“What did I tell you?” Trent said.
“So many doors,” Simpson said, laughing lightly. “You already know everything you've come here to ask me. It's all about opening the right doors, isn't it, Joel? Unlocking them to reveal the right answers.”
Trent, the .45 still aimed at him, said, “You're gonna give us those right answers, Simpson, or I'll put your brains all over this nice rug.”
“Who are you?” Joel asked.
“Just a man,” Simpson said. “A scientist. Some might say a pioneer.”
“A devil.”
“Some might say that too.”
“And they wouldn't be wrong.”
“I suppose not.”
“We're part of the Monarch Program,” Trent said. “Aren't we?”
Simpson sipped his Scotch but didn't answer.
“Monarch,” Joel said. “Like the butterfly.”
The swarm of butterflies flying from Trent's mouthâ¦
“What is the Monarch Program?” Joel pressed.
“In simple terms, trauma-based mind control.”
The voicesâ¦the swirling voices moving all around himâ¦human voices from everywhere and nowhereâ¦
“Trauma,” Joel repeated, as if involuntarily
One lone gurgling voice finally becomes clear enough to understand.
Simpson grinned. “Mmmm.”
This voice. His voice.
And then he knew. He remembered. Joel put a hand to
his mouth.
Sexual abuse is paramount, as it breaks the subject down and brings about the compartmentalizationâ¦
“We teach the brain to disassociate,” Simpson said, slowly pushing the cigar between his fat lips with a suggestive widening of his black eyes. “And the result is a mind-controlled subject that has no idea he or she is being controlled.”
Once programmed to forget such abuses, subjects can be more easily programmed to forget other things as wellâ¦
“The result, Joelâ¦is you.”
A stern, older man looks down at him, holds out his hand.
Joel focused on Simpson's hands. “You,” he said through a hard swallow. “It was you.”
He takes the man's hand even though he doesn't want to.
“Do you remember the fan, Joel?” Simpson asked.
The old table fan, the metal blades spinning, twirlingâ¦
“No, Iâyou sonofabitch, Iâ”
The ringing phone no one ever answersâ¦
“Don't listen to him,” Trent said, leveling the gun at Simpson again. “I'm gonna shoot this motherfucker. I'm gonna shoot him in his fat fucking mouth.”
“There are so many,” Simpson said, unfazed by the threat. “Slowly, gradually, we've taken you. One by one, and readied you for what's coming.”
What we're talking about is a type of structural dissociation where the occult is assimilated into the equation in order to bring about compartmentalization of the brainâ¦
“Do you think your descent into the occult, into the satanism running rampant all those years ago, was a mistake? Do you think it happened by chance?”
During this process, satanic rituals must be performed so that specific demons may be attached to the subjects and alters as wellâ¦
“Nothing happens by chance, Joel.”
The shattering of a personality brings about compartmentalization of memoryâ¦
“The assassins, the sex slaves, the spies.”
Of trauma too horrifying to grasp or processâ¦
“None of them mean anything without the special ones.”
The result is dissociative identity disorderâ¦
“The ones like you, Joel, because you helped us usher them in.”
The wiping clean, the death of one mindâ¦and the birth of othersâ¦
“First come the children. Then the master.”
“You're sick.”
“
Diseased
,” he said, grinning again. “Wonderfully, eternally
diseased
.”
Trent's gun hand began to shake so violently he dropped it back down to his side and took a few steps away. “Christ. Christ, IâI don't know what to do, I⦔
Simpson chomped his cigar with a disturbing slurping sound. “Do you know what happens to a child's mind when it shatters, Joel?”
Pleaseâstopâhelp meâIâI can't moveâ¦
Joel looked away, his emotions raw and surging through him. He felt sick, like he might vomit or pass out at any moment.
“When something so horrible happens to their sweet, pure, innocent little minds?” Simpson rolled the cigar back and forth along his bottom lip, the leaf damp with saliva. “Do you know what happens, Joel?”
“Shut up,” he said through gritted teeth. “Justâjust shut up.”
“When the trauma is so extreme, the child's mind protects itself. Do you know how it achieves that, Joel? Do you remember?”
“Shut your mouth.” Joel staggered over toward the desk, swung at a glass lamp on the corner and knocked it to the floor. It shattered at his feet. “Shut your fucking mouth!”
Trent looked at him, horror and panic in his eyes.
“The most severe torture,” Simpson said, licking his lips as he pulled the cigar away. “The most delectable rape. It creates MPD. Do you know what that is, Joel? Multiple personality disorder.”
His head, held in placeâ¦locked in placeâ¦held by some strange metal contraption that holds his head stillâ¦his eyes pinned open so he cannot blink, cannot close themâ¦cannot look away from the things moving through the wallsâ¦
Joel's eyes locked on Trent, who looked as if he were about to explode as well.
Please,
his eyes seemed to say,
let me kill him. Let me end this. Now.
“Do you know what an
alter
is, Joel?” Simpson asked. “Would you like Father to tell you? Those created when the mind breaks, yes? From chaos and pain, from horror and violence, comes birth. Messy and covered in blood, it comes, and in the same manner they must die, systematically destroyed, one by one. That's what we're doing, you and I. We're killing off those alters.”
“You're lying.”
“Or are
you
the alter, Joel? It's so hard to know for sure, isn't it? So hard to be completely sure of who is who and what is what in a world of deception⦔
“You're a liar.” Joel moved toward him.
“I serve the King of Lies. As do you. You haven't come here for answers. You've come for vengeance. You've come because I've sent for you, son.”
“I'm not your son.”
Simpson smiled, then winced in apparent ecstasy, rolling the cigar back between his lips. “You're my little boy, Joel, my
special
little boy. Father's missed you so very much.”
Before he realized what he'd done, Joel had pulled the 9mm from his coat, closed on Simpson and hit him across the side of the head with it.
Simpson staggered toward his desk, dropped his drink but remained upright, a slow trickle of blood running from the fresh wound on the side of his forehead. Still clutching his cigar, he raised his other hand to the bloody gash and let out a slow moan. “We're in the final stages,” he said. “You can't stop it. No one can.”
“You're insane.”
“No, my precious,” Simpson said, smiling through his pain. “You are.”
Trent paced manically over by the windows, mumbling to himself.
“The whole world is a lie, Joel.” Simpson leaned back against the desk. “It's the world
behind
the world that matters, and the one who controls it all from the world we cannot see. Not yet. It's not what anything thinks it is. Not the pipe dreams of the nonbelievers, not the hooves and pitchforks the Jesus freaks piss on and on about, fearing their alleged savior and his tormentor both, frightened little children huddled in their ridiculous churches to nothing. Not any of the madness disguised as religions a bunch of savages dreamed up in their simple and stupid, superstitious minds while wandering in their deserts, as frightened of themselves as the world in which they found themselves. Weak, all of them, weak, with their rules and laws and prayers to a void that doesn't even know they exist, much less care. Not even the fools who think they've harnessed and worship darkness have it right, with their television rituals and music industry nonsense, their movies and award shows and their silly little cabals. Even the precious scientists, even we were wrong about more than we had right. It's all a magic trick. It's all a lie. And it's all the truth. Every last bit of it, because everything is possible in the abyss. Everything and nothing⦔
The horrible screamsâ¦
“It's time to come home, Joel. Don't you see? I've brought you home. It's time to quiet all those storms in your pretty little head, boy.”
“You made those storms.”
The horror and darknessâ¦
“Yes, and now Father can quiet them.” He dropped the cigar into a glass ashtray on the desk but kept his other hand pressed against his head wound, though it did little to curb the flow of blood. “Just like your pain and fear, Joel, do you remember?”
The agonyâ¦the shameâ¦
“Father can bring painâ¦or Father can take pain away.”
“Kill this fuck,” Trent muttered, still pacing back and forth in front of the windows. “Kill him. Just kill him, justâjust kill him.”
Joel kept the gun at his side. “Tell me about the number stations,” he said, motioning to the windows and the second building beyond. “That's one, isn't it?”
“They're all over the world,” Simpson said. “Speaking to those who can hear them, to those who don't realize they can, and to those who have no idea they even exist. It's all part of a bigger plan, Joel, a bigger hive. Bringing the world to slavery slowly and quietly, while using our greatest gift against us. Our minds. Listen to the broadcasts, Joel. I know you hear them even in your sleep. Hypnotic, aren't they? Nearly as wondrous as the growls and whispers you hear at the very back of your mind while you're awake. It's beautiful. Beautiful slavery, child,
beautiful
slavery⦔
“Kill him,” Trent said again, suddenly more focused. “Or I will.”
“All these years of magic,” Simpson said. “All this time. The Devil's not a sprinter, Joel. He's a stroll on a hot summer day. He's a gentle breeze slipping through the trees. He's a drop of rain slowly gliding across a pane of glass, dew hanging from the petals of the most delicate flower. He's a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis in all its exquisite glory. He's everything you think he's notâ¦and everything you fear him to be. Magic is real, Joel. Reality is built on it.”
The door suddenly opened, and in one motion, a man stepped into the office, a shotgun leveled in his hands. By the time it registered, he'd already fired.
Trent vaulted backward, into the windows, as a huge wound exploded across his midsection and a deafening boom shook the house to the chorus of shattering glass and splitting wood.
Reflexively, Joel raised his 9mm and fired several times.
The first two shots missed, tearing into the doorframe behind the man. The third struck him in the shoulder and spun him around. The fourth hit his side and dropped him to his knees as he cried out in pain.
In shock, Joel stood in the center of the office, the gun still aimed at the man he now recognized as Novak. Simpson remained where he was, a ridiculous grin on his face. Trent was collapsed and caught in the destroyed windows, half his body hanging outside, the other half still in the office and covered in blood.
Snow and cold air blew through the newly formed portal.
Novak, grunting and groaning in agony, reached for the shotgun he'd dropped when he fell to his knees.
Joel aimed and fired, blowing several of Novak's fingers from his hand in a spray of blood and bone.
Screaming, Novak slumped forward. “Motherfucker!”
Musicâ¦I hear musicâ¦sadâ¦strange musicâ¦pianoâ¦a sad and lonely pianoâ¦
Stepping closer, and with a skill and calm Joel had no idea he possessed, he placed the 9mm under Novak's chin and fired.
The body flopped over onto its side, the top of Novak's head a bloody and mangled mess of brain and tissue. The body convulsed several times, then lay still.
Blinking Novak's blood from his eyes, Joel turned back to Simpson.
The son of a bitch was still smiling. His free hand reached down to his crotch and gleefully rubbed the erection pressing against his slacks.
Those eyesâ¦dark and horrificâ¦looking down at himâ¦
inside
him as a piano plays in the distanceâ¦
“The things I've seen, Joel, the things I've shown you through skies torn open like wounds in Heaven,” Simpson said, his speech slurred from the blood trickling into his mouth. “Fires burning and alive in the ruined minds of geniuses and fools, starving children and bloated kings on thrones of pride and lust. Liars and prophets, slaughter, slavery and exterminations on scales unimaginable, blood running in the streets, butchers loose in the West, the killers of children unleashed in the East, the rise of night, the fall of light. Each and every glorious moment, every unanswered prayer, every tear, every breath. I remember them all.”
What do you remember, Joel?
“I remember you,” Joel said. “
You
, Father. I remember you.”
“As above, so below.” Simpson began to laugh as he opened his arms in welcome. “Come, child. Fulfill your destiny. Send me through the door. Open it wide for all that needs to come through.”
Joel shot him in the throat.
Simpson slumped to the floor, a gurgling, bloody mass writhing about on the rug. Straddling him, Joel began to hit him with the butt of the 9mm. Again and again, until he had no strength left and there was little more to the man's skull than a frothy mess.