Author's note: This is going to be, well, a different chapter. I do want to make a disclaimer before we start off, and it's not the usual I-don't-own-these-characters disclaimer. Cause to be honest, the only character I don't own in this chapter is the GD and he's mentioned in passing. Susana's killed off just about everyone else Thomas Harris created.
But…I do want to offer fair warning to anyone who may consider themselves a devout Christian or otherwise religious. I will advise you now that if this applies to you you may well be offended by this chapter. Scotch the may well, you will be. I don't think there are terribly many devout Lecterphiles out there, but just in case. Writing this chapter has probably ensured that my soul is heading to the bottom of the bubbling inferno. (Which it probably was already, especially if cliffies are a sin.)
So if you do want to read, by all means, but keep in mind, I did warn you.
For the non-devout: You wanted to know about the accomplice, Dear Reader? Come close and be informed. Closer, please…closer….
He raised his hands into the air and trembled in excitement. The time was coming. The first few omens had swept over the land. The first were small things, tiny things, easy to lose notice of. But the Hand of God worked in strange and mysterious ways. But he had seen them coming. And now, the omens were so great that even an ordinary man could see them.
He sat down on his living room couch and trembled with excitement. She was here, in his house. In his bed. If he tiptoed to his bedroom door, he could hear her breathing, low and deep as she slept. He had done so several times before already, excitement thrilling his limbs, but he did not do so again. He would let her rest for now. She needed some sleep. He would sleep on the couch tonight. He knew all about charity and kindness. He had learned well.
He crossed over to his refrigerator and pulled out a beer. The top twisted off and he flick. He stared down into the brown neck of the bottle and into the foamy liquid for a few minutes before quaffing it. Beer always made him feel slightly conflicted. Alcohol was a Tool of the Devil. They had told him so at the orphanage, and he'd certainly seen what it had done to Mother before that. But he knew that Father Curran drank occasionally, so he had tried it. Drinking always made him feel slightly guilty, slightly bad. A sinner.
Mother drank. She was a sinner. Until he was twelve years old, he had lived his entire life on eggshells. If mother was sober, he was generally all right. It was when she drank that things were worse. Once she had told him about the fires of hell, and showed him with an object lesson. She held his arm over the kitchen stove and held it there for fifteen minutes. If he screamed or moved, she had told him, she would take him to the orphanage at once.
The pain had been excruciating, but he had managed.
And there were other pains and torments that he had undergone. She often sent him to school without food or money. He'd become adept at stealing lunches from other children. Stealing was a sin, he knew, but starving was worse. At home he was not always fed, either. He had learned how to rearrange things in the refrigerator so that she did not notice. Sometimes she did, and yelled at him anyway. The other children swiftly learned to exclude him with the swift wrath that the young have for anyone noticeably different. He wore long sleeves when it was hot to hide the bruises. The orphanage was a common threat.
He remembered his last day with her very well. It had been three days after he turned twelve. Despite the fact that food wasn't always something he had access to, he had somehow managed to grow, and grow taller than her. She noticed this sourly. He would always remember how she had looked at him, utter disgust on her face, the scent of cheap gin hanging around her in a nasty-smelling cloud. Her lips curled at him in boozy anger.
"You think you're smart, huh?" she had asked. "Getting too big for me? You're not big enough that I can't beat your ass."
That much was par for the course. He was used to the cruel words and threats. Sometimes, she was too boozed up to actually make contact. This wasn't one of those times. He did not know then what it was he had done to set her off. It wasn't until later that he made the connection and realized what Mother was.
She'd struck him in the face, a full-force blow, closed fist. He had laughed. That wasn't anything he couldn't handle. Then, he'd simply wiped up the blood and headed for the bathroom to get a towel. As he was holding his nose, he had heard her coming up behind him. When he had turned, he had seen the flash of the knife in her hand, and felt the bright bolt of pain as it entered his chest. The pain had been amazing, indescribable. He'd honestly thought he was going to die. He'd managed to get away from her, though. He'd staggered out of the house and collapsed in the front yard. The neighbors had found him lying in the street, flopping like a caught fish, the haft of the knife sticking out of his chest. Even after all these years, he could still remember the bitter, red pain and the feel of the gravel against his face.
After that, he never saw Mother again. His last memory of her, ever, was of her watching him through the back window of a police car. Her face still bitter and harsh through the glass, looking at him with no sympathy at all. The police officer and then the ambulance crew leaning over him: Poor kid, Jesus, what a psycho she must have been.
When he got out of the hospital, a woman with reddish-brown hair and a blue suit came to see him. At the time, he thought she was the prettiest woman he had ever seen. She smelled nice and actually smiled at him. She told him she was from the county and that she was going to find him a place to stay. He had ended up at the orphanage. And so it had come to pass: bad boys went to the orphanage to live, and so he must be bad.
At the orphanage, there were other, larger boys who tormented him. The sisters were strict and hit you with rulers. That was fine. It was better than where he had been: they didn't stab you when they were mad at you. He could take it. And as he grew older and stronger, he was able to fight off his tormentors.
He was fifteen when he had been selected to hear the truth. The orphanage had a library that consisted mostly of religious books. It was way, way back in the shelf. Tortures and Torments of Christian Martyrs. And then it all had become so clear. Now, looking back, he had to laugh that he hadn't seen it before.
He had always wondered how it was that the sisters and priests could claim that God was so merciful and loving. It did not square well at all with his experience. God seemed to love and hunger only for pain. The Bible – at least the New Testament – did not explain anything to him at all. But now this book…this book was the Truth.
He saw over and over copies of woodcuts in which heretics tortured martyrs. He drank it in. He saw in there the cruelty and pain that he knew life consisted of. The church had known about this for almost fifteen hundred years! They knew all about it! It was a sublime and amazing discovery.
It took him some time to put this together. Obviously God was indeed a God of anger and horror and pain. But He – or the Church – did not want people to realize this. Only rare ones, strong people, like himself, could bear to live in a world thus so. So that must explain all the love and mercy and other claptrap that he was forced to listen to every Sunday.
But there it was. Martyrs were exalted for suffering and dying in defense of the faith. But surely they were just men as he was. Therefore, what earned them their exaltation was clearly being tortured and dying. So then, did it not follow that the heretics were actually doing them a favor? Weren't they helping the martyrs? After all, if there were no heretics there would be no martyrs. So God must want there to be heretics, torturing and exalting the martyrs at the same time.
Looking back, he could now understand what had compelled him at younger ages. He sought out small animals, cats and dogs and squirrels. Now, he knew what he had been doing. He had martyred them. People seemed horrified at the sight of the sad little bodies after he was done with them. But he stopped. After all, they were animals and he did not know if they had souls or not. It was a waste and it was childish.
By the time he came to understand these truths, the underlying framework of his life, he was almost eighteen. Once that happened, he was on his own in the world. The night before his eighteenth birthday, he went out onto the street and hunted down the street trash, the homeless men and women who populate every city. He'd found what he was looking for: a young hooker, probably younger than he. To get into a sleazy hotel room with her for an hour was a simple matter. But she'd cried when he tied her up and begged.
"Do you believe in God?" he had asked. She'd said yes. Good enough. Clearly, without his help she would die a sinner. Just like most martyrs, no better than the rest except that they died for their faith. So he had taken out the claw hammer out of the back of his waistband. He'd taken it from the maintenance man's toolbox. It wasn't missed.
The hammer was a crude tool, but it had done the job. By the time he had been done, there was blood all over the room, and all over him. Small chunks of bone clung to his face. The claw end of the hammer was an excellent thing to martyr with. Once he was done, he was taken by how relaxed and peaceful her face looked in death. Martyr. Died for her faith. She was exalted now, far more exalted than she ever would have been had she been permitted to live.
He'd left the orphanage for the Army, one barracks for another. He got along reasonably well and did his job. It was boring, but it was easy work, and it left him nights and weekends to pursue his true calling. He'd almost gotten caught once in Bielefeld. He was smart and made sure to transport the bodies far away from the base.
But in the Army he'd been reasonably happy. He followed the rules and got by. Only when his Need got to be too great, when he realized how the world needed martyrs, and how sinners needed to be martyrs, did he steal off to the woman-meat markets that surround every military base on the planet and find himself someone in need of his services.
And then…it had all come crashing down. Psychological discharge, what a crock of shit. He'd thought at first that they knew of his Plans, his Need. But no, they just thought he was a lunatic. Three years into a four-year hitch, he was declared mentally disabled and sent back to the States. On his return, he discovered that his grandmother had died and had specifically disinherited his mother. All the better, he thought. Although Mother had done one thing for him: she had assured him a place in heaven with other martyrs. Now, he would give back to others what she had given to him. He was embarrassed to say he didn't remember Grandma. He hadn't seen her since he was five or so. But he had some money and he now had a house. Paid off. All his.
He moved into the house and went to school on his GI benefits, which he still had. He learned about computers. Soon, the antique tables and heavy oak furniture hummed with cast-off equipment. He had an entire network in the house, router, cable modem, the works. He could check his email from the toilet if so he chose.
The house had an excellent basement for his work. He was good with his hands and some of Grandmother's furniture was easy to adapt. A heavy dinner table, for example: he simply installed eyebolts and voila. He put a lock on the basement door. And occasionally he would go out on the prowl and someone else would come to Glory down in his basement. He made it a rule to stay with them as they went. Maybe he might see Elijah in the great fiery chariot.
He still had the book, of course. It occupied pride of place on a bookshelf he had dragged down there. Occasionally, he would go down to his basement and read by candlelight in the reek of blood and rotting flesh. There, one woodcut caught his attention: it detailed a martyr who was being stabbed in the stomach. The caption read: Martyr whose belly has been cut open and the liver torn out, which the heathen used sometimes to eat.
At the time, he had wondered if there were others like him, and the lightbulb had gone off. Everyone knew of Hannibal Lecter's exploits, of course. He would have given anything to talk with Dr. Lecter, to see what the man knew of martyrs and heretics and heathens. It would have been astonishing. But Hannibal Lecter was dead, gone on to whatever worlds lay beyond this one.
But when Susana was caught, he wondered if it was a sign. Surely she must be like him, she must understand him. At first, though, he had done nothing but watch and wait for a Sign. That sign came when he was watching TV over dinner, eating alone as always. Susana Alvarez Lecter was being led into the courtroom in chains. He had dropped his spoon and watched, his eyes wide.
The TV commentator had been saying something about how Susana's citizenship status was murky. She was the child of American citizens, there was no doubt of that. But she had never attained American citizenship. It was claptrap, but only he saw the sign in it. Paul had been a Roman citizen all this time and the jailers had put him in irons. So it was with Susana. She was an American citizen by birth, and they had put her in irons too. How clever of God to plant the sign that way.
And then…if he needed it any clearer. Being called upon to see her. Walking into the cellblock and watching her through the tiny observation window. Speaking with her through the tray slot. God wanted this. God had closed the mouths of the lions against Daniel and God would open the jail doors and free Susana Alvarez. For it was meant to be, and she would be with him. And so it had been.
He finished the beer and put it carefully into the trash, so that the glass bottle would not clink. He tiptoed up the stairs to his bedroom door and glanced in again. She was curled up in his bed, sleeping peacefully. A thin moonbeam crossed in from the window, and in her face he could see that social-worker woman from so long ago. Her hair too, where it had grown in from the dye.
He'd gotten what she asked him to get her. Most of it made perfect sense: hair dye, clothes, that sort of thing. More important was that she was here. She was weak now, and she needed him. That made him feel powerful: for so long he had needed no one and no one had needed him. Well, except his martyrs, of course. He was up to this responsibility. He would care for her until she was well. She was wearing it, and he smiled.
She had been surprised at the nightgown. Black silk, short and a bit tight. He had bought it at a local lingerie store, blushing furiously all the while, the pink and white striped bag hot in his fist as he left, the heavy perfume cloying in his nostrils. It made him feel nervous and swimmy. Never once had he done such a thing before. A sin. It was a sin. No, it was just a gift, and she seemed surprised and delighted.
He toyed with the idea of going in and lying down next to her. But no, he could not. That was wrong and a sin. That would wait until they were man and wife, joined in the eyes of God, one flesh. And black eagles would fly and blood would flow in the streets and there would be a Great Martyring. And on her he would beget a generation of heathens and heretics, and the images that flowed through his mind would be carved into woodcuts to last another fifteen hundred years. A great kingdom in which there would be martyrs after martyrs, with himself and Susana as King and Queen. The Lecters of the future would be his children. He rather liked that idea. And their Kingdom would have no end.
But not yet. He would have to suffice himself with the remembered screams of his victims and the imagined scream of martyrs yet to come. He'd waited all his life. A bit more could not possibly hurt anyone.
He tiptoed back downstairs and lay back on the couch. He doubted he would sleep tonight, but eventually he drowsed off. Big things were coming.