The Scarlet Gospels (42 page)

He had been watching for just a few seconds when the tidal shifts in the ground abruptly ceased, the thundering that accompanied them ceasing at the same instant.

The Hell Priest's pulse quickened in anticipation of whatever lay on the far side of this silence. It came soon enough. A simple sound, as of some immense blow, struck in the tormented ground. It caused the pieces of the stone that had crushed the city to be lifted off their bed of rubble, their vast weight effortlessly thrown up by the power unleashed in that single blow. At the top of their ascent they seemed to pause for a beat. Then they dropped—their magnitude so great that the ground upon which the city had been raised simply cracked as the stones bearing the city's remains started their descent. The fires found the mother lode of whatever fuel had fed them and the geysers of flame leaped so high they would have licked the sky if it had still been there.

The burst of light illuminated the cataclysm below with brutal clarity. But there was nothing down there left to witness. Just the stones falling away with the abyss. The Cenobite looked at the fire instead, and in that instant the fire looked back at him.

He was watching, he knew, the unmaking of Hell. The place was being wiped away by some great, invisible hand. Perhaps it would be rebuilt. Perhaps a new system would be put in place. It was not for him to know. The thoughts contented him. He had challenged a higher power, and he had lost. It was the natural order of things. In that challenge, he had wreaked havoc, and now he was dying, along with everyone else in this contemptible place. Content in the knowledge that his legacy would forever be one of agony and loss, he opened himself to oblivion.

His eyelids closed—buckled, really—the bones in his face so fragile they shattered under the weight of his very lids as he dropped to the threshold of existence. His last breath had already left him. And as he fell, life did the same.

 

3

Besides Norma's impressive television collection, the only other physical items Harry had inherited from Norma's apartment were the many talismans and charms that she accrued doing during her years as New York's Queen of the Dead, almost all of them sent to her by the relatives of spectral clients, thanking her for the help that she had given to a spouse, or a sibling, or, most distressing of all, a child.

As it had been Harry who had read the letters these items came with to Norma, he was profoundly respectful of how much love and gratitude had been poured into the gifts. Each item had been charged with all the power of those feelings, making up a vast collection of potent protectors. Not a single one was discarded.

With so much to be moved from Harry's apartment and office, Caz knew the task would take several weeks if it was to be left to Dale and himself. He talked it over with Harry and asked if he could bring some extra muscle to get the job done quickly, so that Caz could open up his shop again and start earning some money. Harry had no problem with this; he only asked that Caz be the one to box up and carry the contents of the two deep-bottomed drawers to the right and left of his chair.

“What have you got in there that's so special?”

“Just a few keepsakes. Souvenirs from various scrapes I got into. I don't want anybody but you to deal with all the stuff in those drawers, okay? Do you know who will be helping with the move yet?”

“Yeah. Some friends of mine. They can be trusted.”

“Are they…?”

“
Ex
–fuck buddies, Harold. I'm a new man, remember?”

“That's right. I keep forgetting that Dale has made an honest man of you.”

“It doesn't hurt that he's hung like a giraffe.”

“I was a detective for a long time, Caz. I already assumed as much.”

Caz's friends Armando and Ryan arrived the next day. Lana was there too, invited by Caz, unbeknownst to Harry, who forcibly made nothing of it and put them all to work in the storeroom, with the duty of packing up in boxes everything on the cluttered shelves and in the cabinets. The room was L-shaped, with the portion that wasn't visible from the office abandoned to chaos by Harry several years before. Most of it, Harry had admitted to Caz, was boxes of old office supplies, which he'd intended for his secretary back in the day when he'd still believed his life was going to be a painless, lucrative round of divorce cases and insurance investigations.

Lana, Armando, and Ryan were working up a sweat in the L-shaped room, the door between the two rooms open a crack, but there was very little conversation. They shifted many boxes that were indeed packed with office supplies that told their own melancholy story. Only one item was slipped through to Caz.

“Take a look at this. There's a whole box of them,” Lana said, passing Caz a Christmas card. If there was any sadder proof of Harry's high hopes for his business it was this slickly painted card with an innocuous painting of pine trees and snow by moonlight with a printed message inside wishing the recipient:”The Best Christmas till Next Christmas! Season's Greetings from the D'Amour Detective Agency.”

Caz laughed. “I'd bet he never sent a single one of these out.”

“What's the joke?” Caz turned. Harry was pushing the door open wider.

“Just talking about Christmas,” Caz replied a little lamely. He put the card down on Harry's desk. “It wasn't important.”

“Everybody okay?”

“We're sweaty and dusty and ready for something to eat,” said Lana, “but we're getting through it.”

“Shall I order Chinese? Or there's a good Thai place a few blocks over that delivers? Or pizza?”

“I vote Thai!” Armando yelled through from the storage room.

“Thai's fine with me,” Lana said. “Will you get some Thai beer? I've worked up a powerful thirst.”

“Not a problem,” Harry said. “Is the phone still in the same place?”

“You want me to do it?” Caz asked.

“No, Caz. I'm blind, not crippled.”

Harry made a confident move toward the desk, avoiding with uncanny ease the heaped-up files that littered his path. He got to his chair and sank down in it.

“You know this is a damn comfortable chair. Will you put it by the window for me, Caz?”

“You mean in the Big Room? In place of Norma's chair?”

“Yeah.”

“Done.”

Harry slid the chair toward his desk and picked up the phone, dialing the number from memory.

“I'm just going to order a bunch of things they do really well. Is that okay?”

“Ryan doesn't like stuff too spicy,” Armando said. “Right, Ryan?”

There was a grunt from Ryan.

“Are you okay back there?”

“Yeah. Just … concentrating.”

“On what?”

“Nothing. Just make sure it isn't too spicy.”

“Already noted,” Harry said. “Damn.” He put the phone down. “Dialed the wrong number.”

He pulled the phone over so it was right in front of him and ran his fingers over the buttons. “Why the hell did I do that? My head feels—”

He stopped.

“You need me to check the number?” Caz said.

“Listen,” Harry murmured. “You hear that?”

“What?”

“That tinkling music.” Harry stood up, dropping the receiver on the desk beside the phone. “You don't hear it, Caz? Lana?” He was moving around the other side of the desk toward the stockroom door, kicking over several piles of paperwork in his haste. Lana opened the door as wide as she could, squashing the garbage behind it against the wall.

“Be careful,” she said to Harry. “The floor's covered—”

Too late. Harry's foot caught on one of the boxes and he stumbled forward, dropping onto his hands and knees in the litter of envelopes and rubber bands that had spilled from the box he'd kicked.

“Oh God, Harry,” Lana said. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine!”

He reached out to his right, memory guiding his fingers to the handle of the top drawer of the much-dented filing cabinet. The drawer was unlocked, however, and empty. It slid out, and Harry would have hit the floor a second time if Lana hadn't thrown her weight against the drawer and slammed it closed. There was still a moment while Harry regained his equilibrium. The music continued its tintinnabulation: the sticky-sweet little cycle of melody quickening like a madhouse waltz.

“Where's Ryan?” Harry said.

“He's back there,” Armando told him. Armando was talking from the corner of the room, Harry guessed, a vantage point from which he could have both Harry and Ryan in view. The far end of the room was the most chaotic. Four black plastic garbage bags, disgorged notes without files, and files without notes, discarded cameras that had been thrown in a box along with hundreds of rolls of exposed but undeveloped film. And buried behind all this chaos, a few items that Harry had felt obliged to hang on to but hadn't wanted to think about every day because they had unpleasant associations; toxic souvenirs of his journeys to the end of the world and his wits.

He quietly cursed himself for failing to remember the danger that was buried amid the trash here: a scalpel he'd confiscated from a demon who'd caused mischief by passing itself off as a cut-rate plastic surgeon; some keepsakes from a demonic casino he had closed. He'd held on to all of these, but—

“No,” Harry whispered. “That's not possible. I left it in Louisiana.”

Harry had cautiously found his way around the corner now. It was unmistakable. It was the chime of the box, Lemarchand's infernal masterpiece.

The music it was producing was to enrapture the man who was in the midst of opening it.

“Ryan?” Harry said. “What have you got?”

Ryan grunted by way of reply. He was obviously in the throes of the box's hypnotic working.

“Harold, what is it?” Caz shouted. “You're freaking me out, man!”

“Ryan! I know what you've found is fun to play with, but you need to put it down.”

Ryan actually spoke up now, in defense of his ownership.

“I found it in the trash!”

“I know,” Harry said as calmly as he could. “But it needs to go back there.”

“You heard Harry,” Caz said. He'd come to the spot just behind Harry's left shoulder where he'd reliably been throughout the march through Hell. “Harry doesn't fuck around,” Caz went on. “Just hand over the fucking box. I don't know what you're fucking with, but neither do you.”

“The hieroglyphics are beautiful.…”

“It's Teufelssprache,” Harry said. “It's German. The guy who decided it all was a man in Hamburg. He's dead now. But he named the code before he died.”

“Teufelssprache,” Lana said. “Fuck. That's—”

“Devilspeak, yeah. And I've had my fill.”

“And what does it say?” Ryan asked.

“Give me the box back and I'll tell you.”

“No,” Ryan said.

“Ryan, listen to yourself,” Caz said. He squeezed Harry's shoulder for a moment as he spoke, signaling that he was about to make a move.

“All I hear is the pretty music.”

“Bullshit.” Caz moved suddenly and Harry heard a scuffle, then a pained shot from Ryan, and the source of the lunatic melody dropped to the floor and rolled away from the struggle, ending up close to Harry's feet.

Harry dropped down onto his haunches, his clammy-palmed hands locating the box instantly. As he picked it up, Ryan yelled:

“That's mine, you fuck!”

“Get back, Harry!” Caz yelled.

Harry turned, but Ryan reached out and grabbed his arm, his fingernails digging deep enough through shirt and skin to make Harry bleed. Harry pulled away, Ryan's nails gouging him in the process, and stumbled in what he hoped was the right direction. Lana caught him and took his arm.

“Where's Armando?” Harry said.

“He ran,” Lana said. “Soon as you said ‘Devilspeak.' Where are we going?”

“Into the office.”

It was only four steps to the door; five and they were through it. Behind them Ryan was still cursing Harry, but he put it out of his head and concentrated on the matter in hand. The puzzle apparently no longer needed any human agency in its solving. It was doing that for itself, opening in Harry's hands as he walked with it, its tune scratching at the back of his skull to get in there and cause some trouble the way it had with Ryan. The little door of curved bone near the back of the device was open, just a crack, and Harry felt the familiar stream of Teufelssprache that had made Ryan crazy wind its way into his head.

At its root were the remnants of angelic speech, which had risen into music when their passions were fired. But the words had been poisoned, the music corrupted. After his trip into the inferno, Harry knew now that what was coursing into his head was sewer filth, stinking with plague and despair. He wanted it out.

“Desk?” he said to Lana. “One sweep. Just clear it all off. Quickly!”

Lana caught the urgency in Harry's voice and she did as he'd said, sweeping whatever papers and photographs Caz had been organizing back into the chaos underfoot. From every corner of the room, and from the boards beneath the threadbare carpet, came a ragged litany of growls and creaks as the fabric of the old building was tested by the mechanisms that the solving of the puzzle had activated. Somewhere in the nonamesland between crawl-space and dream-space, where the brute simplicity of brick and timber lost faith in itself, something slid over the threshold.

Harry carefully set the box down on his old desk. He'd spent much of his adult life behind it, too much time wasted puzzling over the twin mysteries of cruelty and grace. Now all that was old news. The only puzzle left that mattered had finished solving itself, right there on his desk. The music had slowed again, the pitch dropping to a guttural mutter.

What happened next was candy for the sighted. It drew an admiring, “Fuck, look at that,” from Lana.