by Gideon, John
The dark came alive with eddies of air, the whining and buzz of unseen powers, the energies of the words.
Lindsay ascended, her naked body gyrating slowly and her flaxen hair streaming as though underwater. She floated to the center of the pentagram. The forces in the air focused on the contents of the pewter bowl. The vile mixture formed itself into a thin column that stretched upward to the ceiling, undulating and twisting as though alive, then separated into two streams and snaked downward to flow into the open mouths of Lindsay and Hannie. When they had drunk until nothing was left in the bowl, Hannie lowered it, and Lindsay descended into the center of the pentagram, where she stood next to the pale and shaking Robbie Sparhawk, who looked as though he might throw up at any moment.
Hannie sliced the remains of the dead infant into chunks suitable for the food processor, then processed them into a thick paste, adding more spices and oils and old words. She scraped the mixture into the bowl, which she then handed to Lindsay. Now Carl felt himself being drawn into the center of the star, and he let himself go after casting a worried glance at Stu, who stood as though frozen in the shadow of the kitchen door. Hannie suddenly went rigid as a statue. Carl thought for one wild moment that she had died, but a closer look revealed that she was indeed breathing, but so shallowly, so slowly. It was Lindsay now who was animated, who was alive and vital.
When he was within her arm’s length, she scooped a handful of the paste from the bowl—it was more like a salve or a balm—and began to rub it on his chest. Old Hannie must have added something powerful to the mixture, for it felt warm and tingly on his skin. Another handful, more rubbing—onto his shoulders now, his neck, warm, warm. Onto his arms, down his belly—Jesus!
He plunged his own hands into the bowl, took gobs of the balm, and rubbed it into Lindsay’s skin, marveling at the light in her eyes, only touching on the thought that there was someone else besides Lindsay Moreland behind those eyes. His hands found her firm breasts as her hands found his cock, his balls. He was oblivious now to the wide, watching eyes of Robbie and Stu. He knew only that he must touch the rusty mound of hair between Lindsay’s legs, that he must press his fingers into that velvety wet fold, that he must knead and knead, which is what he did. Lindsay uttered a cry and began to gyrate her beautiful hips, began to claw at his shoulders with her nails. Suddenly her mouth was on his, and he knew that even if someone else were inside her head, it was still she—Lindsay—who was kissing him like this, ramming her tongue against his, pulling him down to the floor, massaging his cock with the greasy, fiery balm.
They went to the floor, she on top of him. She maneuvered his stiff member into herself, sluicing it inward and up to the hilt. Carl pulled her down to him and felt the crush of her hard nipples into his chest, reached behind her and dug his fingers into her satiny buttocks, now slippery and hot with the balm. They began to thrust on the floor. Chanting came out of Lindsay’s mouth, old words that she could not possibly have known, but neither she nor Carl cared about this. They fucked with a frenzy and fortitude born of intoxicants and aphrodisiacs, of denial and desperation, of having endured too much terror and too much truth, of needing the elemental physical coupling of male and female to set their spirits straight. Too soon, too late, it was over, an eruption of raw love and bio-fury; Carl jolted and released. Lindsay screamed, fell against him.
The leathered form of Hannie Hazelford jerked back to life, shook and throbbed and distended. From the corner of his eye Carl saw that something was swelling within the old woman and moving. Had he not been so exhausted he would have screamed, because the sight was truly terrifying: Hannie bending out of shape, undulating like a snake who was unhinging its jaws to engulf some bulky prey. The mass inside her moved upward through the shapeless sack of her torso, bulged her neck as it passed out through her mouth: a wiggling, squirming infant, slick with mucous but lacking umbilical cord or any other accompanying membrane of a normal birth. It dropped from Hannie’s mouth into the crook of her waiting arm.
Lindsay and Carl lay in each other’s arms, not believing their eyes, though what they had seen in recent days should have made anything believable. The infant appeared to be alive, tiny and very male. It kicked and waved its arms, and, after a few choking breaths, screamed like any other newborn.
Hannie’s misshapen head now pulled itself back into normal shape, her jaw reconnected to her cheekbones, and her skin re-formed like flexible latex. She began to chant again in the Old Tongue as she lay the bawling infant upon the wooden block. She took up the knife.
“No!” Carl screamed, because he now knew what had happened: that Hannie had indeed been inside Lindsay. Sharing the repast of the pewter bowl had allowed Hannie’s and Lindsay’s souls to merge, to fuse. The old sorceress had thus tapped the incredible energy of Carl’s and Lindsay’s sexual union, and she had used that energy to fuel this atrocious magic, to vomit up a human baby for no other purpose than to—
“No!” he shrieked again, because the reality was too fulsome, beyond enduring. But the air grew very cold, and his muscles went numb and heavy like lead. His injured sensibilities seemed laughably irrelevant now, inasmuch as magic makes no value judgments, requires no elegant deductions about what is right and what is wrong. Magic simply is. Hannie Hazelford’s magic had provided the sacrificial flesh required for the next step. And now that the process was under way, there was absolutely nothing Carl could do about it.
Except cry, which had become so damnably easy for him in recent weeks.
The infant’s wailing abruptly ended in a skirling shriek as the knife sank deep, as Hannie’s voice sailed high in the dark:
Combine with the fat of an unbaptized Child,
An Innocent’s Blood, unpolluted and mild.
The fat came away from the tiny body, flopped into the pewter bowl.
Juice of an Innocent Babes tiny Liver
Is Poison, dread Poison to the Dream Giver!
Then came more flashes of surgical dexterity and a repeat of the horrible doings that had earlier utilized the corpse of a naturally dead child. But now the bubbling potion was not to be shared by Lindsay and Hannie: It was meant solely for Carl, who was himself to be a sacrifice. Together Hannie and Lindsay held the heavy bowl to his lips, as Robbie and Stu bolstered him into an upright position. That he did not vomit or struggle was because he had accepted the unavoidable fact: Nothing else could kill the Giver of Dreams, defeat Hadrian Craslowe, or free Jeremy. Nothing but the magic, the sacrifice of Carl Trosper—his body and soul poisoned by innocent blood.
So he forced himself to drink the thick stew. To breathe its horrific fumes and chew the bits of offal afloat in it. To swallow it and, with the help of magic, keep it down. The room swirled, the candle flames became shooting stars, the faces of the others were washed-out projections against a tattered screen.
Whiteleather Place, once again, looming black against a stone-silent sky.
Deep night, perhaps midnight—Carl did not know. To look at his watch did not occur to him.
He got out of the van and shivered. The wind drove specks of moisture against his face. Before he could move away, Lindsay touched his arm, and he glanced back at her, saw that her face was pale in the glow of the dome light, her eyes huge with worry. For a few fleeting seconds, Carl saw the past in those eyes, saw the Yesterday of a young lawyer and his pretty artist-wife, their sick little boy, and the field of unknowable Tomorrows stretching before them. He wondered whether he would have chosen to go on living had he faced a choice back then, knowing what lay in the field: that Tomorrow and Tomorrow would bring this.
This horror, this sacrifice.
That’s what moms and dads and husbands and wives are supposed to do: sacrifice!
Which is what Lorna had told him more than once, usually in response to Carl’s insistence that they institutionalize Jeremy. Which certainly would have made their lives easier, would have freed them to live like normal human beings.
Would this have made Lorna
happy? he wondered absurdly. Did this meet her criteria for sacrifice?
Lindsay was talking now, not Lorna: “You’re holding up well, Carl. You look strong, and that’s good. I can see strength in your face, and I can”—she stammered, searched—“feel your love for Jeremy.”
In answer Carl reached out and touched her cheek, feeling close to her in a way that he had never felt with another woman, not even Lorna. Magic had brought Lindsay and him together. But wasn’t it magic that brought all men and women together? he wondered.
“I just want you to know,” Lindsay went on, whispering to keep the others in the van from hearing, “that I’m sorry for all the grief I’ve caused you over the years. I’m sorry for misjudging you, forjudging you at all. I hope you can forgive me. If we come out of this...” She lowered her eyes.
“No apology needed,” he whispered.
“Best not to waste time,” said Hannie with a scolding tone. “The longer we delay, the more likelihood there is of Hadrian discerning our intentions. Go now. But remember, Carl”—her tone changed to sympathy, concern—“we are all with you. We shan’t fail you.”
Carl shook hands with Stu, who was now the keeper of the stubby Roman sword, and with Robbie, who gave a thumbs-up sign. He then headed for the pair of crumbling gateposts that marked the entrance to Whiteleather Place.
The once-Teri Zolten met him at the front door of the mansion as though she were expecting him and made hideous small talk as she led him down to the undercroft. The sight and sound of her enraged him, but he tried to shut her out of his mind, tried to ignore the treacly stench of half-living flesh that trailed behind her. With every descending step into the curving stairwell, with every new breath of the stinking air, fear tightened its grip: He was about to give himself to the thing that had done this to a beautiful young girl.
Lindsay had said a few moments ago that he looked strong, and in truth he felt strong. He felt strong enough to destroy the squad of acolytes who slunk around him in the shadows of the tunnel—physically, with his fists and feet, ripping and stomping and bashing. But he fought down the urge and walked on, like a condemned heretic to Torquemada’s dungeon, following the Teri-thing.
His usher pushed through the heavy wooden door to the undercroft, moved aside, and retired into the shadows of the tunnel behind him. Carl stepped into the rubicund light of a hundred candles, then down three steps to the stone floor. Standing before the black maw on the far wall were Hadrian Craslowe and Jeremy, both robed in red and black satin, their eyes agleam and their faces grinning. They had apparently been busy with the array of silver bowls and chalices on the table before them, engaged in some unspeakable ritual that Craslowe had been reading from a massive old book.
“So you’ve finally come, have you, Dad?” said Jeremy by way of greeting, riveting his father with his laserlike eyes and grinning tightly. “So nice to have you, so nice indeed.”
The boy’s snideness aroused little feeling in Carl. This was not his son talking, not the child he had dreamed of nurturing and guiding to a love of truth and goodness; not the innocent babe he had deserted so long ago. This was an intruder, a thief of bodies and dreams and hopes. What horrified him was the sudden thought that he himself might be infiltrated by that evil, that Carl Trosper would become not merely a sacrifice but a living member of the enemy. The thought shook him to the cellar of his soul.
“Finally given up, is that it?” Jeremy went on, grinning even more tightly. “Finally seen the world for what it really is?”
“I’ve come to take you home, Jeremy,” answered Carl, thinking how laughable the rehearsed words sounded. The candle-lit room started to swim, and tentacles of fear constricted his chest. “Take off that ridiculous robe and get into your real clothes. We’re leaving.”
Both Jeremy and Craslowe laughed long and loud as Carl had known they would. The peals of their laughter reverberated off the carved stone walls and echoed down the tunnel that led from the undercroft. The arched maw in the wall behind them issued no echo but remained as silent as it was dark, a dead space.
“Really, Mr. Trosper, you can’t believe that we don’t see through this pathetic charade,” said Hadrian Craslowe. “Your Hannie Hazelford isn’t the only one in the world who car operate a scrying mirror! We know precisely what’s going on, and we know why you’re here.”
Carl’s heart began to beat madly.
“Jeremy,” he managed once again, his vocal chords rasping and quivering, “I’m taking you home. Now, come with—”
“Kindly shut your odious mouth!” shouted Jeremy. “You have done me a great wrong, Dad, one that I’m not inclined to overlook! You’ve killed my half-brother, the offspring of the Giver of Dreams, and have thus denied me great power. It will be another three hundred years before that opportunity comes to me again, at the close of the Giver’s next long sleep, and only through the brotherliness of Hadrian can I hope to last long enough to seize it. I’ve eaten of the Giver’s flesh, you see, and will continue to do so as long as Hadrian allows it.”
“And I intend to allow it indefinitely,” added Craslowe. “The Giver’s flesh will sustain Jeremy for at least a thousand years—long enough, certainly, for him to become one of history’s most potent stewards.”
“But as for yourself,” said Jeremy, “I’ve decided that you must pay for the wrong you’ve done. I’ve petitioned the Giver to prepare some very special dreams for you.” The boy laughed abominably, causing Carl’s guts to lurch. “And it has graciously consented.”
“Concerning the magic that you believe will save you,” added Craslowe, “you may forget it. I’ve cast strong counterspells to ensure that your charmed flesh cannot harm my master. I think you’ll find that my magic is considerably stronger than Hannie Hazelford’s. In short, Mr. Trosper, you’ve delivered yourself into the clutches of the Giver of Dreams, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do except endure your fate.”
The old man turned his ghastly smile to the lad who stood at his side. “If you please, Jeremy, you may officiate.”
Jeremy needed no prodding. His eyes lit greenly, his grin became the slavering yawn of a carnivore. He spewed out a power that seized Carl’s heart and rendered him instantly weak. It lifted him off the floor and dragged him toward the maw in the wall.
Carl struggled like a slave in shackles, like a worm on a hook. He was now certain that the beast who waited and hungered in the maw meant to do more than feast on his flesh; it meant to become one with him, to fuse his soul and body with its own and give him its own vile hungers and needs. He floated closer to the blackness, clawing and kicking the air, close enough now to feel its foulness against his skin, to taste the shrieking stink of its evil and hear the groans of its hunger. The dreadful images of Teri and Sandy Zolten flared in his mind. He saw himself becoming like them: willing, panging disciples of the beast, vehicles of its unthinkable cravings, wanting only the dreams it gave.
Blackness closed over him, and he convulsed with the touch of a slithery hand-thing against his cheek, the rough and eager tearing of claws at his clothing.
It had him now, and it was large, many times larger than a man. It was spongy with viscous fat and amorphous underfolds of skin. It had teeth. Carl had never known such fear, such revulsion.
The Giver of Dreams started to feed.
“It’s time,” said Hannie Hazelford, somehow knowing. The four of them piled out of Robbie’s van. Slowly they made their way through the damp night to the front door of the mansion, which was open as though in welcome. There they met Mrs. Ianthe Pauling, a smiling, gliding wraith in the aura of the porchlight, customarily attired in funereal color but lacking much of her face. She had atoned grievously for earlier helping Carl escape the undercroft.
Stu ground his teeth and, forcing his muscles into motion, stepped forward and cut her down with the charmed sword, driving it deep into her rib cage. Something in Ianthe’s tortured eyes cried out in gratitude as she died, as she collapsed in a shapeless mou
nd in the shadowed foyer. Lindsay struggled to fight back a shriek. Somehow she steadied herself and followed the others into the screaming silence of the house.
From her scrying, Hannie knew the location of the undercroft, so she took the lead, her ruined right arm wrapped tight to her side, her blond wig pushed down on her head like a clown’s hat. She led them to the vault in the basement, pulled open the door that gave onto the twisting stairway, and started down. Stu and Lindsay went next, shoulder to shoulder, Lindsay manning the flashlight and Stu gripping the sword with both sweating hands. Bringing up the rear was Robbie Sparhawk, lowering himself on his crutches, one stony step at a time, sweating profusely and swearing occasionally at his legs.
They were a strong formation, and the pitiful victims of the Giver of Dreams were no match for them: Hannie’s magic on the point, Stu’s charmed blade on the flanks, Robbie’s psychic sledgehammer in the rear. Every half-living acolyte they encountered died a mercifully quick and complete death by the sword: Teri Zolten, Monty Pirtz, Elizabeth Zaske, maybe half a dozen others.
No need to worry about getting them all, Hannie assured. At the moment of the Giver’s destruction, the surviving victims would be liberated to the cool void of death, and their very bodies would vaporize.
She halted before the door that led into the undercroft and warned that things could get “nasty” beyond this point. Lindsay was to stay close at Hannie’s side, because she lacked Robbie’s psychic power and Stu’s charmed sword, having only the pouch around her neck for protection. Lindsay felt naked and exposed, like a prey animal entrapped in a predator’s lair, able to do little but wait until hunger moved the beast to pounce. Her source of strength was the vision of Carl’s strong face and the love it radiated, the selfless commitment to saving a little boy. Lindsay emulated that love, adopted it as her own, directed it to Carl, and hoped that it would somehow find its way to him. She had been wrong about so much, she knew now: about Carl, about herself. About the world.
