel rewards of a prophecy that would never be fulfilled.
Lethe had no more patience for her father’s words.
The moment had arrived, and she’d reached her own conclusion.
She said, “You lied, father.”
Lethe started toward me, cleaved cheekbones gleaming in the flashlight’s glow. “I don’t know what your game is,” she said. “I don’t know what’s between you and my sister and that little girl, but you’re not walking out of here, and you’re not taking her with you.”
“My bargain was with your father,” I said. “Besides, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“But I can do something to that little girl. I’ll finish the job I started, only this time I’ll rip her to shreds.”
“You’ll do nothing, Lethe,” Whistler commanded.
Blue irises flashed in her bloody face. “Quiet father,” she warned, “or you’ll go first.”
She started up the trail. The beach grass lashed her like long knives, like the deep pain of disappointment and betrayal that sliced her heart.
There was nothing I could do to stop her.
But Whistler could. A cold gust of wind blasted over the waves and the beach, and Whistler welcomed its gray embrace. His bristling cloak flared like a catclaw thicket come to life as he rose on the storm, and he closed on his daughter from above, gathering the cloak around her like a net of midnight, wrapping her in his unforgiving embrace.
Lethe fought him, and the sound was the scream of a hurricane. Bony gullies appeared in Whistler’s cloak as she struggled, scratching for freedom, tearing a window in blackness darker than midnight.
The wind tumbled them both. A vein of scarlet spouted from the shroud—Lethe’s arm, skinless fingers scrabbling a brutal path to her father’s spiked neck. Something spilled from Whistler’s wounds, something as dark and shiny as blood, and father and daughter were caught in a twister of it, a razored whirlwind of lashing nettles that sliced the dead deeper than the truth, so much deeper, slashing a relentless path until the only thing that remained was a tattered black vapor that whipped through the beach grass like a shadow fleeing the light.
The storm was the master now. It carried father and daughter into the night and past it, leaving behind the beach and the hearse and the boxed thing that would never move.
I stood alone in the rain.
I didn’t know where Whistler and his daughter had gone. I didn’t care.
I only cared about what they had left behind.
* * *
The little girl waited for me in Whistler’s ruined chapel, still hiding behind that cobwebbed cross. “I knew you’d come back,” she said.
“I always keep my promises.”
“Then you’ve got one more promise to keep.”
“What’s that?”
Circe smiled. “Take me away from here.”
Her delicate fi
ngers crossed through the cobwebs without rustling them, but I hardly noticed. I was so happy to see a smile on her face, so happy that she was safe, that I reached out for her hand without thinking.
Our fingertips came together like magnets. Circe’s hand passed through mine. There was nothing I could do to stop it.
The chill of her fingers sent an ache through my bones. I curled my fingers into a fist. Blood pounded in my hand, but there was no warmth in it.
And there was no warmth in the little girl’s eyes. No more. It was gone.
“You lied to me,” she said.
“No.” I swallowed hard, knowing that it was too late, but going on all the same. “I didn’t lie. I didn’t mean to—”
Her hand passed through mine again, and the coldness froze the lie in my throat.
“It’s true,” she said. “I’m dead. I’m a ghost.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I explained. “That’s why I didn’t tell you the truth. That’s why I lied.”
We sat there in silence. The only sounds were the guttering torch and the girl’s sobs, but it seemed I heard the pounding of my heart.
“You shouldn’t stay here,” I said finally.
“I won’t. I’ll go back to the bridge.”
“That’s good.”
I took the torch from the wall and started up the stairs. We left the bottle house together and crossed the beach to the trail that led into the woods.
No breadcrumbs there, but we both knew where the trail led. To a special place, a place where the little girl belonged.
I wished I could go there with her.
Circe felt the same way. “Please come with me,” she said.
“Not now. There’s something I have to do. But I’ll be back.”
She looked away quickly, but not quickly enough. I saw the doubt in her eyes.
“Don’t tell me any more lies,” she said. “All I want is the truth.”
I nodded.
The truth was all I wanted, too. One woman could give it to me. Her name was Circe Whistler.
PART FOUR:
I BURY THE LIVING
I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.
—Shakespeare
King Lear
Act III, Scene VII
1
Cerberus’s teeth gleamed in the harsh glow of the hearse’s headlights.
But I wasn’t looking for a bronze dog. I flicked a lever near the steering wheel and the headlights flared to bright, blinding the guards lurking in the shadows near the rear gate of Circe’s compound.
Two men with black robes and very large guns. They looked like Spider Ripley’s brothers, and maybe they were. Maybe they were waiting for Spider to show up in a big black hearse.
The men exchanged glances and a few words, standing there like a couple of bowling pins.
A seven-ten split.
It was an easier pickup then I’d had at the funeral home. I slammed my foot against the gas pedal. Cerberus’s bronze teeth savaged the Caddy’s left front fender as I clipped the statue. Gunfire pitted the windshield. But it was too late.
I picked up the spare.
* * *
The guards disappeared under the Caddy’s front bumper, and I crashed through the electronic gate on whitewalls stained red with blood.
Only a brick footpath on the other side, but it would have to do. The main entrance to Circe Whistler’s estate was heavily guarded, with another gate in the way. The odds of making it through that gate alive—and down the winding driveway, and into the mansion itself—were short.
I needed a direct route, like the one I’d used at the funeral home. This was it. Past braided vines and ferns and orchids and hanging fuchsias, Cadillac hearse on brick staircase, Detroit steel screaming against wrought iron railings, fenders kicking up sparks that rained down on the dark windshield like dying fireflies.
Hi-beams splashed black water. The swimming pool was just ahead. I cut the wheel sharply, tires digging through a patch of orchids like four wild dogs, and the hearse went into a power slide.
Driven by too much weight. I’d misjudged badly, and all I could do was bail.
Shoulder first, I landed hard in the churned earth. The Cadillac rushed on without me. I didn’t have time to watch it go. Flaring taillights painted my hands the darkest red as I pawed the soil, trying to get up.
A quick glance beyond the taillights as I rose.
Men sprinted around the side of Circe’s mansion, drawing guns as they ran.
I was almost up, but almost wasn’t going to cut it.
The hearse hit the water with a thunderous slap.
A curtain of water rose from the pool, and Circe’s guards were lost behind it.
Just another second and I’d have my feet under me.
Gunfire ripped through the wall of water.
My right foot slipped on a pulped orchid and I dropped to one knee.
Water splashed down on me, pasting lank white hair to my shoulders.
Flashlight beams seared my face like lightning strikes. Circe’s men recognized me. The first one whispered a prayer. The second dropped to his knees.
The third squinted at me. Raised his pistol. Said, “Wait one fucking minute—”
I shot number three twice in the chest. He fell forward as I rose, pistols bucking in my hands while I cut down his companions.
The guards’ guns clattered against the cement. Two splashes in the pool. Two dead men bobbing like Halloween apples.
A white arc of light pierced the deep water. A sinking flashlight. I watched it hit bottom.
Four more guards turned the corner of the house. For a second, they thought they knew who I was. A second was all I needed. I killed them where they stood.
* * *
Ghosts stumbled into the woods, and writhed on the cement patio, and swam like drowning things in the black water of Circe’s swimming pool.
I ignored the spirits of the dead. Moving fast, I scavenged a couple of pistols from the fallen guards, along with extra ammunition. Then I tossed a deckchair through one of the glass doors and entered Circe’s mansion.
So far, I’d been lucky. The guards at the gate had hesitated when they saw the hearse, thinking that I might be Spider Ripley. Their counterparts at the pool had hesitated for another reason—they thought that I was a dead man reborn.
I had only fooled Circe’s men for a moment, but in that moment they had mistaken me for her father. Not that I looked like Diabolos Whistler. But I was wearing his double’s face.
I’d carved it off the undertaker’s skull before leaving the Owl’s Roost Mortuary, and now I wore it like a monster mask. Long white hair hanging halfway down my back, my mouth surrounded by a dead man’s bristling goatee—the horrible disguise wouldn’t fool anyone with 20/20 vision and an ounce of sense, but it was enough to freeze a true believer’s circuits for just a second.
That second was all I needed to get the upper hand.
I sucked a breath through the undertaker’s dead lips as I crossed the dining room. I was sure that Circe was in the house—the property wouldn’t have been so heavily guarded if she had pulled up stakes and run. And Circe Whistler wasn’t the kind to run.
Inside the mansion, silence hung heavy in the air. No frightened voices, no bodyguards shouting orders. If any guards remained, they weren’t showing themselves.
If they were here, I’d take them the way I took the others. I was sure of that. I had two pistols, extra ammunition clips in my pockets, and a K-bar knife jammed under my belt. As long as I could hide behind a dead man’s face, as long as I could count on a single moment of hesitation, the odds were on my side.
Pistols gripped tightly in my hands, I stepped into the long shadows of the living room. I paused as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The large windows that faced the Pacific came into view. Leaden clouds above a black horizon, silhouetting furniture…and a bonsai tree on a low table…and a spiked wrought iron staircase twisting upwards.
Upstairs…that was where I wanted to go.
A staccato slash of raindrops rattled against the windows.
I drew a deep breath.
Held it in silence…lost it with a single sound. A scrabbling of claws near the bonsai tree. A throaty growl as a black shadow launched itself in my direction.
Fangs ripped across my shoulder, chewing a path to my throat.
* * *
The guard dog drove me back into the dining room.
My pistols thundered, and three .45 slugs ripped the Doberman apart, and the dog hit the dining table in sections.
A wet red fire raged over my right shoulder. The dog’s teeth had torn flesh and muscle, and I was bleeding badly.
But I couldn’t slow down. I hurried through the doorway, toward the spiked, twisting staircase.
That sound again, like wild castanets—dog claws on polished oak.
Two guns in two hands. Instinctively I raised them both, and my wounded shoulder exploded in agony.
I stumbled toward the windows. The room spun and threatened to go black. I hesitated for a moment, just to steady myself, but it was a moment I couldn’t afford to waste.
Because Circe’s guard dogs didn’t hesitate for an instant. They closed on me from different directions, three of them, the scent of my blood burning in their black nostrils.
The dogs didn’t mistake me for Diabolos Whistler.
They were smarter than that.
They scented a man’s blood, not the blood of Satan.
The first dog jumped at me, jaws stretched impossibly wide.
I clenched the pistol in my left hand and jerked the trigger as fast as I could. A .45 slug severed an angry bark as the Doberman’s black head exploded in midair. Teeth and bone chattered against the hardwood floor and the dog thudded dead at my feet, blood pumping over my shoes as the second canine launched itself.
Black lips peeled over barbed white teeth.
Wildest Dreams Page 14
