Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) (34 page)

Just like me.

On the stereo: some horrifying self-help stuff.

A woman who sounded maybe a thousand years old spoke in a frog’s croak about the power of denial in the self. She ranted—in a soft, grandmotherly way, but still—about the tyranny of eating and how it was an artificial concept real humans could do without. I didn’t mention it to Brady and she didn’t comment, although occasionally she would make a little noise of agreement in her throat and nod ever so slightly.

The drive was a relatively short one. I directed her to park right around where VC and I had the previous day. It felt like a hundred years ago. I was going to start measuring everything in dog years just so it would make a lick of sense later when I tried to unpack the whole mess.

“That’s the theater?” Brady asked.

“That’s it. I’m thinking there should be a side entrance and we use that.”

“What exactly are we looking for?”

“We’ll know it when we see it.” I put a lot of confidence in my voice. Maybe Brady was convinced. I sure wasn’t.

I ducked down the narrow alley running between the theater and the dry cleaner next door. A gutter ran down the middle and a single Dumpster slumped against the side. The alley barely looked big enough for a single car. A fire door led inside, and the lock clunked open after a second of tinkering with a section of wire hanger I found under the Dumpster. Brady and I went into the warm dark of the theater.

We were in a small corridor, with three stairs leading to another door. This would be the side exit. I opened it a crack. I recognized the booming voice, even if I wished I didn’t.

“Nobody expects me. Not even my family. I show up to Thanksgiving and it’s like, bwah! Boom! Pow! And I have a headache, so it’s time for some stuffing.” The voice, with its Valley inflections and lazy vowels, belonged to Rodrick Rand, movie star and member in good standing of the First Reformed Church of the Antichrist.

“I am certainly pleased you’re here, Mr. Rand.” That voice belonged to Hollis Nguyen, who appeared to be the current leader of the Sons and former member of the Order of the Morning Star. “Our condolences in your time of mourning.”

“When the little guy got blown away, it was amazing, like his life force just shot right into... have you ever had a Bangkok Balloon?”

“I’m sorry, a what?”

“It’s where you get, like, a narrow hose and pump liquid cocaine into your cock.”

I supplied the confused frown in the pregnant pause that followed. “I can’t say I have.”

“It’s fucking amazing. Stick with me and you’ll get one. And a Backwards Cactus, Four-Fingered Push-Up, maybe a...”

“We can catalogue the various sex acts later, Mr. Rand.”

“It’s called a Balloon because it’s like you’re getting inflated.
With cocaine
.”

“I figured that out.”

“When the midget died, his life force went right into my cock. And now it’s like I have his soul in me, too. Only I ate it with my penis and now I am power.”

“Right, yes. My condolences. And congratulations.”

“Fuckin’ ay.”

“So, with you as the nominal head of the First Reformed Church of the Antichrist, we need to formalize your absorption into the Sons of the Crimson Gaze. This will of course begin with your ritualized rejection of your former heresy and an initiation...”

“And then you make me the leader.”

“No, Mr. Rand. We already have a leader. You will be... well, think of yourself as a bishop, though we do not need titles. The important thing is making this world a welcoming place for our lord and to prepare as much of the population as possible to follow Him.”

“By beating them in a cage match, one by one.”

“No, to alter the culture and educate the masses.”

“With face kicks.”

“No.” Nguyen sighed, going for a different tack. “I don’t have to tell you how much informal power a celebrity of your stature holds in our culture.” He paused, as though expecting Rand to say something insane.

“Go on,” Rand said.

“Oh. I thought you were going to tell me about... doesn’t matter. The point of this is, with your assistance, we can reach a wider audience than ever before, and our message, the true message, carries with it the weight of someone the listener already trusts. Has already invited into his or her home.”

I opened the door a bit wider. Because of the way the door swung, I could only see into the audience, rather than what was transpiring onstage. There were a few people in the crowd I recognized, including Brenda. Some of the other faces were from the theater earlier, others from the Church. I trusted in a combination of religious rapture and my black suit against black walls to camouflage me. If there were answers, they would be backstage.

“Yeah. The midget wanted me for the same reason. I’m a hot commodity. On fire!”

I moved purposefully down the aisle, never once looking over to catch anyone’s attention. I was up the stairs and behind the curtain in a few quick strides. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that they had a table set up onstage, the house lights on Rand and Nguyen. A few others were onstage with them, all in costumes I remembered seeing in the dressing rooms downstairs.

“We were beginning with a little community theater, but with your connections... I have a screenplay. It’s called
Son of Heaven
, and it would be perfect for you.”

“Do I get to play Satan?”

“I was thinking the Antichrist, but really, the choice of roles would be up to you.”

“Incredible. I’ll take this to Mark, Tommy, Uwe, Zack... we’ll get this thing made.”

I was struck with a deep ambivalence. On one hand, I wanted to bring down the conspiracy and get Mina out of jail. On the other hand, that movie sounded so amazingly terrible I couldn’t help but want to midwife it into the world. I was in the kind of pickle that would normally be solved by Mina smacking me on the arm and telling me to focus. See, this is why I needed her around.

Safely out of sight from the Satanist conclave, I finally turned around and saw that Brady had followed me. “Was that Rodrick Rand?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I remember when he won the Oscar.”

“Right, yeah. For
Shining Tall
. He played the handicapped transgender Iraq War veteran.” I thought about it. “That movie sucked.”

“It did. And that woman who played his wife was far too fat to be in any Hollywood movies.”

“She was hospitalized for anorexia.”

“She’s doing it wrong.”

I realized then that arguing with Brady was a waste of both our time. I needed to ransack this place for anything that might help put this whole thing to bed. And while I hoped for a giant book titled
The Entirety of My Evil Plan
by Hollis Nguyen, I was unlikely to find something more damning than a couple receipts or an internet search history featuring some combination of “shaved,” “tanned,” and “bison.”

I passed the dressing rooms and kept opening doors. I found a maintenance closet and a bathroom before I got to an office tucked way into the back. It held a single cluttered desk, a bulletin board so full it looked more like the plumage of a very flamboyant bird, and a computer that had probably served its original Cro-Magnon owners well. This was how these idiots were attempting a Satanist coup?

Not just attempting, but winning.

There was literally no way this was their headquarters, no matter what anyone was saying. This was the place we were supposed to
think
was their headquarters. The public façade, while someone else directed things from the shadows. Give their enemies a convenient place to focus hostilities.

“Well? Aren’t you going to look for your clues?”

“There’s nothing here. You’re welcome to tear this place apart. It’ll only take you six or seven years, and when you discover the theater isn’t properly reporting its income, you can take that right to the IRS.”

“What are we doing, then?”

“I want to take a quick look in the other rooms. You should go out and get the car. Last time I had to get out of this place, I had to move fast. After that and the adventure at the police station, they probably won’t be so easy to give up.”

“Police station?”

“Do you really want to talk about my record right now?”

Brady’s fake mustache twitched, which was one of the funnier things I’d seen that day. She left. I gave the office a once-over to make sure my knee-jerk assessment had been accurate. There wouldn’t be an address lying around, would there? Probably not. A look through the bulletin board and the desktop didn’t yield anything of interest. At least not anything my brain could piece together. I needed Carrie Mathison to come in and pinch hit, but she’d probably just end up sleeping with Rand.

I poked my head into the dressing rooms. Empty. I went back upstairs, my next move still nebulous in my head. I felt like I had hit a dead end, forced to sit on my hands while the asshole in the shadows made his play. More time for Mina to be miserable in jail. More time to threaten me or Oana. Or Brady. She was sort of an ally.

I came upstairs and nearly jumped out of my skin. Mothman was right there, waiting for me. I was behind the second curtain, in the corner of the stage where they kept unused props, sets, and costumes for easy access. Someone had hung the Mothman costume up so that he was invisible when going downstairs, but would be the first thing you’d see when you came back up. I was impressed that Brady hadn’t yelped. I almost did, and I kind of knew the guy.

As my heart started to get back into its normal rhythm, a plan started to form in the section of my brain that was between Jason Statham and Morgan Freeman. The kind that actually thought about incredibly stupid ideas, debugged them, and put them into practice with the assumption that everything would work like aces.

Which is why, a minute later, I was inside that sweaty, bulky monstrosity, waddling out onto the stage. “I am your lord!” I boomed from inside the Mothman outfit.

IT WASN’T THE FIRST TIME I’D IMPERSONATED A DEITY.
Through the eyeholes, which were probably around where Mothman’s mouth would have been if he’d had one of those, I could see Nguyen and Rand getting up. Nguyen stood smoothly, more confused than frightened. Rand jumped away in terror, his eyes huge, sending his chair thumping across the stage. He scrambled to his feet. The rest of the Satanists backed away to either side of the stage.

“Holy shit,” Rand whispered.

“I don’t know who—” Nguyen started.

I cut him off. I had to. The human brain, if allowed to work, naturally arrives at a distrusting place. If it continually gets interrupted, especially with things it already sort of believes, it can be strung along. “I am your lord!” I boomed again. “It is I, Lucifer, known as Asmodeus, come to save and also doom the world.”

This is where I was going to have trouble with orthodoxy, and if that isn’t a universal concern, I don’t know what is. The problem was, in the room I had members of all three sects of Satanist, and they had some widely varying views on what made a good Adversary. The Asmodeans would be expecting someone so ridiculously evil even Serpentor would tell him to tone it down a notch. The Luciferians were all about the misunderstood rebel thing, treating the devil like he was a combination of James Dean and Che Guevara. And to top it all off, I was in the nominal headquarters of the one goddamn cult in LA whose bullshit I didn’t know backwards and forwards.

So I was going to have to wing it.

“You have called! I have answered!” Seemed nice and vague. “I have come to guide you to... the kingdom!”

At that moment, with a metallic thud, the house lights went dark. I could see, because the lights in the false eyes of the costume shone with a red glow, washing across the front of the audience and the two heads of the Satanist conspiracy presently onstage with me. I’m sure I looked much more impressive now, a looming shape in the dark with hypnotic eyes. A lot like the real Mothman. Ominous music, so quiet as to be almost subliminal, grew behind me.

Brady. She had gotten to the control booth and she was backing my play. Three cheers for teamwork.

“Ask! Ask your lord what you will of him!” I managed, needing a little assist.

“Lord? Are we working Your will?” Nguyen asked, now cowed a bit by my performance.

“That’s a good question!” I yelled. “Remind me what that is again?”

“Lord?”

“I’ve been in Hell!” I glanced at the Asmodeans in the crowd. “Torturing the unjustly condemned!” And then the Luciferians. “Which includes me! So I’ve had a lot on my plate recently!”

“Well...” Nguyen said, chancing a look out of the corner of his eye to see if anyone else was buying my act. Rand was weeping openly, so that answered his unspoken question. “Yes, well, we’re uniting all the devoted under one roof, of course. And then we will begin spreading Your message far and wide.”

“...which is?”

“Now that You are here, You can tell us.”

“Right! Well, for one thing, no more eating high fructose corn syrup! It causes obesity and diabetes! Satan has spoken!”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Also, you should shower every day! And really wash under your armpits! Deodorant is a supplement, not a substitute! Satan has spoken!”

“Of course. Should I be writing this down?”

“Every Friday shall henceforth be known as the Day of the Dance! You will dance everywhere! Walking is forbidden on Friday! Satan has spoken!”

“Someone get me a pad and paper!” Nguyen hissed. “It’s unfortunate the prophet is not here to receive your teachings, Lord. He will be so disappointed.”

“I, too, am disappointed! I hoped to meet my prophet in the flesh! Up until now, I could only speak to him through pictures of kittens wearing bonnets!”

The Asmodeans murmured angrily.

“...who are participating in ethnic cleansing!”

The Asmodeans calmed down. The Luciferians murmured now.