A Lower Deep - A Self Novel About 3300 wds (2 page)

We got in just as Rumsey turned east onto the highway. It took me a minute or two to rock the Mazda out of its spot where the snow had bunched high around the tires. I followed at a fair distance with no other traffic in view. Bridgett kept trying to fondle me, still muttering about Jerry Terry, his Dodge, and broken promises. His mother would be pissed too—the old lady liked Bridgett and wanted grandkids soon before her bad hip completely gave out.

With her face planted in the side of my throat, those lips were like passionate razors cutting deep that reminded me of another lady from the dead past. I put my arm around her and listened to her sighs, until at last she slept.

The Mazda handled poorly on the slippery highway, fishtailing and skidding all over. One headlight was out and the other pointed under the grille. I had trouble keeping Rumsey's station wagon in sight. We drove for twenty minutes before he pulled into a sparse hillside area and backed into a lengthy driveway, the house secluded by acres of brush on either side. I turned around and parked at the far edge of their property.

Even with the fierce wind blowing, a stench of blood and burned flesh bloomed over the house. Between that and the heady aroma of church I had barely enough time, as the nausea hit, to open the door and vomit outside the car. Spasms wracked me and I reached down to get a handful of snow and washed my face with it.

My second self uncoiled at the pungency in the air and pranced up my back. His mouth watered for bonemeal, Bridgett's sexuality, and the Fetch-lit doomed. Self nuzzled my neck, his tongue working at my skin the way Bridgett's never could, his breath warm in my ear and mind. He plucked at her coat, claws clinking rhythmically on the metal studs.
Hot-chee Mama. Nice winnebagos. Now you're thinking, boy!

We've got problems.

He scrambled back and forth across the dash, his arousal overpowering.
Hey, no problem here!

Finally he wheeled from her and splayed himself against the passenger window, sniffing and mewling. His eyes could pick up the Fetch-light glowing where mine no longer could, the flaming portent of murder spinning lazily in the night. Warmed in his blood lust, growls of ecstasy escaped him as he dreamed of what might be shuddering, pleading, or eviscerated inside. His thoughts pounded vindictively at me, showing images that made my already queasy stomach tumble further. Cold sweat exploded across my body.
Quit it.

Good stuff going on in there, he said, but weird.

How so?

Can't tell yet.

You yipped a name before. What was it?

Did I?

I got out and left the car running, heater going full blast to keep Bridgett warm. The woods were filled with tree branches so heavy with ice that they blocked my passage as I stumbled through hip-deep snow.

The first floor was brightly lit, every room blazing. Smoke rose from the chimney but no fire burned in the living-room fireplace. Two calico cats slinked across colonial furniture made by Sears. The Rumseys were nowhere to be seen. I tried the front and back doors and found them both dead-bolted. At the other side of the house, grades in the snow showed a few inches of shuttered windows at the stone foundation. I got on my belly and dug a corner of the shutter free, planted my feet, and pulled. The wood splintered and enough came away for me to see the painted black glass of a cellar. Self spat on the window and the paint on the inside bubbled and ran.

"Holy God," I whispered.

Self guffawed at the sight.
You've got to be kidding me. This? In Billings, Montana?

Burning coals in a circular brick pit at the center of the cellar threw fingerlicks of shadow along the walls. A teenage girl lay gagged, naked, and tied spread-eagled to an old-fashioned metal box spring standing against one wall. Thin and gangly, her ribs pressed out sharply beneath her small breasts. It looked as if she'd been holed up here for at least a week. Intricate braids of lengthy red hair had come loose and curled down past the butterfly tattoo on her left thigh and the blackly emboldened name MEL on the right. She was covered with gashes, bruises, and burns from melted wax.

Gouged patterns of cabalistic symbols confirmed she'd never wear a bikini again. Copper wire had been strung so tightly around her wrists and ankles that the crusty skin had sealed over the wounds and her extremities had turned blue. She might not ever have the use of her hands or feet again. Self slurped and jitterbugged beside me, in his element now and wanting a taste of everything. He crooned, begging for entry. Mel—or Mel's girl—looked up. She spotted me and moaned, unsure of whether to cry out from beneath her gag, half expecting me to be just another form of agony.

At the opposite end of the basement, Fred and Kathy Rumsey sat in a poorly drawn chalk majik circle, a variation of Baphomet's inverted pentagram: The customary nine-feet of circumference had been whittled to five, and titles of the Infernal hierarchy had been misplaced between the tetragrammaton of Jehovah's holy name along the inner edge; along the outer ring Hebraic figures at each point of the pentagram incorrectly spelled out
Corozon
instead of
Leviathan
.

The Rumsey's wore cheaply sewn, hooded gray robes, turning pages of a book and reading aloud in badly accented French. I recognized passages from the eighteenth-century grimoire called
La Petite Grossetete
written by Emile la Duc, a charlatan hoping to cash in on the depravity of certain French nobility of the time. His wife had killed him with a broom handle.

Walt sat in his stroller, still silently staring.

If not for the girl, it would have been laughable. Another couple of ridiculous modern Satanists, and poorly adept ones at that, wearing Halloween costumes and humping books on the occult back from the library. Not too uncommon a sight in the Manhattan or LA underground club scenes, with parlor games, group sex, blood fetish, and a modicum of Anton La Vey's
Satanic Bible
special effects tossed in for good measure. Shops in Greenwich Village and on the Sunset Strip stocked eyes of newt and devil's chalices, catering to the social fringe. But . . . Christ, in Billings, Montana? None of this accounted for the signs I'd seen in the roses. The Rumsey's weren't witches, only perverts, kidnappers, and possibly killers.

The two-sided blade Rumsey used proved to be a true
athame
—a witch's knife—sharply honed as he stood facing his wife from across the circle, chanting an invocation so garbled I couldn't make any sense out of it. They approached and kissed, taking turns pricking their wrists, licking the droplets, and smearing each other's face with blood. The flames wavered as a real hint of sex majik filled the room. I held my hand to the glass. Bursts of yellow sparks popped painfully around my fingers, and the girl writhed as though I'd scratched her. Walt continued watching. Nothing fit together.

Something's wrong
, Self said.
You know what I mean?

Yes.

This reminds me of . . .

Me too
. Neither of us liked talking about the beginning.

His breath cracked the remaining paint.
I'm getting bad vibes. Let's get out of here.

No.

Quickly. Now.

First, the girl.

Forget her, we've already got one in the car!
I leaned back ready to smash the glass and he hissed,
Do that shit and you're so dead
, as if daring me.
Variant majiks are in motion. She's no one to care about. Just bait, a thing on the floor lying in the open trap. You've got to let this debacle play out.

Fred Rumsey untied the teenager and dragged her stumbling into the Baphomet pentagram. She sobbed and struggled wearily until he dumped her into the circle, scuffing the chalk marks and erasing all-important characters—her head cracked against the floor and she fell over semiconscious and groaning for Mel. The arcana intensified until the hair at the back of my neck crawled, electrified.

The Rumsey's took off their robes and continued sharing the knife, cutting at each other's naked flesh, getting into it now, wielding the blade high and drawing it down fast and slicing, tittering all the while. They dragged it deeply across bodies, first one and then the other, politely handing the sticky
athame
back and forth, soon chopping and slashing through muscle and bone.

They were insane and they had no real style. True masters at the art of mutilation would have frowned at the waste. Their blood arched and splashed madly across the room. With a final thrust Fred Rumsey shoved the blade into his wife's heart—as she grinned and mumbled, giving up one last bark of delight—then turned the knife on himself, and with a careful flick opened his carotid. He dropped heavily over his wife, and their blood pooled across the pentagram and ran around the girl. It was only going to get worse.

"Enough of this crap."

I kicked in the window and dropped inside, the storm following as Self jabbered in the snow, the trap closing. Walt drooled and shook his head happily at me, arms filled with toys. I pulled his stroller out of the way. In the pentagram the Rumsey's' corpses vibrated, eyes bulging and blinking, teeth bared.

Invisible daggers flayed them as I watched, skin ripping back from bone. Veins, nerves, and organs danced little shimmies as the viscera smoked, yanked free from the bodies like corn being shucked. Coagulating, the blood withdrew, and all that spineless flesh slid across the floor and began merging into one large mass that hunched before the teenager like a giant toad.

Get the girl
, I said.

Nuh-huh, I'm not stepping into that screwy circle. You don't know her or owe her anything. She's got no character, no soul you can see. Why do you keep doing this? You can't care about her.

I just…

You don't, no one does. She's only meat on the floor, intended for the moment. She doesn't mean anything.

Shut up already.

Will you ever listen?

Nothing else to do but get it done. Conjuring Babylonian wards of protection—head back and arms out, pinkies precisely placed to cover the lifelines of my palms—I crossed the outer boundary of the Baphomet circle. Connecting with it was like tying into a conduit of fathomless anguish—and an overwhelming love of that anguish—as red mist reared about me.

Jaws of the corpses dropped open and cackled as the charnel beast formed of their flesh started sprouting heads now. Three semi-human, insectoid faces sprang from the belly of the eight-foot toad. Two pairs of arms extended from its viscous torso, those chitinous heads excitedly stirring. I picked up Mel's girl and backed away, feeling the majik trying to chew my skin off too.  I dragged her outside the pentagram and wondered if running would do me any good.

Is that Arioch?
I asked.

Yes
, Self said, much calmer now than he should've been. That meant running wasn't going to work. A smile tugged his lips apart.
The Bishop of Worms. I haven't seen it since the goblin market in Sepharvain.

Maybe you can reminisce.

An ally of thoughtful Adramelech, Chancellor of Hades, Keeper of the Wardrobe. Watch out for the wings. It doesn't use them for flying.

Get over here and help me.

I am here and helping you
, Self said.
I always am
.

Arioch. Impossible—these simpleton Satanists couldn't have called Lord Arioch from its sixty regions. I scanned the badly drawn chalk circle again for signs of hidden names of power, a subliminal commandment of the Infernal, or some obscure or coincidental incantation of the Lightbringer's echelon. I couldn't spot anything. The Bishop of Worms hopped forward with great scraping noises, four flaming hands stuffed with killing strokes.

Every eye on those three heads gazed at me in fury, each mouth working at once. Its voice contained multitudes, composed of the voices of half a million human and animal souls—I heard kids and women in there, dogs, cattle, and impaled ravens, the elderly evil and misbegotten, wailing beyond its words.

"And so," it said. "Am I a piece to be moved about in mortal games now, Necromancer?"

"There's been a mistake. I have no quarrel with you, Prince Arioch."

Something like a snicker—myriads of whines and yelps—escaped its throats. Razor-sharp wings sprouted from its sides, expanding to the entire width of the cellar and leaving gouges in the stone walls, buzzing as those four hands worked spells I couldn't comprehend. "I'll not be party to your gambit."

"I—"

"Why have you tried my patience so? You and your brethren need to be made an example."

"My brethren?"

"You've finally called forward your death, children of oblivion."