They drove in Martin’s Mustang across to Vine Street. Alison held the sword while Martin drove: Emilio sat in the back. The wind was still fuming across Los Angeles, and lightning was crackling from one side of the valley to the other, like the roots of giant electrified trees. There was hardly anybody else around. A few cars crept along the freeway, but it seemed as if most people had decided to stay home. A wild, dark night, thunderous with impending doom.
They reached the Hollywood Divine hotel. Martin parked on the opposite side of the street and they all climbed out of the car. Half a dozen hookers still strutted up and down outside, but otherwise the sidewalk was deserted.
‘Hey, young boy,’ one of the hookers called to Emilio, ‘want me to pop your cherry?’
Martin pushed his way into the hotel lobby, with Emilio and Alison following. The usual collection of drunks and scarecrows were still there, but the young desk clerk was nowhere around. The lobby was gloomy and sour and smelled of urine and burned copper. Martin paused and listened, and he could hear a faint rumbling somewhere in the building, more of a deep vibration than a noise, and the sound of voices, chanting.
‘Upstairs,’ he said. ‘The Leicester Suite.’
Alison said, ‘Martin, I’m frightened. This is it, isn’t it? I mean, this is really
it
?’
‘Come on,’ Martin reassured her. ‘At least we’ve got God and all His angels on our side.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘Martin –’ she said.
He looked at her. He had a feeling that he knew what she was going to say.
‘Not now,’ he told her gently. ‘Let’s get this done first.’
They climbed the marble stairs until they reached the mezzanine. On the far side of the landing, the double doors of the Leicester Suite were wide open; and from inside a fitful flickering of pale light illuminated the paneling and the drapes. The vibration was even stronger now, even deeper. Martin hefted the mirror-sword from one hand to the other and then said, ‘Here we go.’
They walked into the Leicester Suite. Three or four men in tuxedos were standing by the inner doors, but nobody made any attempt to stop them; or even to look at them. They were all staring in awe at the horrific spectacle which filled the high-ceilinged room.
When Martin stepped into the room and looked up at it, he almost felt like dropping to his knees. It was one thing to be told of Satan in storybooks. It was quite another to find himself standing in front of the Great Beast itself.
The room was dark, lit only by two wavering candelabra. Kneeling on the floor with their heads bowed were fifty or sixty of some of the most famous actors and actresses and directors and producers in Hollywood. Even in the darkness, Martin recognized Shany McKay and Derek Lorento and Harris Carlin and Petra Fell. Even Morris Nathan was here, at the very end of the front row, his head bandaged, leaning on the arm of his old friend Douglas Perry. It was like a Who’s Who of Hollywood, all in one room.
At the very front of the kneeling celebrities, with his back to them, stood Boofuls, quite naked, his arms outstretched. His back was narrow and white-skinned, his blond curls flew upward as if he were standing in a fierce wind. Beside him, in her swooping black cape, stood Miss Redd, her hands pressed together in prayer.
In the shadows at the very far end of the cavernous room, Martin saw something stirring. Something huge, and leathery, and inhuman. He heard its claws shuffling on the marble floor, he heard its dry dragon wings rustling. It was the color of death: yellowy gray, its skin crazed with wrinkles. Its skull was wedge-shaped, with curled horns like an aging ram, and its eyes were narrow and dull and infinitely evil.
It stood three times as tall as a man, its head swaying slowly from one side to the other, surveying without emotion those who had been vain enough and proud enough and weak enough to raise it at last from its endless sleep.
‘Is it real?’ whispered Alison. ‘It can’t be real.’
Martin swallowed. ‘It’s real,’ he said, and then swallowed again.
‘
It’s the devil
,’ murmured Emilio.
‘And there’s Morry,’ said Alison in disbelief. ‘Right at the front – there’s
Morry
!’
Martin tried to restrain her, but Alison hurried forward and took hold of Morris’ arm and shook it. ‘Douglas,’ she said, ‘why is Morry here? He should be back in the hospital!’
Martin came after her. ‘Alison, for God’s sake!’ But Miss Redd had already turned round and seen them, and she touched Boofuls with her long clawlike hand, and Boofuls turned around, too.
Deaf and blind, Morris turned his bandaged head. Douglas Perry said brusquely, ‘I asked Lejeune, and he promised that Morry would be given his sight and his hearing back if I brought him here.’
‘From
him
?’ Alison almost shrieked. ‘From the
devil
?’
It was then that Boofuls walked up to them – naked, smiling, beatific. ‘Hello, Martin. So you came to pay homage?’
‘I came to give you what you damn well deserve,’ Martin told him.
‘Too late.’ Boofuls smiled. ‘I have brought back my father from his exile, and he lives. You and Alison and young Emilio can provide him with his first feast.’
Behind him, the immense dragon-creature arched back its withered neck and let out a harsh gargling sound.
Boofuls said, ‘He is back now, to rule his rightful domain. All praise. And all praise to those who found his scattered body, piece by piece, and brought it here, so that I could breathe life back into it. These actors and directors spent millions of dollars finding the last few pieces of my father’s body … some were found in Europe, others were found in Arabia. And then all that was needed was the great sacrifice – one hundred forty-four thousand innocents, whose souls gave my father new life.’
Martin lifted the mirror-sword. ‘I’m going to do now what your grandmother should have done, all those years ago. So if you’ve got some prayers to say, you’d better say them.’
Boofuls laughed. ‘Do you think that
you
, of all people, can ward off the realm of endless night? The sun will refuse to rise tomorrow, my friend, and it will never rise again, and the world will die in chaos and darkness and storm and cold. The time was promised in the Bible, my friend, and the time is now!’
Behind Boofuls, the bulk of Satan suddenly and thunderously spread his wings and opened his jaws in a screech of triumphant fury. Dust and decayed fabric were stirred up into a whirlwind, and the devil clawed his way toward Martin with its eyes staring and his teeth bared. Boofuls lifted both arms, and stepped aside, and sang out, ‘A feast for my father, that’s what you’ll be!’
Martin was so frightened that he could hardly think how to make his arms move. But he managed to lift the mirror-sword and swing it around and around so that it whistled cleanly through the dust and the murk, and gleamed like a helicopter blade above his head.
Satan lunged his head forward, and the tip of one of his horns caught Martin in the chest. Martin heard two ribs crack and felt a sharp, agonizing pain. Satan’s head swayed around again and grazed against his shoulder. For a split second, he had a close-up of that watery, evil eye, and gingery fur that was thick with maggots; and when he breathed in he breathed the nauseating stench of excrement and dead meat.
Satan was playing with him, enjoying his fear, relishing his pain. Martin rolled aside and shouted out, ‘
Bastard!
’ and took a swing with his mirror-sword at Satan’s neck. But Satan rolled his head away, with fumes pouring from his nostrils, and Martin lost his balance, stumbled, and dropped the mirror-sword on the floor.
‘A feast for my father!’ screamed Boofuls, dancing up and down. ‘A feast for my father!’
Martin felt one broken rib grate against the other. He tried to turn himself over and pick himself up, but Satan’s wing was already flapping over him like a circus tent in a storm, and Satan’s reptilian head was already diving toward him with its fangs agape.
‘Oh, God, help me!’ he yelled.
And it was then that Emilio ducked quickly under Satan’s brushing wing and picked up the sword marked
VORPAL
. The glass blade was almost as tall as he was; but he grasped the insulating-tape handle in both hands and ran three or four paces forward, and just as Satan turned his head sideways to grip Martin with his teeth, Emilio jabbed it straight into the devil’s eye.
It was so sharp that it slid all the way in, and its point came gleaming out of the back of the devil’s withered neck.
Martin had his eyes shut. He didn’t see the sword run in. But he heard Miss Redd scream; and he heard Boofuls shouting in dismay; and then he opened his eyes again and saw Satan rearing up, up, up, leathery trunk on leathery pelvis, wings stretched taut in agony, dust and maggots showering down from his shaken fur.
There was a moment of deafening silence. Everybody in the room rose from their knees and stepped backward in awe. The dragon that was Satan stood immensely high, his head arched back, the mirror-sword glittering out of that one eye.
Remember that only the child can destroy the parent
.
Then the dragon collapsed. He literally fell apart, limb from limb, claw from finger, bone from bone. His skull dropped from his neck and rolled across the floor with a hollow sound like an empty barrel. His wings folded and dropped. Within a few minutes, there was nothing left of his leathery eminence but all the fragments that had been so painstakingly and expensively collected over so many years by the vainglorious Satan worshippers of Hollywood. A pall of stinking dust hung over him for a while, but gradually sifted and settled.
Boofuls stood quite still, with his eyes wide open.
‘
What have you done?
’ he said. ‘
What have you done!!
’
Without a word, Martin limped over to the devil’s skull, placed his foot against it, and tugged out the mirror-sword. Then he turned back to Boofuls and faced him, the sword lifted over his right shoulder, ready to strike.
‘The son of Satan,’ he whispered.
Boofuls said nothing, but continued to stare at him, wide-eyed. Miss Redd, a little farther away, weakly mouthed the word ‘no’.
Martin swung the mirror-sword with all his strength. It flashed through the air and sliced Boofuls’ head clean off his neck. The bloody blond head bounced across the floor. The small naked body stood in front of Martin for a moment, its neck pumping out squiggles of blood, and then it fell stiffly sideways, as if it were a tailor’s dummy, and dropped to the floor.
Shaking, half berserk, Martin advanced on Miss Redd.
‘You will never kill me with that,’ she spat at him, backing away. ‘I am quite different.’
‘I know that,’ said Martin. He tossed the mirror-sword aside, and it dropped to the floor and smashed into half a dozen pieces. ‘But Father Quinlan told me to read my
Alice
carefully, and that’s just what I did.’
Martin stepped forward and gripped hold of Miss Redd’s cape.
She shook the Red Queen backwards and forwards with all her might
. He shook her violently, until she screamed. But he kept on shaking her and shaking her, so that her head was hurled from side to side, her whole body was jerked around.
The Red Queen made no resistance whatever: only her face grew very small, and her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept on growing shorter – and softer
–
and rounder – and
–
Martin was holding nothing but an empty black cape. He dropped it, exhausted, just in time to see a brindled cat dodging off into the darkness of the Leicester Suite, and jumping up onto the drapes, and disappearing.
‘That was Pickle!’ said Emilio in astonishment. ‘Martin – that was Pickle!’
Martin looked at his bloodstained hands; then at Alison; then at the decayed ruins of the angel whom God had banished from heaven forever. ‘Yes, Emilio,’ he said. ‘That was Pickle.’
Together, Martin and Alison and Emilio turned away and walked through the silent assembly of actors and directors. Morris blindly called out, ‘Alison!’ but Alison ignored him and took hold of Martin’s hand. Martin in turn took hold of Emilio’s hand.
‘
Alison!
’ called Morris one last time; and that was the last word that echoed in the Hollywood Divine.
They buried Ramone next to his mother at Forest Lawn. Afterward, Martin took them to lunch at Butterfield’s. Alison and Emilio, Mr and Mrs Capelli. They were all too hot, dressed as they were in black.
Alison looked at Martin for a long time. Then she said, ‘I’m going away tomorrow.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Martin had been hoping they could spend the weekend together.
‘Acapulco, just for a couple of weeks.’
‘Hey, Acapulco, that’s nice,’ said Mr Capelli.
‘By yourself?’ asked Martin, trying to sound offhand.
‘Well,’ admitted Alison. ‘There’s this guy I met … he’s an independent producer. He has this house in Laurel Canyon. I mean you wouldn’t believe it! Nine bedrooms,
two
pools!’
Martin nodded. ‘Quite a guy, by the sound of it.’
Alison reached over and squeezed his hand. ‘You’re not upset?’
‘Upset? Why should I be upset?’
But then Emilio came around the table and laid his hand on Martin’s shoulder and said, ‘It’s okay, Martin. You can play with me.’