This story is intended for mature readers. Chris Claremont,
Alan Moore and Clive Barker created many of the characters
featured herein, and Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Dimension
Films control the rights to them - no challenge to existing
copyrights is intended. The previous chapters are archived
at the Fonts of Wisdom (home.att.net/~lubakmetyk), and at
fanfiction.net. Feedback is very much appreciated at
XanderDG@hotmail.com.
________________________________________________
HELLRAISER: HELLFIRE
by
XanderDig
_________________________________________________
3
Though there were no dirty snowdrifts or piles of melting slush
here, London still felt more like a city under the yoke of winter
than New York did. A thin drizzle fell slowly, constantly. The
cold permeated the air, chilling me to the bone. I pulled my
black coat close around me and mused that I would have
preferred a storm, all hail and thunder and lightening. I didn't
realize that one was almost upon me.
The neighborhood was little better than a slum, and I wished
that I hadn't stepped out of the cab early to get a lay of the
land. Even in the rain, the smell of garbage was pervasive. I
passed empty storefronts with shattered glass in the windows
and structures blackened by fire. There were cars stripped in
the street. Every surface was covered in graffiti: "PAKIS GO
HOME," one eloquently advised. "NF" shouted another.
There had been a high school in Philly, North Fulton, whose
football team had been fond of spray painting the same legend.
I didn't think this was by the same group.
Refuse collected in the storm drains, so there was a good inch
of water out on the road. I might have been concerned about
getting splashed by a passing auto or lorry, as the natives called
them, but nobody seemed to drive in Paddington on a Saturday
morning. I glanced at the address in my pocket again; the ink
was running in the wet. Still, it was legible. I looked at the
small tourist map I purchased at the airport, turned a corner
and continued on my way.
Looking at maps in rough locales is never a good idea,
particularly when one is wearing an eight-thousand-dollar
Burberry coat. Across the pockmarked road were three boys
with the look of local toughs. Their heads were shaved,
emphasizing their thick, stupid brows. They all wore blue
jackets with flags on the shoulder, black pants, and jackboots
with white laces. A gang, perhaps the poets behind the local
wall art. Knowing I shouldn't, that time was of the essence, I
nodded over to them and smiled. Then I slowed to a stroll.
True to form, the skinheads began to pace me on the other side
of the street. They spoke quietly to each other, egging one-
another on. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or a lizard brain
desire for masculine dominance - I wasn't sure of the "whys"
of my actions, but what did they matter, really?
There was a thin alley between two buildings up ahead and I
turned down it. It was heaped with garbage, and it occurred to
me that the momentary enjoyment I was about to receive was
probably not worth the damage to my shoes. I stepped over the
sloughed-off refuse as best I could and made my way deep into
the fissure. Before I even reached the end, I heard footsteps
behind me, the boys' haphazard attempts at stealth as
successful as a herd of rhino. I noticed I had an audience.
There were two children beyond the wooden fence at the end
of the alley. One was an Indian boy, the other pale, with dark
hair and blue eyes. I winked at them and turned around.
For a moment, my "pursuers" stopped like deer in headlights.
Then they remembered that *they* were mugging *me*.
"Oi!" belched one. "You some kinda queer then!? Lookin' for
a bit'a roughie!?!" The three began to fan out, less concerned
for their shoes than I had been.
"We'll give it to ya rough, missie!" shouted the biggest one.
"Give us yur to-dos and maybe you'll be walkin' outa here,"
said the first. The one who hadn't spoken was only a boy, little
older than the kids on the other side of the fence. While the
two bruisers would only end up lying to their friends about
what happened today (presuming I left them with the ability to
speak), the frightened boy might still be taught a lesson.
"Let me make you an alternate proposal, you ridiculous little
strumpet," I said mildly. The large one pulled a short length of
pipe from his waistband, surging forward, but doubt licked the
leader's face. I focused on him and ignored the charging
gorilla. "Why don't you take off your clothes right now, and
after I treat you like the other children in juvenile did, I'll let
you walk away from this."
The leader's mouth fell to an almost comical doughnut,
exacerbated by the younger one's snort. I couldn't enjoy the
moment, though, the big one was on me.
He shoved me back with all his might, and I almost toppled
over a mound of garbage.
"Break him, Arnie!" yelled the leader, still rooted in place.
The gorilla reared back with his pipe while I was off balance
and brought it down in a wide arc, slow as a B-52. I could
have moved, of course, but where would the fun in that have
been?
There was a hollow clang when the steel hit my forehead, and I
heard one of the kids behind the fence screech and run away.
Even the other skinheads paused in their advance, presuming
that the scrap was over before it really began. There were
mistaken. I held the pose for a moment, my head theatrically
held back, allowing the strength from the blow to course into
my muscles. Then I turned back to the ape with a wide smile
on my face.
"This is going to hurt," I told him.
"Christ, Johnny!" he screamed. I grabbed the boy by the arm
and yanked the pipe from his grasp. He held up his other hand
to ward off a blow, but it never came. I pulled a Superman and
bent the pipe for all to see. Then I threw the big one into the
brick edifice of the adjoining building. He landed hard enough
to crumble the mortar.
The leader, Johnny, was a whelp, but he wasn't a cowardly
one. He whipped a butterfly knife from his pocket and
charged. He tried to cut me but I danced around his unskilled
attack and slapped his face. Enraged, he attacked again, so I
slapped him harder before I grabbed him by the throat and
lifted him off the ground. I looked over at the smallest one,
staring at me with wide, wet eyes.
"You see, boy? There is always someone bigger." I toyed with
the notion of snapping Johnny's neck, but I had been seen by
the kids beyond the fence, and needless complications were the
last thing I needed. Instead, I tossed him casually by his friend,
where he coughed and gasped for breath. Finally I went to the
young one and grabbed him by the collar of his coat.
"Don't let me catch you running around with this lot
anymore," I said, doing my best super hero. When I was done
here, I could go and save people from a burning building or
rescue a cat from a tree. "There's a good lad." Tears were
flowing freely down the kid's face. I reached up and tousled
his hair paternally when he cut my hand with the knife he was
concealing in his palm.
I cried out, jerking my hand protectively to my chest and the
boy turned and ran, screaming at the top of his lungs. The little
bastard cut the back of my hand almost to the bone. Blood
flowed, and I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, pressing
it hard into the wound. The affectation of carrying around a
kerchief was something I'd taken from the Club - I was a
sleeve man left to my own devices - but now I was thankful.
Instead of giving a chase, I was so enraged that I nearly went
back to finish off the other two.
Then I thought about the box, and my quest for Buckman. I
had to get to Constantine and a run in with the London police
would not expedite matters. I removed the cloth and looked at
the cut on my hand. Now I'd shed blood for LeMarchand's
Box - whatever it held had better damn well be worth it.
I reapplied pressure to the laceration and stormed out of the
alley, the eyes of the kid behind the gate heavy on my back.
***
My anger and annoyance made me careless, and I became
hopelessly lost. I walked back and forth through the
neighborhood. I stopped at a small druggist's to pick up a
bandage for my hand and to ask directions, but I couldn't
understand what the foreign cashier was telling me. Foreign?
I had to chuckle at the irony. By the time I finally found the
address Chantel had written down, now little more than a blue
splotch on the expensive, fibrous stationary of the Club, I was
chilled to the bone and my hand was a hornets nest.
The building was gray, of course. It seemed that everything in
London was. It was a brick structure, four floors tall. There
was a butcher shop on the street level. The meats and cheeses
displayed in the window indicated that the place was on its last
legs. I looked inside to find an ancient Asian man staring at
me from behind the counter. He offered no greeting. The door
to the building was next to the shop's entrance, and I opened
the glass door and went inside.
Narrow and claustrophobic, the stairwell smelled of piss. Paint
was peeling inside, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood
on end as soon as I crossed the threshold. There was
something not right about the building, something wrong on a
subliminal level. I looked up the stairs and heard a woman
moan from up in the darkness - none of the hall lights seemed
to be working.
"Naturally," I said. I rubbed the back of my hand and walked
up, the soft wood squeaking plaintively under my weight. At
least I didn't need to go all the way to the top.
At the landing of the second floor, I turned to walk down the
hall when another moan drifted down. The sound was deep
and wanton, but also pained. I looked down the hall. It was
thick with shadows. Only one of the flourescent bulbs
flickered with an audible buzz, bathing the green walls in an
illusory strobe. The window at the end of the hall was taped
over. Another moan. A howl, really, and there were
consonants in the noise - something was being said. I began to
climb the stairs when the noise stopped abruptly.
Something crashed in one of the apartments - it sounded like a
dresser falling over - and the scream stopped in mid-breath.
There had been enough distractions today. I turned and walked
down the hall of the second floor.
Evens were on the left, and odds the right. The burgundy
carpet was a jigsaw puzzle of dark stains, and the smells of
excrement, cigarette smoke and stale beer were heavy. 209.
211. The door of 213 was open. The apartment was a studio,
and a man inside was calmly shooting up. He held an elastic
band wrapped around his slim upper arm tightly in his teeth,
and he punctured a black vein with a syringe, depressing the
plunger in a practiced motion. He withdrew the needle. A thin
jet of blood squirted straight up when he opened his mouth and
released the latex tourniquet. I looked up and saw that the
ceiling was covered in cris-cross brown patterns that looked
somehow familiar. The man looked out at me, his eyelids
fluttering.
"Old faithful, boss," he said. He smiled and laid back on his
mattress. I turned away and continued down the hall. 215.
Finally, 217. The apartment I was looking for. I could hear
music on the other side of the warped, plywood door.
Something loud and driving. Why on earth would Buckman
want anything from the kind of man who would live in a rat
trap like this? I knocked on the door like a cop, three loud raps
of my knuckles.
After a moment, the music cut out with a scratch on vinyl. I
knocked again.
"Bollocks on it! I'm coming, Chas!" Surprisingly, there was
no noise of locks disengaging. This man must have been
confident or stupid not to lock his doors in an environment like
this. The door opened and a blond man frowned up at me. His
hair was spiky, but one side was flat as though he were only
lately lying on his side. He wore a T-shirt, boxer shorts, and
his eyes were rimmed in the kind of red that speaks more of
tears than drugs. A cigarette dangled from his lips. The man
looked neither surprised nor intimidated by my appearance at
his door.
"Are you John Constantine?"
"Depends on who's asking."
"My name is Shaw, and I'm here on business. I understand
correctly, you recently . . ."
"If you're here on business you can buy us a cuppa, can't you,"
he interjected, and he shut the door in my face. I was so
surprised by the audacity of the action that I didn't even have
time to become angry. A minute later, Constantine reappeared
with pants on and a brown trench coat more suited to the
weather than my own. He brushed past me and shut his door,
ambling down the hall.
"Let's go, gramps," he said. He never locked his door, and if
the caterwauling from upstairs fazed him, it didn't show.
***
"So you're one of the old queen's boys then," he said.
Constantine's manner was so disarming that it was difficult to
tell if this was meant as a challenge or a term of affection. If
Buckman, the old queen in question, was correct about this
man being in the con game, then he must have been very good
at his vocation.
As we walked through the drizzling wasteland from his
apartment to a nearby cafe we talked about nothing at all. My
flight, his life on the dole, even the weather ("It'll piss down
like this 'til May or so," he said, "then we'll get a right rain.").
Through it all, he steered conversation away from my line of
questioning and to more prosaic concerns. Now, as we sat
across from one another, he with strong tea, myself with coffee
so weak it did not deserve the title, it was time to get to
business. I reached out and lit his cigarette.
"You know the Club?" I asked.
"I'd rather wager I know the Hellfire Club a bit better than
you, Sebastian. The old git wanted me to come to New York a
few years ago to give him some lessons." I laughed, but
Constantine didn't blink. Perhaps he was insane. "I know that
your club is made up of a bunch of rich blokes with delusions
of grandeur. I know that Eddie Buckman has his fingers in a
lot of very twisted pies, and that he's a paranoid convinced that
foreigners and mutants are out to get him." I made sure not to
blink at the word.
"There's more, Shaw. I know that as much money and
influence and power as he does have, there are a lot of things
your King doesn't know shit about. He doesn't admit that, you
understand. He comes off like he's looked into the abyss, like
he's fucking been there, but it's all a scam. When he's unsure
of the consequences of his little hedge magics, he uses an
apprentice for the dirty work. Do you understand me, Shaw?"
The question hung in the air between us.
"He doesn't take the risks. Just the gains," Constantine
concluded.
"Maybe so," I said. "Either way, I have significant resources
of my own, so if you answer my questions, you'll never need
another welfare check."
"Your funeral. Cash and carry," he answered. "Shoot."
"I'm looking for a box. A puzzle box built by a man named
LeMarchand.."
He looked at me and for the shadow of a moment a real
sadness crept across his face. Then he shook his head and
stood, stubbing out his butt.
"Thanks for the tea. Ta." He made to walk out and I realized
that I would have to be more direct.
"The hell . . ." Constantine cried when I threw him back into
the booth. The owner of the diner, a burly man with a thick
moustache, made to run around the counter. He carried a
funny bat, flat and wide in his hands. I turned to him.
"You're going to want to go have a smoke in back, friend. A
good long puff." Constantine tried to move around me and I
shoved him back into the seat. The cook looked at both of us
in turn.
"Sorry, Johnnie," he said. He walked through the swinging
door to the kitchen. When he was gone, I turned back to the
blond man. His face was not the mask of fear I expected. If
anything, it was contemptuous. No matter.
"Mr. Constantine, I would very much like to pay you to assist
me in finding Le Marchand's Box. I know you have some idea
where it is, because I know you possessed it at one time. I
require that information. I will have it."
"LeMarchand's Box?"
"That's right, John. This can be very easy."
"Right. Give us a pen." I handed one to him and he scribbled
an address. To my surprise, it wasn't far off.
"What's this?"
"It's an antique shop 'round in Notting Hill. I know for an
absolute fact that they have a LeMarchand puzzle box." He
stood up and faced me. "In fact, if you go through all the
shops over there, I figure you'll find ten, maybe fifteen
LeMarchand's. Good errand boy'll bring back a bloody
bouquet of the things."
"You don't want to trifle with me, Constantine. The box I
want . . ."
"That's the fucking point, boyo! You don't have any
conception of what you're asking for! It's not 'LeMarchand's
Box,' Shaw. It's the fucking Lament. Do you know what it is,
Shaw? Do you have any notion of what the Lament
Configuration can do?"
"I, I . . ."
"Of course not. Because it doesn't serve the White King's
purpose for you to know what he's gotten you into,"
Constantine grinned. "I don't know you, Sebastian, and I don't
give two shites about your life. But I know that the Lament
only brings misery and suffering to those who seek it. I know
that whoever finds the Gashes will be owned by them forever.
*Forever*, Shaw. Whatever Buckman has promised you is not
worth the price you'll pay."
"What are the Gashes?" I asked.
"Jesus. Leave it alone, man. You don't want to know."
"I will know, Constantine. I intend to know why Buckman
sent me after the box, and I'll know why you're so keen to
keep me away from it. Now tell me where it is."
He shook his head and lit another cigarette. He told me that he
didn't know exactly, that when it's returned to its rightful
guardian, the Lament picks its own resting place. He said that
it probably already knew I was looking for it, and that it would
reveal itself in time.
"But if you really need to make another step to be ready for it,
try Bangkok. There's a good chance it's there, Shaw, and you
probably deserve what it'll give you. Ta." He told me an
address in the Thai capital as he put on his coat and walked to
the door.
"'What it will give me,' Constantine?" I asked. I had to get in
my shot. "How would you know? You never had the nerve to
solve the puzzle."
"That what he told you, sonny?" He didn't turn around. "I
solved it well enough. Down in Newcastle. I thought it would
give up the answers I needed for a spot of trouble I was having.
It gave me answers, all right. All I could take and more." John
Constantine walked away into the mist, and I found myself
with more questions than when I met him.
***
My driver was a rotund man who insisted on telling me five
hundred years of history for every site we passed. There were
a great many of them over the hour it took to get back to
Gatwick. I tuned him out to think of my own artifact, my sleep
deprived mind turning and turning the puzzle pieces it had
been given. The names swirled like mist, the puzzle box
turning along with them whenever I closed my eyes.
LeMarchand, De L'Isle, Constantine, Lament, Gashes. The
Gashes most of all. Buckman had talked about guardians -
were these the same things that Constantine alluded to? I was
not naive enough to think the supernatural impossible. I had
seen and experienced too much for that, but supernatural
golems seemed unlikely.
All ancient treasures were protected curses and the like. They
were only cultural metaphors so ingrained in legend that the
bad luck that often followed the possessor of such things was
psychologically preordained. Stories like that were the wives
tales that kept children out of storm cellars. Of course, those
cellars were always where the Christmas presents were hidden.
Whatever was powerful enough to require a gatekeeper was
worth having. I paid the cab driver, and walked into the
terminal.
"Your tickets seem to be in order, Mr. Shaw," said the perky
girl behind the counter. She began to slide my boarding pass
to me. I stilled her by placing my hand atop her own. Her
flesh was deliciously warm after the chill outside.
"I have to make a change. When is the next nonstop to
Bangkok?" She looked at me a bit too long, then down at her
directory until she found the flight. I managed to wrangle a
first class seat where none was to be had, and had the layover
been any longer, I might have tried to get even more. Such
were the advantages of wealth. As it was, though, I only had
an hour or so and customs was a bear. I said goodbye to the
English rose and walked to the international terminal.
Completely unable to sleep in the air, I bought the new George
Stark novel at the duty-free shop and wondered how long it
would be before my lack of rest caught up with me. It had
been something more than two days since I'd had a good
night's sleep, and it might be another two before I did. Had I
been thinking, I would have asked Constantine's neighbor
where to find some coke. Fasting and a lack of sleep was a key
component to any vision quest, and I was coming perilously
close to the dream state. I bought a coffee.
There was a surprise waiting for me on the other side of
customs. I made my way through the line, thinner here than it
had been at JFK, but still incredibly slow. They called my
flight over the PA, and it was clear that a number of others
were also last minute flyers. These were all business people
traveling for work. Winter still held the world in its grasp
north of the equator, and people weren't much for tourism in
the cold. Most of my companions in the day's one mile club
were dressed as I was (though less soaked and out of sorts),
and a plane must have just landed because a throng of business
people passed me by coming the other way. I didn't see him
until I had nearly run into him.
The Rook stood directly in my path, a thin grin on his pale
face. He wore what might have been the same immaculate
black suit as he had at 54. Regarding me with his large,
unblinking eyes, he did not so much as nod when I approached
- he only stood quietly, an island in the river of foot traffic.
There was a large nylon bag hung over his shoulder. Just as I
arrived in front of him, an electronic trill sounded from within
the satchel. Never taking his eyes from my face, the Rook
flipped open the top and pulled a telephone handset from
within. He handed it to me.
I hadn't used one of the new satellite phones before, and I
could feel the eyes of the other passengers regarding me
curiously as they passed. I took it so gingerly that it must have
looked as though I didn't trust the apparatus. I slowly put it to
my ear. There was a static noise in the receiver that sounded
like pine straw on a campfire.
"Hello?" I said. The Rook stared calmly, unperturbed when
my plane was announced again. "Hello?"
"Where is the box?" asked Edward Buckman. "Why are you
going to Thailand?"
"Constantine didn't have it. You're having me watched?" I
felt anger begin to rise despite myself.
"Of course I am, you idiot. My eyes and ears span this world
and nothing is secret from me. You have no thoughts I do not
comprehend before you think them, Shaw. Never forget that.
Now tell me, why are you going to Thailand?"
I thought to answer with the flaw in his question - that he
should have known already since he was so all seeing. The
little worm thought himself a spider in the midst of a web,
sending out minions to do his work. I would not comply so
easily, reward or no. I said none of this. The Rook's
impassive, grinning face put me right off speaking my mind.
Instead:
"He said that the box knew when someone was seeking it.
That it would be waiting in Bangkok. He gave me an address."
"An address? Good. Good. I didn't think the little rascal
would have it himself. He probably tried to throw it out to sea,
the coward. You are not a coward, are you Shaw?" The static
on the phone hissed and whirred like the whispering of the old.
"I'm not, Mr. Buckman." I didn't tell him that I doubted
Constantine was either.
"Good. That's why I've made you my champion in this. For
your courage. That is why I will offer you rewards your
imagination can only begin to describe. Not a coward. Not a
coward. I do hope you're not a fool, either." My flight was
given its last boarding call, but the Rook only continued to
stare. I swear the small man never blinked at all.
"No, White King. I am no fool."
"Than stop imagining what must be in my puzzle box, Shaw.
It's like Blackbeard, is it not? You may have any room in my
house but one. Even a moment in that threshold means your
doom. You understand, don't you? To solve my puzzle means
an end to your future. And remember, young man."
"Yes?"
"I have my eyes on you always." For a moment, there was only
the whispering static. Then the Rook reached up, plucked the
phone from my ear and replaced it in the bag. He lifted his
arm and tapped his watch twice. I held his eyes for a moment,
anger growing out of my impotence with Buckland, but the
Rook would not budge. He only stood there, the ticking of his
wristwatch barely audible as he held it by his right ear.
I ran for my gate and barely made the plane on time.
***
The soup scalded my tongue, but even the pain did not dull the
unusual taste of the exotic broth. "An idiot," Buckman had
called me. I stood at the noodle cart eating voraciously - the
flight had taken almost eighteen hours, and beyond peanuts
and bourbon, the airplane food held no appeal. I needn't have
worried, though. Less than a dollar bought me a feast of
noodles and spices, and I could feel the hot concoction
refreshing my tired body from within. If only I could find a
tailor, a bed and a barber, I might get back to being myself. I
turned around to look at the wide street that ran along the edge
of the Chao Phraya River.
The air along the boulevard was perfumed in a thousand alien
aromas, and it seemed that an endless array of people paraded
back and forth. They bought food or cologne or imitation
Gucci from the street vendors who shouted at the passing
tourists. Some bartered, some did not. Locals did not come to
this little stretch by the river, not those who had nothing to sell
at any rate. They manned carts, moved supplies and hawked
wares both legal and ill.
American servicemen were the most numerous group of
tourists, Navy mostly, followed by the Japanese. The rest of
the young faces looking gluttonously around were the scions of
the rich blowing their graduation money to expand their minds
in the East. They were my age, mostly, but it seemed as
though they were from a different planet. Other Asians
wandered about making this a wicked melting pot, for it wasn't
this avenue that most of the assembled had came to Bangkok
for. This city wasn't a shopping destination, unless you were
shopping for flesh.
I finished my bowl, surprisingly full. The meal was so good
that I was tempted to lean over the lip of the small man's cart.
On reflection, it was probably best not to see the wizard behind
that particular curtain. Better to begin my walk - I had a ways
to go.
The address that Constantine had given me was miles north of
the royal palace in the industrial section of town. The Luk
Luang tributary ran from the Phraya deep into northern
Bangkok. Heavy junks and barges ran up and down the water
at all hours, picking up shipments at the warehouses and
running them to ports throughout Asia. It was to one of these
depots that Constantine sent me. It was fine; the sites along
my route were much more to my liking than the pomp and
circumstance of the daytime tourist pathways.
Prostitution was not legal under the rule of the King, but was
neither it hidden nor confined to street corners in the dead of
night. Bangkok's red light district was famous the world over
for its absolute depravity, and as I strolled its alleys in my shirt
sleeves, I could see why. Every building's lower floor was
lined with windows, and in each of them were the children of
the night. I stood for a moment with a group of men staring at
a young girl who could not have been fifteen. She wore her
hair in pigtails, and the rouge on her cheeks cut a striking
contrast to the schoolgirl skirt around her waist. If only I had
more time . . .
The crowds were thickest amongst the whores, and less so the
deeper one walked into the morally blind world. Soon, the
figures in the windows were more haggard and worldly wise.
The barkers in front of the cat houses cried out in their broken
English/Thai/Japanese about the debasements performed
within. They yelled that no matter how jaded a man you might
have been, what you would witness inside would reawaken the
lust in your marrow. Their talk of snakes and ping-pong balls
only brought a grin to my face. These carneys underestimated
my weariness.
Even these petty perversions ended and I passed out of the
district, only the most hardened continuing along my path. The
ornate window dressings gave way to darkened alleys and
dockside bars. The come-ons here were less well rehearsed.
As I rounded a corner, I heard voices from an alcove, low and
mean. The recess was dark, but I saw the shadows ripping and
clawing at one another, wet and violent. Still, I continued the
path.
The buildings were low and squat, the vicissitudes of Thai
architecture giving way to the blockiness of utility. I walked
along the Luk Luang, the massive cranes used for transporting
cargo reaching for the sky like the skeletons of ancient gods.
The warehouses were mostly empty, and few barges were out
on the water.
I found Samsen, my road, and turned up the street. The climes
were squalid, and fires burned in oil drums, surrounded by the
sleeping forms of the homeless and unemployed. The
warehouses here were burned out, and the smell of oil and
gasoline was heavy in the air. When I arrived at the address
Constantine gave me, it was only an empty lot filled with
weeds.
"Son of a bitch!" I shouted. I kicked one of the drums, sending
it spiraling through the air in a rain of sparks. I shouted more,
swearing revenge on the lousy Britain. A group of old men
who had been sleeping around the collective warmth shouted
in alarm. The rose and stumbled away as quickly as they
could.
Truly possessed by my rage, I grabbed hold of another of the
burning drums. Unmindful of the searing pain tearing my
hands, I hurled it after the terrified men. It exploded upon
hitting the ground. The men dashed around the flaming debris
in the midst of the avenue. I continued my assault, lashing out
at everything in my path.
When the final drum was prostrate to my fury, I leaned against
a fence, breathing heavily. I had come around the world for
nothing, a pawn in a game between two chess players inferior
to me. Buckland called me "an idiot." "An idiot." Perhaps he
was right.
"Spare any change, boss?" I nearly jumped out of my skin. I
looked around to find a homeless man sitting on a small cart.
He had no legs, and his makeshift transportation's wheels
squeaked as he dragged himself toward me. "Big change?
Little change? Make no difference."
My hand was smarting, and the last thing I wanted was to deal
with some drunk cripple. "Off with you," I said.
"You give money, maybe I help you."
"I'm beyond help, I'm afraid."
"Maybe so. Maybe so," he said, "but I know what you need."
I reached into my pocket, wincing when my hand brushed over
the fabric, and fished out my change from the noodle stand.
The little man took it eagerly.
"What might that be?"
"You looking for something. You need to find what you
looking for." The little man started laughing, loud and long.
"No shit," I said. I was going to reach down and take my
change back when I saw something beyond the fire burning in
the middle of the road. On the other side of the heat and
flames was a figure wearing a long, wet black coat. His teeth
glinted in the light, and he nodded to me as I stepped forward.
It was the faceless man. The cripple laughed on and on.
"Why are you following me?" I demanded. The faceless man
only stood his ground, the air between us shimmering in the
heat. "Are you working for Buckman?" The figure turned and
walked away.
"Got to find what you seeking," laughed the cripple. I ran
forward, jumping over the flames and chasing the faceless
man. He ran as well.
***
He was always close enough that I could see him, never so near
that I could grasp his coat tail and bring my pursuit to a
conclusion. We ran through the streets, through the red light
district and past the docks. We charged across the Chao and
around the palace, the Royal Guard disinterested in our private
game of hide 'n seek. If the stoic soldiers noticed that my
mark had no eyes, no nose, nothing on his gray face save a set
of grinning teeth, they showed no sign.
The figure ran through a shopping mall, and I followed him
through, the glaring lights stunning me. All the faces I passed
seemed to regard me impassively, as though they were
watching a film and nothing more. We escaped the shopping
area and ran deeper into the city. We ran past a karaoke bar.
At least twenty youths sat on Vespas out front, all of them
wearing sunglasses despite the night. They pulled out just as I
ran by, and for a moment I was completely surrounded by them
in the street, blinded.
As quickly as the swarm had begun, it ended, and it seemed
that I was alone in the most desolate and empty part of any
city. A rail yard stretched before me and I walked toward it. A
rational part of my mind shouted that the line of sleep
depravation had been crossed, that dream and waking were
becoming indistinguishable. I silenced the voice when I saw
light leaking from under the door of a boxcar up ahead.
There was a large man standing in front of the car, easily six-
feet-ten, and he looked me up and down when I approached.
Finally, he barked something at me in Thai.
"I don't understand," I said. "Have you seen . . ."
The bouncer held out his hand, and I understood the
universality of the gesture well enough. I pulled out my
billfold and counted out money until the man was satisfied. A
great many notes filled the giant's hand before he knocked
twice against the side of the car. The door slid open only wide
enough for me to slip through, a sweet aroma wafting from
inside. I stepped up into the red lighted space.
Cots and couches filled the room, and tapestries strung from
the ceiling separated spaces in the car, creating rooms. Men
and women lied around on the beds and pillows, contented
expressions lolling across their boneless countenances. I stood
quietly, unsure of what to do or say until a beautiful woman of
Chinese ancestry approached me. She was wearing a jade
Suzy Wong dress embroidered with a pattern of gold filigree
that was familiar, and her eyes were black as coal. She smiled
and took my hands, leading me toward one of the fabric walls.
We went around to the other side, and she slowly pushed me
back on a small couch with an ornate houka beside it, four
pipes snaking out from the central cylinder. The pleasant
smile never left her face as she pulled a packet wrapped in foil
from a pocket in her tiny dress. She unwrapped a small, black
marble that resembled tar more than anything else and handed
it to me. The gummy stuff smelled like roses. The young
woman worked on the apparatus, lighting a fire inside it, then
took the marble and placed it in the top.
She smoothed the hair on my sweaty forehead, and ran her
fingers along my stubbled cheeks. Then she handed me the
pipe. I breathed in the floral vapors, pulling them deep into my
lungs. Opium had virtually disappeared from the world of the
twentieth century. Heroin was cheaper to produce, and
infinitely more addictive. It simply made no economic sense
to go through the time-consuming process of coaxing droplets
of nectar from the beautiful red flowers in the modern age.
I inhaled again and my cheeks grew numb. I felt the world
falling away as I stared at the beautiful girl. Her lips were so
red, so glossed that they glowed in the muted light. I realized
why the embroidery on her dress was so familiar - the
swooping, spiraling pattern was the same as the one on
LeMarchand's gilded puzzle box. I drew from the houka a
third time, and then the woman took the pipe from my
unwilling hand, pulling me to my feet.
Without a word, she led me back through the central room. I
felt light on my feet, as though I were floating through a
flowery afterworld. I glanced down at the people lying on their
couches, at the awkward way that they were positioned, arms
and legs and heads cast at obscene angles. I looked at the red
bulb hanging from the ceiling and realized that the light was
crimson because the bulb was covered in blood. They were all
dead, laid out in an orgy of flesh, an abattoir tableau parodying
wanton pleasure.
Stumbling to the door, I made for an escape when the girl
grabbed my arm. Her grip was steel, and I would have
attempted to fight her if it wasn't for her angelic smile. It was
calming. It never fell, even when she stepped over the dead.
She led me to the other side of the car, past tapestries and
rooms, far further than we should have been able to go in the
constricted space of a train car. When we passed a mirror, I
was shocked at my appearance. My face was drawn, my eyes
wide and wild. Sweat had soaked through my shirt and my lips
were dry and cracked. At last, we came to a room.
There was a simple table in the middle, with two simple
wooden chairs facing each other. The woman took me to one
of them and sat me down. She leaned down to kiss me, her
tongue hot in my mouth. I closed my eyes as she sat astride me,
writhing gently. Then she bit my lip, hard enough to draw
blood. I cried out, my eyes bolting open and for a moment her
flawless brown skin was gray and lifeless. Her eyes were open,
too. The lids had been cut away, so they couldn't close.
I pushed her back and she stumbled, hair falling into her face.
I was ready to stand and fight when she brushed it back. Her
face was normal. There was a thin line of blood on her lips,
my blood, and she flicked her tongue over it. She smiled again
and walked out of the room.
The passage of time was impossible to track. My lip throbbed.
So did my hand, but the pain was distant and illusory. The
opium made everything dreamlike, and after a time my eyes
became heavy despite my fear. They drifted closed for only a
moment before I heard a voice.
"What's your pleasure, sir?" An ancient man sat before me.
He might have been Thai or Chinese, but he could also have
been white or something else all together. A thin beard
dangled from his chin, and he regarded me curiously with his
fingers steepled in front of him.
"What's your pleasure?" he asked again.
"I've come for something," I mumbled. "A box. A puzzle
box."
"Ah. A puzzle box. They are rare nowadays. Very pricey.
Most expensive."
"I can pay. I'll pay whatever the price."
"Will you? Will you indeed?"
"Whatever the price." He nodded and placed the Lament
Configuration on the table with a hollow click. The box was
smaller than I expected, the familiar whirling golden pattern
covering its faces less mystifying so close up. I reached
forward and took hold of it, and the ancient man smiled.
"Your father will be proud, Mr. Shaw," he said. "Use the back
door on the way out."
***
I have always been a slave to instant gratification. Buckman
had called me and idiot, but I wasn't insipid enough to blithely
bring him the prize. He picked the wrong man for that. I held
the box greedily as I reeled through the train yard, the birds
chirping out their pre-dawn songs. My flight left at nine in the
morning. There would certainly be enough time to solve the
puzzle, see the contents and make it to the airport on time.
Constantine might not have been man enough for the treasure,
but I certainly was.
There was an empty cargo car with its massive door ajar, and I
tossed my coat inside. A peek around told me I was alone, so I
rolled in myself. Slamming the door shut, I pulled my zippo
from my pocket and lit it, the small flame proving to be my
only illumination. The train was stifling so I pulled off my
shirt. I smelled bad enough that it even offended me. Perhaps
I would have time to stop at a hotel to shower before the
journey home.
LeMarchand's box really was the marvel that everyone had
said. I ran my fingers along its surface feeling for a seam and
came up dry. Buckman had only allowed me a few moments
to regard the instructions in the grimoire, surely part of his
attempt to keep me from learning whatever secrets the puzzle
held.
The lighter had nearly gone out by the time I made a
breakthrough. I was leaning down, my head practically on the
floor to see. There was a disk of gold on one face of the
Lament, and when you pressed three of the corners, it would
rotate. I turned the dial, satisfied by the deep clicking the
motion produced. In the distance, I heard what sounded like
chains jangling in the night, and I became concerned that the
car I was in might be getting hitched for a journey. Regardless,
I was too close now to stop my efforts.
After rotating the circle for a full revolution, I pressed in with
my thumbs. The disk gave way and ratcheted deep into the
surface, releasing a series of locks as it went. I felt some give,
so I twisted, the two sides of the puzzle going in opposite
directions until they met again in the middle. This time the
noise that the interlocking mechanism made was impossibly
deep, a thick grinding discord that might have come from some
great industrial machine in the nineteenth century. Then it
moved entirely on its own.
Four quadrants of the box lifted of their own accord, rotated,
and slid back down. The new shape it created was of a star. I
marveled at LeMarchand's artistry. Despite the complete
change in the object's architecture, all of the gold inlay still
matched up perfectly. The glittering patterns were unbroken. I
glanced at the lighter and saw that it had finally gone out. So
how was I seeing?
I looked up to find slats of pale blue light leaking impossibly
into the room. It was as though windows had materialized
where none existed. A thin mist rose in the streams of light,
carrying the scent of burning meat with it. The noise of
jangling chains grew even louder behind me, accompanied by
the clop-clopping of wood striking wood. I turned around.
Thick metal chains hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly
despite the lack of a breeze. In their midst was a large wooden
block. It was warped and rectangular, the same material as the
box in my hand but much larger. It spun around slowly,
ceaselessly on the end of a chain, deep pits and scours covering
its surface. The brown stains saturating its edifice told readily
enough what the impossible object was. There was a chopping
block on this railway car. A cutting board formed out of thin
air. I felt myself begin to shake. My breath showed in the
cold.
"Sebastian Hiram Shaw," commanded a bass voice behind me.
I recognized it instantly - it was the doctor from my dream, the
one who knew my blood was deadly. I spun around and knew.
I knew what Buckman and Constantine had warned me about.
I turned around and I knew the Gashes.
There were four of them, their skin the pitted gray of the dead.
They all wore shining black clothes that seemed stitched into
their very skins. One of them was monstrously obese, rolls of
fat dangling from every appendage. His face was pulled thin,
his hanging jowls and flaccid chins having been stretched
around to the back of his head and stapled together. A thin
rope of drool streamed from his taut mouth to the floor. A
second of the creatures had no legs. It stood on impossible
stretched and spindly arms, clicking its steel fingernails on the
floor as though bored.
The woman was the worst. The shimmering outfit fused into
her skin did not cover her swollen, pregnant belly. Her gray
hands stroked it lovingly, running over the open wound of a
caesarian incision cleaved amateurishly into her torso. Blood
flowed over her skirts from the mangled tear, and something
inside her was moving. While I watched, something black and
fluid reached out of the fissure, peering out into the world for
an unhappy, hungry glance.
"Sebastian Shaw," the leader of the group ordered again. He
stood in the center of the car facing me with his devil's eyes, a
black-toothed scowl hacked across his mouth. A grid had been
carved into his toneless skin, and at every intersecting point, a
nail had been driven into his skull. The singlet he wore did not
hide the carvings on his chest, cuts held perpetually open by
pins sewn into his skin.
The Gash held out his hand, and the Lament flew from mine to
his. He looked at LeMarchand's Box, and it folded itself back
into a cube. Then he let his arm drop by his side and he turned
his unwanted attention back to me. Whatever unnatural calm
the opium and sleeplessness had given me was gone now. I
stood before the box's guardians possessed by a horror so
abject and terrible that I found myself unable to breathe.
"You have called us, Shaw," said the Gash with nails in his
skull. "We have come."
________________________________________________________________
To be concluded . . .
Read more nonsense at http://www.livejournal.com/~xanderdg
Alan Moore and Clive Barker created many of the characters
featured herein, and Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Dimension
Films control the rights to them - no challenge to existing
copyrights is intended. The previous chapters are archived
at the Fonts of Wisdom (home.att.net/~lubakmetyk), and at
fanfiction.net. Feedback is very much appreciated at
XanderDG@hotmail.com.
________________________________________________
HELLRAISER: HELLFIRE
by
XanderDig
_________________________________________________
3
Though there were no dirty snowdrifts or piles of melting slush
here, London still felt more like a city under the yoke of winter
than New York did. A thin drizzle fell slowly, constantly. The
cold permeated the air, chilling me to the bone. I pulled my
black coat close around me and mused that I would have
preferred a storm, all hail and thunder and lightening. I didn't
realize that one was almost upon me.
The neighborhood was little better than a slum, and I wished
that I hadn't stepped out of the cab early to get a lay of the
land. Even in the rain, the smell of garbage was pervasive. I
passed empty storefronts with shattered glass in the windows
and structures blackened by fire. There were cars stripped in
the street. Every surface was covered in graffiti: "PAKIS GO
HOME," one eloquently advised. "NF" shouted another.
There had been a high school in Philly, North Fulton, whose
football team had been fond of spray painting the same legend.
I didn't think this was by the same group.
Refuse collected in the storm drains, so there was a good inch
of water out on the road. I might have been concerned about
getting splashed by a passing auto or lorry, as the natives called
them, but nobody seemed to drive in Paddington on a Saturday
morning. I glanced at the address in my pocket again; the ink
was running in the wet. Still, it was legible. I looked at the
small tourist map I purchased at the airport, turned a corner
and continued on my way.
Looking at maps in rough locales is never a good idea,
particularly when one is wearing an eight-thousand-dollar
Burberry coat. Across the pockmarked road were three boys
with the look of local toughs. Their heads were shaved,
emphasizing their thick, stupid brows. They all wore blue
jackets with flags on the shoulder, black pants, and jackboots
with white laces. A gang, perhaps the poets behind the local
wall art. Knowing I shouldn't, that time was of the essence, I
nodded over to them and smiled. Then I slowed to a stroll.
True to form, the skinheads began to pace me on the other side
of the street. They spoke quietly to each other, egging one-
another on. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or a lizard brain
desire for masculine dominance - I wasn't sure of the "whys"
of my actions, but what did they matter, really?
There was a thin alley between two buildings up ahead and I
turned down it. It was heaped with garbage, and it occurred to
me that the momentary enjoyment I was about to receive was
probably not worth the damage to my shoes. I stepped over the
sloughed-off refuse as best I could and made my way deep into
the fissure. Before I even reached the end, I heard footsteps
behind me, the boys' haphazard attempts at stealth as
successful as a herd of rhino. I noticed I had an audience.
There were two children beyond the wooden fence at the end
of the alley. One was an Indian boy, the other pale, with dark
hair and blue eyes. I winked at them and turned around.
For a moment, my "pursuers" stopped like deer in headlights.
Then they remembered that *they* were mugging *me*.
"Oi!" belched one. "You some kinda queer then!? Lookin' for
a bit'a roughie!?!" The three began to fan out, less concerned
for their shoes than I had been.
"We'll give it to ya rough, missie!" shouted the biggest one.
"Give us yur to-dos and maybe you'll be walkin' outa here,"
said the first. The one who hadn't spoken was only a boy, little
older than the kids on the other side of the fence. While the
two bruisers would only end up lying to their friends about
what happened today (presuming I left them with the ability to
speak), the frightened boy might still be taught a lesson.
"Let me make you an alternate proposal, you ridiculous little
strumpet," I said mildly. The large one pulled a short length of
pipe from his waistband, surging forward, but doubt licked the
leader's face. I focused on him and ignored the charging
gorilla. "Why don't you take off your clothes right now, and
after I treat you like the other children in juvenile did, I'll let
you walk away from this."
The leader's mouth fell to an almost comical doughnut,
exacerbated by the younger one's snort. I couldn't enjoy the
moment, though, the big one was on me.
He shoved me back with all his might, and I almost toppled
over a mound of garbage.
"Break him, Arnie!" yelled the leader, still rooted in place.
The gorilla reared back with his pipe while I was off balance
and brought it down in a wide arc, slow as a B-52. I could
have moved, of course, but where would the fun in that have
been?
There was a hollow clang when the steel hit my forehead, and I
heard one of the kids behind the fence screech and run away.
Even the other skinheads paused in their advance, presuming
that the scrap was over before it really began. There were
mistaken. I held the pose for a moment, my head theatrically
held back, allowing the strength from the blow to course into
my muscles. Then I turned back to the ape with a wide smile
on my face.
"This is going to hurt," I told him.
"Christ, Johnny!" he screamed. I grabbed the boy by the arm
and yanked the pipe from his grasp. He held up his other hand
to ward off a blow, but it never came. I pulled a Superman and
bent the pipe for all to see. Then I threw the big one into the
brick edifice of the adjoining building. He landed hard enough
to crumble the mortar.
The leader, Johnny, was a whelp, but he wasn't a cowardly
one. He whipped a butterfly knife from his pocket and
charged. He tried to cut me but I danced around his unskilled
attack and slapped his face. Enraged, he attacked again, so I
slapped him harder before I grabbed him by the throat and
lifted him off the ground. I looked over at the smallest one,
staring at me with wide, wet eyes.
"You see, boy? There is always someone bigger." I toyed with
the notion of snapping Johnny's neck, but I had been seen by
the kids beyond the fence, and needless complications were the
last thing I needed. Instead, I tossed him casually by his friend,
where he coughed and gasped for breath. Finally I went to the
young one and grabbed him by the collar of his coat.
"Don't let me catch you running around with this lot
anymore," I said, doing my best super hero. When I was done
here, I could go and save people from a burning building or
rescue a cat from a tree. "There's a good lad." Tears were
flowing freely down the kid's face. I reached up and tousled
his hair paternally when he cut my hand with the knife he was
concealing in his palm.
I cried out, jerking my hand protectively to my chest and the
boy turned and ran, screaming at the top of his lungs. The little
bastard cut the back of my hand almost to the bone. Blood
flowed, and I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, pressing
it hard into the wound. The affectation of carrying around a
kerchief was something I'd taken from the Club - I was a
sleeve man left to my own devices - but now I was thankful.
Instead of giving a chase, I was so enraged that I nearly went
back to finish off the other two.
Then I thought about the box, and my quest for Buckman. I
had to get to Constantine and a run in with the London police
would not expedite matters. I removed the cloth and looked at
the cut on my hand. Now I'd shed blood for LeMarchand's
Box - whatever it held had better damn well be worth it.
I reapplied pressure to the laceration and stormed out of the
alley, the eyes of the kid behind the gate heavy on my back.
***
My anger and annoyance made me careless, and I became
hopelessly lost. I walked back and forth through the
neighborhood. I stopped at a small druggist's to pick up a
bandage for my hand and to ask directions, but I couldn't
understand what the foreign cashier was telling me. Foreign?
I had to chuckle at the irony. By the time I finally found the
address Chantel had written down, now little more than a blue
splotch on the expensive, fibrous stationary of the Club, I was
chilled to the bone and my hand was a hornets nest.
The building was gray, of course. It seemed that everything in
London was. It was a brick structure, four floors tall. There
was a butcher shop on the street level. The meats and cheeses
displayed in the window indicated that the place was on its last
legs. I looked inside to find an ancient Asian man staring at
me from behind the counter. He offered no greeting. The door
to the building was next to the shop's entrance, and I opened
the glass door and went inside.
Narrow and claustrophobic, the stairwell smelled of piss. Paint
was peeling inside, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood
on end as soon as I crossed the threshold. There was
something not right about the building, something wrong on a
subliminal level. I looked up the stairs and heard a woman
moan from up in the darkness - none of the hall lights seemed
to be working.
"Naturally," I said. I rubbed the back of my hand and walked
up, the soft wood squeaking plaintively under my weight. At
least I didn't need to go all the way to the top.
At the landing of the second floor, I turned to walk down the
hall when another moan drifted down. The sound was deep
and wanton, but also pained. I looked down the hall. It was
thick with shadows. Only one of the flourescent bulbs
flickered with an audible buzz, bathing the green walls in an
illusory strobe. The window at the end of the hall was taped
over. Another moan. A howl, really, and there were
consonants in the noise - something was being said. I began to
climb the stairs when the noise stopped abruptly.
Something crashed in one of the apartments - it sounded like a
dresser falling over - and the scream stopped in mid-breath.
There had been enough distractions today. I turned and walked
down the hall of the second floor.
Evens were on the left, and odds the right. The burgundy
carpet was a jigsaw puzzle of dark stains, and the smells of
excrement, cigarette smoke and stale beer were heavy. 209.
211. The door of 213 was open. The apartment was a studio,
and a man inside was calmly shooting up. He held an elastic
band wrapped around his slim upper arm tightly in his teeth,
and he punctured a black vein with a syringe, depressing the
plunger in a practiced motion. He withdrew the needle. A thin
jet of blood squirted straight up when he opened his mouth and
released the latex tourniquet. I looked up and saw that the
ceiling was covered in cris-cross brown patterns that looked
somehow familiar. The man looked out at me, his eyelids
fluttering.
"Old faithful, boss," he said. He smiled and laid back on his
mattress. I turned away and continued down the hall. 215.
Finally, 217. The apartment I was looking for. I could hear
music on the other side of the warped, plywood door.
Something loud and driving. Why on earth would Buckman
want anything from the kind of man who would live in a rat
trap like this? I knocked on the door like a cop, three loud raps
of my knuckles.
After a moment, the music cut out with a scratch on vinyl. I
knocked again.
"Bollocks on it! I'm coming, Chas!" Surprisingly, there was
no noise of locks disengaging. This man must have been
confident or stupid not to lock his doors in an environment like
this. The door opened and a blond man frowned up at me. His
hair was spiky, but one side was flat as though he were only
lately lying on his side. He wore a T-shirt, boxer shorts, and
his eyes were rimmed in the kind of red that speaks more of
tears than drugs. A cigarette dangled from his lips. The man
looked neither surprised nor intimidated by my appearance at
his door.
"Are you John Constantine?"
"Depends on who's asking."
"My name is Shaw, and I'm here on business. I understand
correctly, you recently . . ."
"If you're here on business you can buy us a cuppa, can't you,"
he interjected, and he shut the door in my face. I was so
surprised by the audacity of the action that I didn't even have
time to become angry. A minute later, Constantine reappeared
with pants on and a brown trench coat more suited to the
weather than my own. He brushed past me and shut his door,
ambling down the hall.
"Let's go, gramps," he said. He never locked his door, and if
the caterwauling from upstairs fazed him, it didn't show.
***
"So you're one of the old queen's boys then," he said.
Constantine's manner was so disarming that it was difficult to
tell if this was meant as a challenge or a term of affection. If
Buckman, the old queen in question, was correct about this
man being in the con game, then he must have been very good
at his vocation.
As we walked through the drizzling wasteland from his
apartment to a nearby cafe we talked about nothing at all. My
flight, his life on the dole, even the weather ("It'll piss down
like this 'til May or so," he said, "then we'll get a right rain.").
Through it all, he steered conversation away from my line of
questioning and to more prosaic concerns. Now, as we sat
across from one another, he with strong tea, myself with coffee
so weak it did not deserve the title, it was time to get to
business. I reached out and lit his cigarette.
"You know the Club?" I asked.
"I'd rather wager I know the Hellfire Club a bit better than
you, Sebastian. The old git wanted me to come to New York a
few years ago to give him some lessons." I laughed, but
Constantine didn't blink. Perhaps he was insane. "I know that
your club is made up of a bunch of rich blokes with delusions
of grandeur. I know that Eddie Buckman has his fingers in a
lot of very twisted pies, and that he's a paranoid convinced that
foreigners and mutants are out to get him." I made sure not to
blink at the word.
"There's more, Shaw. I know that as much money and
influence and power as he does have, there are a lot of things
your King doesn't know shit about. He doesn't admit that, you
understand. He comes off like he's looked into the abyss, like
he's fucking been there, but it's all a scam. When he's unsure
of the consequences of his little hedge magics, he uses an
apprentice for the dirty work. Do you understand me, Shaw?"
The question hung in the air between us.
"He doesn't take the risks. Just the gains," Constantine
concluded.
"Maybe so," I said. "Either way, I have significant resources
of my own, so if you answer my questions, you'll never need
another welfare check."
"Your funeral. Cash and carry," he answered. "Shoot."
"I'm looking for a box. A puzzle box built by a man named
LeMarchand.."
He looked at me and for the shadow of a moment a real
sadness crept across his face. Then he shook his head and
stood, stubbing out his butt.
"Thanks for the tea. Ta." He made to walk out and I realized
that I would have to be more direct.
"The hell . . ." Constantine cried when I threw him back into
the booth. The owner of the diner, a burly man with a thick
moustache, made to run around the counter. He carried a
funny bat, flat and wide in his hands. I turned to him.
"You're going to want to go have a smoke in back, friend. A
good long puff." Constantine tried to move around me and I
shoved him back into the seat. The cook looked at both of us
in turn.
"Sorry, Johnnie," he said. He walked through the swinging
door to the kitchen. When he was gone, I turned back to the
blond man. His face was not the mask of fear I expected. If
anything, it was contemptuous. No matter.
"Mr. Constantine, I would very much like to pay you to assist
me in finding Le Marchand's Box. I know you have some idea
where it is, because I know you possessed it at one time. I
require that information. I will have it."
"LeMarchand's Box?"
"That's right, John. This can be very easy."
"Right. Give us a pen." I handed one to him and he scribbled
an address. To my surprise, it wasn't far off.
"What's this?"
"It's an antique shop 'round in Notting Hill. I know for an
absolute fact that they have a LeMarchand puzzle box." He
stood up and faced me. "In fact, if you go through all the
shops over there, I figure you'll find ten, maybe fifteen
LeMarchand's. Good errand boy'll bring back a bloody
bouquet of the things."
"You don't want to trifle with me, Constantine. The box I
want . . ."
"That's the fucking point, boyo! You don't have any
conception of what you're asking for! It's not 'LeMarchand's
Box,' Shaw. It's the fucking Lament. Do you know what it is,
Shaw? Do you have any notion of what the Lament
Configuration can do?"
"I, I . . ."
"Of course not. Because it doesn't serve the White King's
purpose for you to know what he's gotten you into,"
Constantine grinned. "I don't know you, Sebastian, and I don't
give two shites about your life. But I know that the Lament
only brings misery and suffering to those who seek it. I know
that whoever finds the Gashes will be owned by them forever.
*Forever*, Shaw. Whatever Buckman has promised you is not
worth the price you'll pay."
"What are the Gashes?" I asked.
"Jesus. Leave it alone, man. You don't want to know."
"I will know, Constantine. I intend to know why Buckman
sent me after the box, and I'll know why you're so keen to
keep me away from it. Now tell me where it is."
He shook his head and lit another cigarette. He told me that he
didn't know exactly, that when it's returned to its rightful
guardian, the Lament picks its own resting place. He said that
it probably already knew I was looking for it, and that it would
reveal itself in time.
"But if you really need to make another step to be ready for it,
try Bangkok. There's a good chance it's there, Shaw, and you
probably deserve what it'll give you. Ta." He told me an
address in the Thai capital as he put on his coat and walked to
the door.
"'What it will give me,' Constantine?" I asked. I had to get in
my shot. "How would you know? You never had the nerve to
solve the puzzle."
"That what he told you, sonny?" He didn't turn around. "I
solved it well enough. Down in Newcastle. I thought it would
give up the answers I needed for a spot of trouble I was having.
It gave me answers, all right. All I could take and more." John
Constantine walked away into the mist, and I found myself
with more questions than when I met him.
***
My driver was a rotund man who insisted on telling me five
hundred years of history for every site we passed. There were
a great many of them over the hour it took to get back to
Gatwick. I tuned him out to think of my own artifact, my sleep
deprived mind turning and turning the puzzle pieces it had
been given. The names swirled like mist, the puzzle box
turning along with them whenever I closed my eyes.
LeMarchand, De L'Isle, Constantine, Lament, Gashes. The
Gashes most of all. Buckman had talked about guardians -
were these the same things that Constantine alluded to? I was
not naive enough to think the supernatural impossible. I had
seen and experienced too much for that, but supernatural
golems seemed unlikely.
All ancient treasures were protected curses and the like. They
were only cultural metaphors so ingrained in legend that the
bad luck that often followed the possessor of such things was
psychologically preordained. Stories like that were the wives
tales that kept children out of storm cellars. Of course, those
cellars were always where the Christmas presents were hidden.
Whatever was powerful enough to require a gatekeeper was
worth having. I paid the cab driver, and walked into the
terminal.
"Your tickets seem to be in order, Mr. Shaw," said the perky
girl behind the counter. She began to slide my boarding pass
to me. I stilled her by placing my hand atop her own. Her
flesh was deliciously warm after the chill outside.
"I have to make a change. When is the next nonstop to
Bangkok?" She looked at me a bit too long, then down at her
directory until she found the flight. I managed to wrangle a
first class seat where none was to be had, and had the layover
been any longer, I might have tried to get even more. Such
were the advantages of wealth. As it was, though, I only had
an hour or so and customs was a bear. I said goodbye to the
English rose and walked to the international terminal.
Completely unable to sleep in the air, I bought the new George
Stark novel at the duty-free shop and wondered how long it
would be before my lack of rest caught up with me. It had
been something more than two days since I'd had a good
night's sleep, and it might be another two before I did. Had I
been thinking, I would have asked Constantine's neighbor
where to find some coke. Fasting and a lack of sleep was a key
component to any vision quest, and I was coming perilously
close to the dream state. I bought a coffee.
There was a surprise waiting for me on the other side of
customs. I made my way through the line, thinner here than it
had been at JFK, but still incredibly slow. They called my
flight over the PA, and it was clear that a number of others
were also last minute flyers. These were all business people
traveling for work. Winter still held the world in its grasp
north of the equator, and people weren't much for tourism in
the cold. Most of my companions in the day's one mile club
were dressed as I was (though less soaked and out of sorts),
and a plane must have just landed because a throng of business
people passed me by coming the other way. I didn't see him
until I had nearly run into him.
The Rook stood directly in my path, a thin grin on his pale
face. He wore what might have been the same immaculate
black suit as he had at 54. Regarding me with his large,
unblinking eyes, he did not so much as nod when I approached
- he only stood quietly, an island in the river of foot traffic.
There was a large nylon bag hung over his shoulder. Just as I
arrived in front of him, an electronic trill sounded from within
the satchel. Never taking his eyes from my face, the Rook
flipped open the top and pulled a telephone handset from
within. He handed it to me.
I hadn't used one of the new satellite phones before, and I
could feel the eyes of the other passengers regarding me
curiously as they passed. I took it so gingerly that it must have
looked as though I didn't trust the apparatus. I slowly put it to
my ear. There was a static noise in the receiver that sounded
like pine straw on a campfire.
"Hello?" I said. The Rook stared calmly, unperturbed when
my plane was announced again. "Hello?"
"Where is the box?" asked Edward Buckman. "Why are you
going to Thailand?"
"Constantine didn't have it. You're having me watched?" I
felt anger begin to rise despite myself.
"Of course I am, you idiot. My eyes and ears span this world
and nothing is secret from me. You have no thoughts I do not
comprehend before you think them, Shaw. Never forget that.
Now tell me, why are you going to Thailand?"
I thought to answer with the flaw in his question - that he
should have known already since he was so all seeing. The
little worm thought himself a spider in the midst of a web,
sending out minions to do his work. I would not comply so
easily, reward or no. I said none of this. The Rook's
impassive, grinning face put me right off speaking my mind.
Instead:
"He said that the box knew when someone was seeking it.
That it would be waiting in Bangkok. He gave me an address."
"An address? Good. Good. I didn't think the little rascal
would have it himself. He probably tried to throw it out to sea,
the coward. You are not a coward, are you Shaw?" The static
on the phone hissed and whirred like the whispering of the old.
"I'm not, Mr. Buckman." I didn't tell him that I doubted
Constantine was either.
"Good. That's why I've made you my champion in this. For
your courage. That is why I will offer you rewards your
imagination can only begin to describe. Not a coward. Not a
coward. I do hope you're not a fool, either." My flight was
given its last boarding call, but the Rook only continued to
stare. I swear the small man never blinked at all.
"No, White King. I am no fool."
"Than stop imagining what must be in my puzzle box, Shaw.
It's like Blackbeard, is it not? You may have any room in my
house but one. Even a moment in that threshold means your
doom. You understand, don't you? To solve my puzzle means
an end to your future. And remember, young man."
"Yes?"
"I have my eyes on you always." For a moment, there was only
the whispering static. Then the Rook reached up, plucked the
phone from my ear and replaced it in the bag. He lifted his
arm and tapped his watch twice. I held his eyes for a moment,
anger growing out of my impotence with Buckland, but the
Rook would not budge. He only stood there, the ticking of his
wristwatch barely audible as he held it by his right ear.
I ran for my gate and barely made the plane on time.
***
The soup scalded my tongue, but even the pain did not dull the
unusual taste of the exotic broth. "An idiot," Buckman had
called me. I stood at the noodle cart eating voraciously - the
flight had taken almost eighteen hours, and beyond peanuts
and bourbon, the airplane food held no appeal. I needn't have
worried, though. Less than a dollar bought me a feast of
noodles and spices, and I could feel the hot concoction
refreshing my tired body from within. If only I could find a
tailor, a bed and a barber, I might get back to being myself. I
turned around to look at the wide street that ran along the edge
of the Chao Phraya River.
The air along the boulevard was perfumed in a thousand alien
aromas, and it seemed that an endless array of people paraded
back and forth. They bought food or cologne or imitation
Gucci from the street vendors who shouted at the passing
tourists. Some bartered, some did not. Locals did not come to
this little stretch by the river, not those who had nothing to sell
at any rate. They manned carts, moved supplies and hawked
wares both legal and ill.
American servicemen were the most numerous group of
tourists, Navy mostly, followed by the Japanese. The rest of
the young faces looking gluttonously around were the scions of
the rich blowing their graduation money to expand their minds
in the East. They were my age, mostly, but it seemed as
though they were from a different planet. Other Asians
wandered about making this a wicked melting pot, for it wasn't
this avenue that most of the assembled had came to Bangkok
for. This city wasn't a shopping destination, unless you were
shopping for flesh.
I finished my bowl, surprisingly full. The meal was so good
that I was tempted to lean over the lip of the small man's cart.
On reflection, it was probably best not to see the wizard behind
that particular curtain. Better to begin my walk - I had a ways
to go.
The address that Constantine had given me was miles north of
the royal palace in the industrial section of town. The Luk
Luang tributary ran from the Phraya deep into northern
Bangkok. Heavy junks and barges ran up and down the water
at all hours, picking up shipments at the warehouses and
running them to ports throughout Asia. It was to one of these
depots that Constantine sent me. It was fine; the sites along
my route were much more to my liking than the pomp and
circumstance of the daytime tourist pathways.
Prostitution was not legal under the rule of the King, but was
neither it hidden nor confined to street corners in the dead of
night. Bangkok's red light district was famous the world over
for its absolute depravity, and as I strolled its alleys in my shirt
sleeves, I could see why. Every building's lower floor was
lined with windows, and in each of them were the children of
the night. I stood for a moment with a group of men staring at
a young girl who could not have been fifteen. She wore her
hair in pigtails, and the rouge on her cheeks cut a striking
contrast to the schoolgirl skirt around her waist. If only I had
more time . . .
The crowds were thickest amongst the whores, and less so the
deeper one walked into the morally blind world. Soon, the
figures in the windows were more haggard and worldly wise.
The barkers in front of the cat houses cried out in their broken
English/Thai/Japanese about the debasements performed
within. They yelled that no matter how jaded a man you might
have been, what you would witness inside would reawaken the
lust in your marrow. Their talk of snakes and ping-pong balls
only brought a grin to my face. These carneys underestimated
my weariness.
Even these petty perversions ended and I passed out of the
district, only the most hardened continuing along my path. The
ornate window dressings gave way to darkened alleys and
dockside bars. The come-ons here were less well rehearsed.
As I rounded a corner, I heard voices from an alcove, low and
mean. The recess was dark, but I saw the shadows ripping and
clawing at one another, wet and violent. Still, I continued the
path.
The buildings were low and squat, the vicissitudes of Thai
architecture giving way to the blockiness of utility. I walked
along the Luk Luang, the massive cranes used for transporting
cargo reaching for the sky like the skeletons of ancient gods.
The warehouses were mostly empty, and few barges were out
on the water.
I found Samsen, my road, and turned up the street. The climes
were squalid, and fires burned in oil drums, surrounded by the
sleeping forms of the homeless and unemployed. The
warehouses here were burned out, and the smell of oil and
gasoline was heavy in the air. When I arrived at the address
Constantine gave me, it was only an empty lot filled with
weeds.
"Son of a bitch!" I shouted. I kicked one of the drums, sending
it spiraling through the air in a rain of sparks. I shouted more,
swearing revenge on the lousy Britain. A group of old men
who had been sleeping around the collective warmth shouted
in alarm. The rose and stumbled away as quickly as they
could.
Truly possessed by my rage, I grabbed hold of another of the
burning drums. Unmindful of the searing pain tearing my
hands, I hurled it after the terrified men. It exploded upon
hitting the ground. The men dashed around the flaming debris
in the midst of the avenue. I continued my assault, lashing out
at everything in my path.
When the final drum was prostrate to my fury, I leaned against
a fence, breathing heavily. I had come around the world for
nothing, a pawn in a game between two chess players inferior
to me. Buckland called me "an idiot." "An idiot." Perhaps he
was right.
"Spare any change, boss?" I nearly jumped out of my skin. I
looked around to find a homeless man sitting on a small cart.
He had no legs, and his makeshift transportation's wheels
squeaked as he dragged himself toward me. "Big change?
Little change? Make no difference."
My hand was smarting, and the last thing I wanted was to deal
with some drunk cripple. "Off with you," I said.
"You give money, maybe I help you."
"I'm beyond help, I'm afraid."
"Maybe so. Maybe so," he said, "but I know what you need."
I reached into my pocket, wincing when my hand brushed over
the fabric, and fished out my change from the noodle stand.
The little man took it eagerly.
"What might that be?"
"You looking for something. You need to find what you
looking for." The little man started laughing, loud and long.
"No shit," I said. I was going to reach down and take my
change back when I saw something beyond the fire burning in
the middle of the road. On the other side of the heat and
flames was a figure wearing a long, wet black coat. His teeth
glinted in the light, and he nodded to me as I stepped forward.
It was the faceless man. The cripple laughed on and on.
"Why are you following me?" I demanded. The faceless man
only stood his ground, the air between us shimmering in the
heat. "Are you working for Buckman?" The figure turned and
walked away.
"Got to find what you seeking," laughed the cripple. I ran
forward, jumping over the flames and chasing the faceless
man. He ran as well.
***
He was always close enough that I could see him, never so near
that I could grasp his coat tail and bring my pursuit to a
conclusion. We ran through the streets, through the red light
district and past the docks. We charged across the Chao and
around the palace, the Royal Guard disinterested in our private
game of hide 'n seek. If the stoic soldiers noticed that my
mark had no eyes, no nose, nothing on his gray face save a set
of grinning teeth, they showed no sign.
The figure ran through a shopping mall, and I followed him
through, the glaring lights stunning me. All the faces I passed
seemed to regard me impassively, as though they were
watching a film and nothing more. We escaped the shopping
area and ran deeper into the city. We ran past a karaoke bar.
At least twenty youths sat on Vespas out front, all of them
wearing sunglasses despite the night. They pulled out just as I
ran by, and for a moment I was completely surrounded by them
in the street, blinded.
As quickly as the swarm had begun, it ended, and it seemed
that I was alone in the most desolate and empty part of any
city. A rail yard stretched before me and I walked toward it. A
rational part of my mind shouted that the line of sleep
depravation had been crossed, that dream and waking were
becoming indistinguishable. I silenced the voice when I saw
light leaking from under the door of a boxcar up ahead.
There was a large man standing in front of the car, easily six-
feet-ten, and he looked me up and down when I approached.
Finally, he barked something at me in Thai.
"I don't understand," I said. "Have you seen . . ."
The bouncer held out his hand, and I understood the
universality of the gesture well enough. I pulled out my
billfold and counted out money until the man was satisfied. A
great many notes filled the giant's hand before he knocked
twice against the side of the car. The door slid open only wide
enough for me to slip through, a sweet aroma wafting from
inside. I stepped up into the red lighted space.
Cots and couches filled the room, and tapestries strung from
the ceiling separated spaces in the car, creating rooms. Men
and women lied around on the beds and pillows, contented
expressions lolling across their boneless countenances. I stood
quietly, unsure of what to do or say until a beautiful woman of
Chinese ancestry approached me. She was wearing a jade
Suzy Wong dress embroidered with a pattern of gold filigree
that was familiar, and her eyes were black as coal. She smiled
and took my hands, leading me toward one of the fabric walls.
We went around to the other side, and she slowly pushed me
back on a small couch with an ornate houka beside it, four
pipes snaking out from the central cylinder. The pleasant
smile never left her face as she pulled a packet wrapped in foil
from a pocket in her tiny dress. She unwrapped a small, black
marble that resembled tar more than anything else and handed
it to me. The gummy stuff smelled like roses. The young
woman worked on the apparatus, lighting a fire inside it, then
took the marble and placed it in the top.
She smoothed the hair on my sweaty forehead, and ran her
fingers along my stubbled cheeks. Then she handed me the
pipe. I breathed in the floral vapors, pulling them deep into my
lungs. Opium had virtually disappeared from the world of the
twentieth century. Heroin was cheaper to produce, and
infinitely more addictive. It simply made no economic sense
to go through the time-consuming process of coaxing droplets
of nectar from the beautiful red flowers in the modern age.
I inhaled again and my cheeks grew numb. I felt the world
falling away as I stared at the beautiful girl. Her lips were so
red, so glossed that they glowed in the muted light. I realized
why the embroidery on her dress was so familiar - the
swooping, spiraling pattern was the same as the one on
LeMarchand's gilded puzzle box. I drew from the houka a
third time, and then the woman took the pipe from my
unwilling hand, pulling me to my feet.
Without a word, she led me back through the central room. I
felt light on my feet, as though I were floating through a
flowery afterworld. I glanced down at the people lying on their
couches, at the awkward way that they were positioned, arms
and legs and heads cast at obscene angles. I looked at the red
bulb hanging from the ceiling and realized that the light was
crimson because the bulb was covered in blood. They were all
dead, laid out in an orgy of flesh, an abattoir tableau parodying
wanton pleasure.
Stumbling to the door, I made for an escape when the girl
grabbed my arm. Her grip was steel, and I would have
attempted to fight her if it wasn't for her angelic smile. It was
calming. It never fell, even when she stepped over the dead.
She led me to the other side of the car, past tapestries and
rooms, far further than we should have been able to go in the
constricted space of a train car. When we passed a mirror, I
was shocked at my appearance. My face was drawn, my eyes
wide and wild. Sweat had soaked through my shirt and my lips
were dry and cracked. At last, we came to a room.
There was a simple table in the middle, with two simple
wooden chairs facing each other. The woman took me to one
of them and sat me down. She leaned down to kiss me, her
tongue hot in my mouth. I closed my eyes as she sat astride me,
writhing gently. Then she bit my lip, hard enough to draw
blood. I cried out, my eyes bolting open and for a moment her
flawless brown skin was gray and lifeless. Her eyes were open,
too. The lids had been cut away, so they couldn't close.
I pushed her back and she stumbled, hair falling into her face.
I was ready to stand and fight when she brushed it back. Her
face was normal. There was a thin line of blood on her lips,
my blood, and she flicked her tongue over it. She smiled again
and walked out of the room.
The passage of time was impossible to track. My lip throbbed.
So did my hand, but the pain was distant and illusory. The
opium made everything dreamlike, and after a time my eyes
became heavy despite my fear. They drifted closed for only a
moment before I heard a voice.
"What's your pleasure, sir?" An ancient man sat before me.
He might have been Thai or Chinese, but he could also have
been white or something else all together. A thin beard
dangled from his chin, and he regarded me curiously with his
fingers steepled in front of him.
"What's your pleasure?" he asked again.
"I've come for something," I mumbled. "A box. A puzzle
box."
"Ah. A puzzle box. They are rare nowadays. Very pricey.
Most expensive."
"I can pay. I'll pay whatever the price."
"Will you? Will you indeed?"
"Whatever the price." He nodded and placed the Lament
Configuration on the table with a hollow click. The box was
smaller than I expected, the familiar whirling golden pattern
covering its faces less mystifying so close up. I reached
forward and took hold of it, and the ancient man smiled.
"Your father will be proud, Mr. Shaw," he said. "Use the back
door on the way out."
***
I have always been a slave to instant gratification. Buckman
had called me and idiot, but I wasn't insipid enough to blithely
bring him the prize. He picked the wrong man for that. I held
the box greedily as I reeled through the train yard, the birds
chirping out their pre-dawn songs. My flight left at nine in the
morning. There would certainly be enough time to solve the
puzzle, see the contents and make it to the airport on time.
Constantine might not have been man enough for the treasure,
but I certainly was.
There was an empty cargo car with its massive door ajar, and I
tossed my coat inside. A peek around told me I was alone, so I
rolled in myself. Slamming the door shut, I pulled my zippo
from my pocket and lit it, the small flame proving to be my
only illumination. The train was stifling so I pulled off my
shirt. I smelled bad enough that it even offended me. Perhaps
I would have time to stop at a hotel to shower before the
journey home.
LeMarchand's box really was the marvel that everyone had
said. I ran my fingers along its surface feeling for a seam and
came up dry. Buckman had only allowed me a few moments
to regard the instructions in the grimoire, surely part of his
attempt to keep me from learning whatever secrets the puzzle
held.
The lighter had nearly gone out by the time I made a
breakthrough. I was leaning down, my head practically on the
floor to see. There was a disk of gold on one face of the
Lament, and when you pressed three of the corners, it would
rotate. I turned the dial, satisfied by the deep clicking the
motion produced. In the distance, I heard what sounded like
chains jangling in the night, and I became concerned that the
car I was in might be getting hitched for a journey. Regardless,
I was too close now to stop my efforts.
After rotating the circle for a full revolution, I pressed in with
my thumbs. The disk gave way and ratcheted deep into the
surface, releasing a series of locks as it went. I felt some give,
so I twisted, the two sides of the puzzle going in opposite
directions until they met again in the middle. This time the
noise that the interlocking mechanism made was impossibly
deep, a thick grinding discord that might have come from some
great industrial machine in the nineteenth century. Then it
moved entirely on its own.
Four quadrants of the box lifted of their own accord, rotated,
and slid back down. The new shape it created was of a star. I
marveled at LeMarchand's artistry. Despite the complete
change in the object's architecture, all of the gold inlay still
matched up perfectly. The glittering patterns were unbroken. I
glanced at the lighter and saw that it had finally gone out. So
how was I seeing?
I looked up to find slats of pale blue light leaking impossibly
into the room. It was as though windows had materialized
where none existed. A thin mist rose in the streams of light,
carrying the scent of burning meat with it. The noise of
jangling chains grew even louder behind me, accompanied by
the clop-clopping of wood striking wood. I turned around.
Thick metal chains hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly
despite the lack of a breeze. In their midst was a large wooden
block. It was warped and rectangular, the same material as the
box in my hand but much larger. It spun around slowly,
ceaselessly on the end of a chain, deep pits and scours covering
its surface. The brown stains saturating its edifice told readily
enough what the impossible object was. There was a chopping
block on this railway car. A cutting board formed out of thin
air. I felt myself begin to shake. My breath showed in the
cold.
"Sebastian Hiram Shaw," commanded a bass voice behind me.
I recognized it instantly - it was the doctor from my dream, the
one who knew my blood was deadly. I spun around and knew.
I knew what Buckman and Constantine had warned me about.
I turned around and I knew the Gashes.
There were four of them, their skin the pitted gray of the dead.
They all wore shining black clothes that seemed stitched into
their very skins. One of them was monstrously obese, rolls of
fat dangling from every appendage. His face was pulled thin,
his hanging jowls and flaccid chins having been stretched
around to the back of his head and stapled together. A thin
rope of drool streamed from his taut mouth to the floor. A
second of the creatures had no legs. It stood on impossible
stretched and spindly arms, clicking its steel fingernails on the
floor as though bored.
The woman was the worst. The shimmering outfit fused into
her skin did not cover her swollen, pregnant belly. Her gray
hands stroked it lovingly, running over the open wound of a
caesarian incision cleaved amateurishly into her torso. Blood
flowed over her skirts from the mangled tear, and something
inside her was moving. While I watched, something black and
fluid reached out of the fissure, peering out into the world for
an unhappy, hungry glance.
"Sebastian Shaw," the leader of the group ordered again. He
stood in the center of the car facing me with his devil's eyes, a
black-toothed scowl hacked across his mouth. A grid had been
carved into his toneless skin, and at every intersecting point, a
nail had been driven into his skull. The singlet he wore did not
hide the carvings on his chest, cuts held perpetually open by
pins sewn into his skin.
The Gash held out his hand, and the Lament flew from mine to
his. He looked at LeMarchand's Box, and it folded itself back
into a cube. Then he let his arm drop by his side and he turned
his unwanted attention back to me. Whatever unnatural calm
the opium and sleeplessness had given me was gone now. I
stood before the box's guardians possessed by a horror so
abject and terrible that I found myself unable to breathe.
"You have called us, Shaw," said the Gash with nails in his
skull. "We have come."
________________________________________________________________
To be concluded . . .
Read more nonsense at http://www.livejournal.com/~xanderdg