by Gideon, John
Hannie Hazelford was more than a thousand years old, one of the last members of the Sisterhood of Morrigan, an order dedicated to ridding creation of the kind of evil that had invaded Greely’s Cove. At Whiteleather Place, somewhere in its black lower echelons, lived a specimen of that evil, guarded and served by a sorcerer whose name was Hadrian Craslowe, himself old beyond belief. The evil had reached out into the community of Greely’s Cove in order to feed, to strengthen itself on the provender of human flesh, to procreate and inflict another of its kind upon humanity. It had commandeered the body, mind, and soul of a tragically impaired little boy named Jeremy, subjected him to execrable ceremonies and rituals in order to transform him into a steward, like Craslowe. Jeremy would serve the newborn offspring, just as Craslowe served his master.
Sickened as he had been by the story, Robbie would not have dreamed of refusing Hannie Hazelford’s plea for his help. Though newly converted to the Old Truth, and lacking even the status of a rank novice in its practices, he could be a valuable ally to her. He did, after all, possess the Gift. While facing the Monty Pirtz-thing and struggling to free himself from its clutches, he had discovered a new dimension of that Gift, a new power that he could use to defend himself and other innocent humans from the predatory evil of Whiteleather Place. He was no longer an aging, helpless cripple.
Their first goal, Hannie had declared, must be to find and destroy the newborn, and the key to accomplishing this, she’d been certain, was Jeremy. This would be no small undertaking, because although Jeremy was a mere slip of a boy, he already possessed awesome powers that Craslowe had transplanted into him from his own feral mind. Jeremy, no doubt, had driven his own mother to suicide, using those powers to stretch her sanity beyond the snapping point, subjecting her to hair-raising demonstrations of his evil magic, planting abominable thoughts and urges in her mind. He had become a dangerous creature in his own right. Hannie had concluded that the safest way to locate him and track him was through the scrying mirror, hoping that he would lead her and Robbie to the newborn.
Suddenly the old witch began to tremble. The table rattled, causing the pewter candle holder to vibrate against the wooden surface. Robbie stared at her and wondered if she were in pain, whether his imagination or a trick of the candlelight was giving a soft, greenish glow to the Kabbalistic symbols carved in the block of wax, upon which the scrying mirror sat. Low coughing sounds came from Hannie’s throat, and her body stiffened.
Robbie himself felt a tremor of psychic energy, and within the space of three heartbeats his mind was aswirl with images. At the very center of the gestalt display was Jeremy, and someone was with him, someone very old. On the periphery were fixtures like candles, heavy books and ponderous furniture that Robbie had never seen before. He knew that this was Whiteleather Place. The old man at Jeremy’s side, who Robbie could sense was Craslowe, was talking, giving advice, issuing warnings. Somewhere in the distance Robbie got an impression of someone searching, someone who was near panic, whose heart was full of dread, and Robbie’s mind was drawn to him. It was Jeremy’s father, Carl, whom Robbie had never met except in the story told him by Hannie. Carl, too, was with someone else. In an old car. They were cruising the dark neighborhoods of Greely’s Cove, searching for Jeremy—but for different reasons, it seemed, although Robbie could not be sure, because the focus of the scrying rippled and the scene was beginning to move. Something was happening...
23
Mitch Nistler parked his old El Camino next to Cannibal Strecker’s Blazer and trudged through the sharp night air to the front door of the crack house. He knocked tentatively on the splintery wood and waited for the door to open, which it did. But not until a dingy curtain had moved aside briefly in one of the front windows.
“So, it’s you,” said Stella DeCurtis, who was spiderlike under a sleeveless jumpsuit of leathery black. The flesh of her arms was nearly as white as her fissile hair. “Well, don’t just fucking stand there. You’re letting all the heat out.” She turned and wandered back toward what had once been the kitchen of the tiny house but had since become the production room of a crack factory. Mitch followed, pulling the door closed behind him. Corley the Cannibal sat in a plastic lawn chair with a beer in one paw and a cigarette between his lips, watching the Bob Newhart Show on a portable TV. An electric space heater glowed nearby.
“It’s Mister Wonderful,” said Stella, by way of announcing Mitch, “on his weekly mission of mercy.” She plopped down in an empty lawn chair and lit a joint.
“Hey, what’s happening, Marvy Mitch?” bellowed Cannibal, popping his chewing gum loudly. “Want a beer or some—”
His stony eyes grew large as they took in the sickly condition of Mitch Nistler, who stood small and stoop-shouldered under the glare of the bare bulb in the ceiling, looking fishy-white and dazed.
“Jesus H. Christ, what happened to you? Go a couple of rounds with a cement mixer or something?”
“I haven’t been feeling very good lately,” answered Mitch, coughing painfully. “I don’t know, maybe it’s the flu.”
“Well, you look like a scoop of shit. Maybe you should knock off a few days’ work, rest up, maybe even see a doc about that fuckin’ rash all over your face. I can’t afford to have my main mule rotting away before my very eyes!” Cannibal thought this worthy of a belly laugh.
“That’s something I need to talk to you about, Cannibal,” said Mitch when the laughter had stopped. “As of last Friday, my job was history. I’ve been fired. On top of that, my old boss is also my landlord, and he’s throwing me out of my house—says he wants to fix it up and sell it. He wants me out within thirty days.”
Mitch studied the worn linoleum and scuffed at it sullenly with the sole of his shoe, hating himself for the fact that he had even come here, for the fact that he was cowering before this felonious slimeball like a slave before his master. The horrors he’d undergone during the past weeks, particularly in the past few days, had not freed him of Strecker, had not changed the fact that he was still Cannibal’s throwaway, and this angered him.
“I guess it means we’re going to have to split the sheets,” he continued, glancing up first at Cannibal and then at Stella. “I’m going to have to leave town, get another job somewhere. There’s nothing for me around here, that’s a cinch.”
Cannibal rose out of his chair, went to the fridge, and pulled out a brew, which he tossed to Mitch.
“Hey, little man, let’s not give up so easily. You’ve got friends, remember? If you ask me”—which Mitch had not, but this mattered little—“you’re better off without that stinking job. I mean, who in the hell wants to pump blood out of dead bodies for a living anyway? And it’s not like you don’t have any cabbage coming in—as long as the crack market holds up.”
“But I can’t stay in this town,” Mitch protested. “Nobody would rent to me, not after Kronmiller throws me out. He knows everybody in Greely’s—”
“I said you’ve got friends, Mitchie, and one of them is me. I’m not going to let you get thrown out in the street.” The big man took the final swig of his beer and crushed the can with one hand, then arched it into a cheap plastic garbage can that stood in a far corner.
“Y’know, this is funny. Me and Stella were just talking to Luis”—the mere mention of Laughing Luis Sandoval, the crack baron, caused Mitch to blanch—“about how good business has been. There’s thousands of little high-school pukes out there, even junior-high pukes, who can’t seem to get enough of our product. We sell out our whole fuckin’ inventory like three hours after it hits the streets, and the very next day it’s a mob scene of pukes, hittin’ on us for more—no matter that half their crackhead friends are lying sick somewhere.” This was so funny that Cannibal had to laugh again, but he recovered quickly.
“The bottom line is this: We’ve got to step up production, maybe double or triple it. That means we’re talkin’ two, maybe three trips a week into Seattle for you. We’re also talkin’ serious cabbage, Mitchie. Wi
th seven hundred and fifty a week you can live anywhere you want, you get my drift? And you can use this place until you get something better.”
A wave of despair swept over him as Mitch glanced around at the little kitchen with its glut of drug paraphernalia. Accustomed though he was to living in a dump, this place would be a new low. His guts jittered as he remembered the conditional promise that Jeremy Trosper had given him on Saturday night, which seemed a horrific millennium past: “You will survive, even prosper.” Fuck a bald-headed duck, was this what the kid had meant by surviving and prospering? Living under the thumb of Cannibal Strecker, putting up endlessly with insults and abuse, dancing to a maniac’s tune and enduring the contempt of that she-snake, Stella DeCurtis? “Fail me, and I promise you a death that’s horrible beyond words, beyond your worst nightmare.”
It was this final thought that brought Mitch back to earth. He had other obligations tonight and little time to engage in fruitless argument with Cannibal. There was feeding to be done.
“Well, I—uh—I guess my problems are solved,” he said, causing Cannibal Strecker to grin hugely. “I should probably start packing up my stuff, get ready to move in and all that.”
“Yeah, the sooner the better,” said Cannibal, clapping his slave on the shoulder. “But first things first. You’ve got a delivery to make.”
He turned as though to head for the refrigerator, then whirled with bull whip speed and drove a hammerlike fist into Mitch’s midsection, plunging the little man against the wall with a bone-jarring thud and knocking his beer can to the floor, unopened. Mitch’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets as he went down, crumpling forward into a fetal ball. He landed on the nasty linoleum, where he writhed and choked and yawned for air, certain that at last he was dying. Strecker’s mighty hands found wads of his jacket, hoisted him back up, and slammed him into the wall again, detonating a blast of pain in his spine.
“Cannibal, no!” screamed Stella DeCurtis from across the room, and Mitch could scarcely believe that she was intervening to spare him more agony. “For shit’s sake, don’t touch the filthy little faggot! Do you want to catch whatever he’s got?” So much for that idea. “I’m warning you, Cannibal, you can forget about stuffing your chubby in me unless you put him down, and I mean right now!”
Cannibal was breathing in adrenaline-charged huffs, chewing his gum at four times his normal speed, obviously enjoying what he was doing. He continued to hold Mitch against the wall.
“I’m just making a little point here, that’s all,” he said breathlessly. “I’m just sort of whatcha call underscoring to my little buddy here that I’m in charge of his future. I don’t want him getting any strange and wonderful ideas about running out on us or thinking that he has any say about anything. I want him to stay conscious of how important it is to keep us happy.”
“You’ve made your point,” said Stella. “Now put him down and go wash.”
Cannibal released his hold on Mitch’s jacket. Mitch wadded into a ball again and slid down the wall to the floor, drooling saliva and trembling uncontrollably.
“Come on, get up,” said Cannibal. “You ain’t hurt. In fact, you better get used to this, because I aim to plant one on you every so often just so you appreciate the nature of our relationship. You hear me, little man? You understand what I’m saying?”
Mitch groaned an acknowledgment, for he had not quite started to breathe again. His chest was a bonfire of pain. Finally he was able to climb back up the wall, to stand against it, to move crazily toward the doorway.
“Just a fuckin’ minute,” barked Cannibal. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He strode to the refrigerator, withdrew the two packages for which Mitch had come, and zippered them into a gym bag, along with half a dozen envelopes full of cash. Then he crossed the room and stuffed the bag into Mitch’s arms.
“Have a nice trip, and don’t get mugged in Pike Place, okay? And try not to slobber on the bag.”
The last thing Mitch heard as he staggered painfully out the front door of the crack house was the sniggering laughter of Cannibal and Stella, and he vowed again that someday, someday soon...
The scrying ended, and Hannie Hazelford muttered the long and redundant phrases that shut off the flow of energy through the obsidian disk, allowing her mind to disengage gently. Robinson Sparhawk’s mind also disengaged, and he leaned back in his chair, crutches across his lap, his face slick with sweat. His hands ached from gripping the crutches, and he felt as though he had spent the preceding hour in a sauna.
Hannie immediately set about the task of dressing.
“Ordinarily I’d offer you a gin and tonic,” she said, pulling on a billowy, flowered smock, “because it’s just the thing after scrying.”
Robbie was struck by her matter-of-fact tone: She could have been talking about a lively round of shuffleboard or badminton.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t time, I’m sure you’ll agree.” She paused a moment while hoisting up her pantyhose. “You did connect with the scrying, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I connected, all right,” answered the psychic, mopping his brow with a sleeve. “I saw Jeremy Trosper, Hadrian Craslowe, a lot of other things I’m not sure I can talk about yet. You weren’t kiddin’ around when you said it could get a little scary. Hell, I almost turned tail a couple of times, I don’t mind telling you.”
“Yes, I quite understand. There’s no need to be ashamed. You were subjected to forces and phenomena that until recently you had not dreamed could exist. You’ve fared remarkably well, if I may say so.”
“What’s the next step?”
“That should be obvious, shouldn’t it? Jeremy left Whiteleather Place and went to that awful little house in the woods.”
“Yeah, I reckon I know where it is.”
“I know exactly where it is, and I fancy that I know who lives there: a most unfortunate little man, named Mitchell Nistler. Something of a misfit, I’m told, an ex-convict and an assistant embalmer, widely regarded as the town drunk.” She sat down again and started levering her misshapen old feet into a pair of Birkenstocks. “But of course he no longer lives alone. You felt the other presence there, didn’t you?”
“I think so. I felt something, that’s for sure—kind of like what I felt the other night at Whiteleather Place.”
“Indeed. What distresses me, though, is that I never thought to consider Mitchell Nistler a likely paternal surrogate until now. I must be getting old and senile.”
“You’re what, darlin’, only about a thousand or so?”
“Advanced enough to be considered a spinster, it seems.” She removed the pince-nez and undertook to install her contact lenses.
“Let me see if I have this straight,” said Robbie. “The steward—in this case Craslowe—snags himself an unsuspecting male adult, hypnotizes him—”
“Hypnosis is not the proper term. Entrancement is much closer.”
“Okay, entrances him, and then forces him to eat the flesh of the Giver of Dreams. With the proper rituals and magic and so on, the unsuspecting male is then the carrier of the creature’s seed. He’s able to sire another Giver of Dreams, that right?”
“That’s exactly right, but only with the corpse of a suicide. The rituals give to the unfortunate man most unwholesome desires—”
“I hope to shout. He actually wants to make love to a dead body?”
“Yes. You must remember that he has communed with the Giver of Dreams in the most hideously intimate way—has actually eaten its flesh—and his mind and soul have combined with the creature’s. This man is in every sense a victim, perhaps as pitiable as the corpse herself. Quite often such a man is cursed from boyhood, selected by the steward and his allies as a target, subjected to charms and magic that result in his growing up to be an opprobrious and maladjusted citizen, easy prey for the steward later on. Stewards themselves often begin life in a similar way: Their mothers have been cursed or charmed just before giving birth, so that their
sons are like Jeremy was—physically healthy but empty shells, open receptacles into which mature stewards can pour their own personalities and knowledge.”
“Is that how Craslowe started out? Someone charmed him before he was born?”
“No, not at all. Hadrianus Craslovius was an alchemist in southern Europe about the time of the First Crusade, traveled mainly throughout Italy and the Balkans, performing minor feats of thaumaturgy. Somehow he stumbled upon a body of ancient writings that were Egyptian in origin—mostly having to do with the cult of Anubis, the Egyptian god of death and embalming. He immersed himself in them and discovered truly powerful magical secrets. He became a potent sorcerer and, like many who achieve great power, began to thirst after even more—in this case, power over death. It seems that he accompanied the crusaders to Antioch, for the writings had told him that a certain high priest of Anubis was entombed there, and buried with him was the secret of resurrecting him. I don’t know whether Craslovius was aware that the priest would arise as a Giver of Dreams or that he himself would be cast in the role of steward. All I know is that this is what happened: that Craslovius awakened an evil from deepest antiquity, and that both he and that evil have survived to this day.”
Robbie shuddered even though Hannie had covered this material earlier in great depth. Maybe it was her offhanded, almost casual delivery that made it so chilling, even the second time around. A mere week ago he would have laughed himself to tears, having heard this tale about ancient magic that enabled a man to live thousands of years, that required human flesh for sustenance, that needed the corpse of a suicide to bear its offspring. But a week ago he had not met Monty Pirtz.
Having dressed fully—blond wig, makeup and all—Hannie bustled around the cluttered chamber, collecting samples of this and that from vials and jars on the shelves: liquids, powders, and dark chunks of something or other, which she stashed in a bulky leather pouch she had taken from a hook on the wall. She turned and tossed to Robbie a small earthen jug, not quite fist-sized, that was stoppered with a dark cork, painted with words that might have been Hebrew.
