The Imago Sequence

by Laird Barron

  "The cavalry," I said.

  Scattered applause. A bawdy ragtime tune. Hungry mouths hanging slack.

  And the muzzy lamps. Red. Black.

  8.

  "What do you call him?"

  "Chemosh. Baal-Peeor. Belphegor. No big deal, the Moabites are dust. They won't mind if the title gits slaughtered by civilized folks."

  "We're a fair piece from Moab."

  "Belphegor speaks many tongues in many lands."

  "A world traveler, eh?"

  "That's right, Pinky."

  "This friend of yours, he speaks to you through the shitter?"

  "Yeah."

  "Interesting. Seems a tad inelegant."

  "Corruption begets corruption, Pinky," says Hicks. His eyes are brown, hard as baked earth. Gila monster's eyes. He once raised a four hundred pound stone above his head, balanced it in his palm to the cheers of mobs. Could reach across the table and crush my throat, even with the chains. Calcium deposits mar his fingers, distend from his elbows not unlike spurs. There is a suspicious lump under his limp hair, near the brow. He's sinewy and passive in the Chair of Questions. "What's more lunatic than fallin' down before the image of a man tacked to a cross? Nothin'. You don't even git nothin' fun. I aim to have fun."

  I'm fascinated by the wet mouth in the bronzed face. It works, yes indeed it articulates most functionally. Yet it yawns, slightly yawns, as if my captive strongman was victim of a palsy, or the reverse of lockjaw. Saliva beads and dangles on viscous threads. I gag on the carnivore's stench gusting from the wound. His teeth are chipped and dark as flint. Long. I ask, "What are you?"

  "Holes close. Holes open. I'm an Opener. They Who Wait live through me. What about you?"

  "I'm an atheist." That was a half-truth, but close enough for government work.

  "Good on you, Pinky. You're on your way. And here's Tuttle." He indicates a prim lawyer in a crisp suit. "P. T. only hires the best. Adios, pal."

  Three weeks later, when Hicks strolls out of Cedar Grove Sanitarium, I'm not surprised at the message he leaves—CLOSE A HOLE AND ANOTHER OPENS.

  Funny, funny world. It's Tuttle who pays the freight for my hunting expedition into the American West.

  9.

  Deputy Levi called it protective custody. They dumped me on a cot in a cell. Murtaugh's orders to keep me from getting lynched by some of Jake's confederates. These confederates had been tying one on down at the Longrifle, scene of the late, lamented Jake's demise. Murtaugh wasn't sorry to see a "cockeyed snake like that little sonofabitch" get planted. The sheriff promised to chat with Trosper regarding the details of our interview. It'd be straightened out by breakfast.

  I fell into the amber and drowned.

  Things clumped together in a sticky collage—

  Hicks leering through the bars, his grin as prodigious as a train tunnel.

  Violet's wheat-blonde head bowed at my groin and me so whiskey-flaccid I can only sweat and watch a cockroach cast a juggernaut shadow beneath a kerosene lamp while the sheriff farts and snores at his desk.

  Jake shits himself, screams soundlessly as my boot descends, hammer of the gods.

  Lincoln waves to the people in the balconies. His eyes pass directly over me. I'm twenty-two, I'm hell on wheels. In three minutes I'll make my first kill. Late bloomer.

  "I once was lost. Now I'm found. The Soldier's Friend, Sister M, had a hold on me, yes sir, yesiree."

  "I give up the needle and took to the bottle like a babe at his mama's nipple."

  "Never had a wife, never needed one. I took up the traveling life, got married to my gun."

  A man in a suit doffs his top hat and places his head into the jaws of a bored lion. The jaws close.

  A glossy pink labium quakes and begins to yield, an orchid brimming with ancient stars.

  "How many men you killed, Jonah?" Violet strokes my superheated brow.

  "Today?"

  "No, silly! I mean, in all. The grand total."

  "More than twenty. More every day."

  Sun eats stars. Moon eats sun. Black hole eats Earth.

  Hicks winks a gory eye, an idiot lizard, gives the sheriff a languid, slobbery kiss that glistens snail slime. When the sackcloth of ashes floats to oblivion and I can see again, the beast is gone, if he ever was.

  The door creaks with the storm. Open. Shut.

  Violet sighs against my sweaty chest, sleeps in reinvented innocence.

  There's a crack in the ceiling and it's dripping.

  10.

  I did the expedient thing—holed up in my hotel room for a week, drinking the hair of the dog that bit me and screwing Violet senseless.

  I learned her daddy was a miner who was blown to smithereens. No mother; no kin as would take in a coattail relation from the boondocks. But she had great teeth and a nice ass. Fresh meat for Madame Octavia's stable. She was eighteen and real popular with the gentlemen, Miss Violet was. Kept her earnings tucked in a sock, was gonna hop the mail train to San Francisco one of these fine days, work as a showgirl in an upscale dance hall. Heck, she might even ride the rail to Chicago, meet this Little Egypt who was the apple of the city's eye. Yeah.

  She finally asked me if I'd ever been married—it was damned obvious I wasn't at present—and I said no. Why not? Lucky, I guessed.

  "Mercy, Jonah, you got some mighty peculiar readin' here." Violet was lying on her belly, thumbing through my Latin version of the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. Her hair was tangled; perspiration glowed on her ivory flanks.

  I sprawled naked, propped against the headboard, smoking while I cleaned and oiled my Winchester Model 1886. Best rifle I'd ever owned; heavy enough to drop a buffalo, but perfect for men. It made me a tad wistful to consider that I wasn't likely to use it on Hicks. I figured him for close-quarters.

  Gray and yellow out the window. Streets were a quagmire. I watched figures mucking about, dropping planks to make corduroy for the wagons. Occasionally a gun popped.

  For ten dollars and an autograph, Deputy Levi had compiled a list of deaths and disappearances in Purdon and environs over the past four months, hand delivered it to my doorstep. Two pages long. Mostly unhelpful—routine shootings and stabbings, claim-jumping and bar brawls, a whole slew of accidents. I did mark the names of three prospectors who'd vanished. They worked claims separated by many miles of inhospitable terrain. Each had left a legacy of food, equipment and personal items—no money, though. No hard cash. No gold dust.

  Violet gasped when she came to some unpleasant and rather florid illustrations. "Lordy! That's . . .awful. You believe in demons and such, Jonah?" Curiosity and suspicion struggled to reconcile her tone.

  "Nope. But other folks do."

  "Tommy Mullen—he does?" Her eyes widened. I glimpsed Hicks, a gaunt satyr loitering in the Honeybee parlor while the girls drew lots to seal a fate.

  "I expect he does." I slapped her pale haunch. "Come on over here, sweetness. It isn't for you to fret about." And to mitigate the dread transmitted through her trembling flesh, I said, "He's hightailed to the next territory. I'm wasting daylight in this burg." Her grateful mouth closed on me and her tongue moved, rough and supple. I grabbed the bed post. "Pardon me, not completely wasting it."

  Three miners. Picture-clear, the cabins, lonely, isolated. A black shape sauntering from an open door left swinging in its wake. Crows chattering in poplar branches, throaty chuckle of a stream.

  I drowsed. The hotel boy knocked and reported a Chinaman was waiting in the lobby. The man bore me an invitation from Langston Butler. Professor Butler, to his friends. The note, in handsome script, read:

  Sashay on out to Forty-Mile Camp and I'll tell you how to snare the Iron Man. Cordially, L. Butler.

  I dressed in a hurry. Violet groaned, started to rise, but I kissed her on the mouth and said to take the afternoon off. Indulging a bout of prescience, I left some money on the dresser. A lot of money. The money basically said, "If you're smart you'll be on the next train to San Francisco; next stop the Windy Cit
y."

  I hoped Murtaugh had successfully smoothed all the feathers I'd ruffled.

  This was my best suit and I sure didn't want to get any holes in it.

  11.

  Forty-Mile Camp was not, as its appellation suggested, forty miles from Purdon. The jolting ride in Hung Chan's supply wagon lasted under three hours by my pocket watch. Hung didn't speak to me at all. I rode shotgun, riveted by the payload of flour, sugar and sundries, not the least of which happened to include a case of weathered, leaky dynamite.

  We wound along Anderson Creek Canyon, emerged in a hollow near some dredges and a mongrel collection of shacks. Cook-fires sputtered, monarch butterflies under cast-iron pots tended by women the color of ash. There were few children and no dogs. Any male old enough to handle pick, shovel or pan was among the clusters of men stolidly attacking the earth, wading in the frigid water, toiling among the rocky shelves above the encampment.

  Nobody returned my friendly nod. Nobody even really looked at me except for two men who observed the proceedings from a copse of scraggly cottonwoods, single-shot rifles slung at half-mast. My hackles wouldn't lie down until Hung led me through the camp to a building that appeared to be three or four shanties in combination. He ushered me through a thick curtain and into a dim, moist realm pungent with body musk and opium tang.

  "Koenig, at last. Pull up a rock." Butler lay on a pile of bear pelts near a guttering fire pit. He was wrapped in a Navajo blanket, but clearly emaciated. His misshapen skull resembled a chunk of anthracite sufficiently dense to crook his neck. His dark flesh had withered tight as rawhide and he appeared to be an eon older than his stentorian voice sounded. In short, he could've been a fossilized anthropoid at repose in Barnum's House of Curiosities.

  Butler's attendant, a toothless crone with an evil squint, said, "Mama die?" She gently placed a long, slender pipe against his lips, waited for him to draw the load. She hooked another horrible glance my way and didn't offer to cook me a pill.

  After a while Butler said, "You would've made a wonderful Templar."

  "Except for the minor detail of suspecting Christianity is a pile of crap. Chopping down Saracens for fun and profit, that I could've done."

  "You're a few centuries late. A modern-day crusader, then. An educated man, I presume?"

  "Harvard, don't you know." I pronounced it Hah-vahd to maximize the irony.

  "An expensive education; although, aren't they all. Still, a Pinkerton, tsk, tsk. Daddy was doubtless shamed beyond consolation."

  "Papa Koenig was annoyed. One of the slickest New York lawyers you'll ever do battle with—came from a whole crabbed scroll of them. Said I was an ungrateful iconoclast before he disowned me. Hey, it's easier to shoot people than try to frame them, I've discovered."

  "And now you've come to shoot poor Rueben Hicks."

  "Rueben Hicks is a thief, a murderer and a cannibal. Seems prudent to put him down if I get the chance."

  "Technically a cannibal is one that feeds on its own species."

  I said, "Rueben doesn't qualify as a member?"

  "That depends on your definition of human, Mr. Koenig." Butler said, and smiled. The contortion had a ghoulish effect on his face. "Because it goes on two legs and wears a coat and tie? Because it knows how to say please and thank you?"

  "Why do I get the feeling this conversation is headed south? People were talking about you in town. You're a folk legend at the whorehouse."

  "A peasant hero, as it were?"

  "More like disgraced nobility. I can't figure what you're doing here. Could've picked a more pleasant climate to go to seed."

  "I came to Purdon ages ago. Sailed from London where I had pursued a successful career in anthropology—flunked medical school, you see. Too squeamish. I dabbled in physics and astronomy, but primitive culture has always been my obsession. Its rituals, its primal energy."

  "Plenty of primitive culture here."

  "Quite."

  "Mama die?" said the hag as she brandished the pipe.

  Butler accepted the crone's ministrations. His milky eyes flared, and when he spoke, he spoke more deliberately. "I've been following your progress. You are capable, resourceful, tenacious. I fear Rueben will swallow you alive, but if anyone has a chance to put a stop to his wickedness it is you."

  "Lead has a sobering effect on most folks." I said. "Strange to hear a debauched occultist like yourself fussing about wickedness. I take it you've got a personal stake in this manhunt. He must've hurt your feelings or something."

  "Insomuch as I know he intends to use me as a blood sacrifice, I'm extremely interested."

  "You ever thought of clearing out?"

  "Impossible."

  "Why impossible?"

  "Gravity, Mr. Koenig." Butler took another hit. Eventually, he said in a dreamy tone, "I'm a neglectful host. Care to bang the gong?"

  "Thanks, no."

  "A reformed addict. How rare."

  "I'll settle for being a drunk. What's your history with Hicks?"

  "We were introduced in '78. I was in Philadelphia and had taken in the circus with some colleagues from the university. I fell in with a small group of the players after the show, Rueben being among this number. We landed in a tiny café, a decadent slice of gay Paris, and everybody was fabulously schnockered, to employ the argot. Rueben and I got to talking and we hit it off. I was amazed at the breadth, and I blush to admit, scandalous nature of his many adventures. He was remarkably cultured behind the provincial façade. I was intrigued. Smitten, too."

  I said, "And here I thought Hicks was a ladies man."

  "Rueben is an opportunist. We retired to my flat; all very much a night's work for me. Then . . .then after we'd consummated our mutual fascination, he said he wanted to show me something that would change my life. Something astounding."

  "Do tell."

  "We were eating mushrooms. A mysterious variety—Rueben stole them from P. T. and P. T. obtained them from this queer fellow who dealt in African imports. I hallucinated that Rueben caused a window to open in the bedroom wall, a portal into space. Boggling! Millions of stars blazed inches from my nose, a whole colossal bell-shaped galaxy of exploded gases and cosmic dust. The sight would've driven Copernicus insane. It was a trick, stage magic. Something he'd borrowed from his fellow performers. He asked me what I saw and I told him. His face . . .there was something wrong. Too rigid, too cold. For a moment, I thought he'd put on an extremely clever mask and I was terrified. And his mouth . . .His expression melted almost instantly, and he was just Rueben again. I knew better, though. And, unfortunately, my fascination intensified. Later, when he showed me the portal trick, this time sans hallucinogens, I realized he wasn't simply a circus performer. He claimed to be more than human, to have evolved into a superior iteration of the genus. A flawed analysis, but at least partially correct."

  Hick's rubbery grin bobbed to the surface of my mind. "He's crazed, I'll give you that."

  "Rueben suffers from a unique breed of mycosis—you've perhaps seen the tumors on his arms and legs, and especially along his spinal column? It's consuming him as a fungus consumes a tree. Perversely, it's this very parasitic influence that imbues him with numerous dreadful abilities. Evolution via slow digestion."

  "Dreadful abilities? If he'd showed me a hole in the wall that looked on the moon's surface I might've figured he was a fakir, or Jesus' little brother, or what have you. He didn't. He didn't fly out of Cedar Grove, either."

  "Scoff as you will. Ignorance is all the blessing we apes can hope for."

  "What became of your torrid love affair?"

  "He and I grew close. He confided many terrible things to me, unspeakable deeds. Ultimately I determined to venture here and visit his childhood haunts, to discover the wellspring of his vitality, the source of his preternatural affinities. He warned me, albeit such caveats were mere inducements to an inquisitive soul. I was so easily corrupted." Butler's voice trailed off as he was lost in reflection.

  Corruption begets
corruption, copper. "Sounds very romantic," I said. "What were you after? The gold? Nah, the gold is panned out or property of the companies. Mating practices of the natives?"

  "I coveted knowledge, Mr. Koenig. Rueben whispered of a way to unlock the secrets of brain and blood, to lay bare the truth behind several of mankind's squalid superstitions. To walk the earth as a god. His mind is far from scientific, and but remotely curious. One could nearly categorize him as a victim of circumstance in this drama. I, however, presumably equipped with superior intellect, would profit all the more than my barbarous concubine. My potential seemed enormous."

  "Yes, and look at you now, Professor," I said. "Do these people understand what you are?"

  "What do you think I am, Detective?"

  "A Satan-worshipping dope fiend."

  "Wrong. I'm a naturalist. Would that I could reinvent my innocent dread of God and Satan, of supernatural phenomena. As for these yellow folk, they don't care what I am. I pay well for my upkeep and modest pleasures."

  "For a man who's uncovered great secrets of existence, your accommodations lack couth."

  "Behold the reward of hubris. I could've done as Rueben has—descended completely into the womb of an abominable mystery and evolved as a new and perfect savage. Too cowardly—I tasted the ichor of divinity and quailed, fled to this hovel and my drugs. My memories. Wisdom devours the weak." He shuddered and spat a singsong phrase that brought the old woman scuttling to feed him another load of dope. After he'd recovered, he produced a leather-bound book from beneath his pillow. The Dictionnaire Infernal. "A gift from our mutual acquaintance. Please, take it. These 'forbidden' tomes are surpassingly ludicrous."

  I inspected the book; de Plancy's signature swooped across the title page. "Did Rueben travel all this way to fetch you a present and off a few hapless miners as a bonus?"

  "Rueben has come home because he must, it is an integral component of his metamorphosis. Surely you've detected his quickening purpose, the apparent degeneration of his faculties, which is scarcely a symptom of decay, but rather a sign of fundamental alteration. Pupation. He has returned to this place to commune with his benefactor, to disgorge the red delights of his gruesome and sensuous escapades. Such is the pact between them. It is the pact all supplicants make. It was mine, before my defection."