The Scarlet Gospels (9 page)

But to his surprise and mild disappointment, there were no demons in immediate view. What he could see, through the shifting crack in the wall, was a vast landscape. He took a quick glance around at the other cracks, but he saw only the same dead, cold light and heard only the sound of a harsh wind, which was blowing across the wilderness in front of him, raising up all manner of trash from the ground—nothing particularly hellish, just plastic bags, sheets of filthy paper, and brown dust. It looked like a war zone.

He could see now the patterns of old, cobbled streets crisscrossing the wasteland, and in some places the rubble of an old building that had presumably once stood on the spot in question. In the middle distance, however, emerging from behind the slow veil of gray smoke, entire buildings, miraculously saved from the bombardment that had leveled everything else, still stood tall. In better times they had been beautiful, he knew, which surprised him. They looked like refugees from the old cities of Europe in their elegance.

The gap in the wall had now opened to the width of a door, and Harry had advanced a step or two through it without even being conscious of having done so. It wasn't every day that a man got a glimpse of the Pit. He was determined to take as much from this opportunity as he could. In his hunger to make sense of the entire vista, however, he had neglected to look down at his feet.

He was standing on the top step of a steep flight of stone steps, the base of which was erased by a yellow-gray mist. And from that mist a figure was emerging. It was a naked man, his limbs scrawny, his belly a pot, the muscles of his chest covered by a layer of fat that resembled rudimentary breasts. But it was the man's head that drew Harry's astonished gaze. The man had clearly been the subject of a vicious experiment, its consequences so severe that Harry was astonished the patient still lived.

The man's head had been sawed open through the bone, from the top of his skull to the base of his neck, slicing down the middle of his nose, mouth, and chin, leaving only his tongue entire, which lolled from the left side of the man's mouth. In order to keep bone and muscle from returning to their natural position, a thick rod of rusting iron, maybe five inches long, had been driven a finger length down into the gap in the sundered head.

The iron rod did more than simply separate the halves, however; it also—by some trick in its design—forced the half faces away from the frontal position, directing the man's gaze off at forty-five degrees in each direction. This cruel surgery left its victim with a vaguely reptilian likeness, his bulging eyes staring out in different directions, and as a result with every few steps he took he turned his head one way or the other so to fix his gaze again on Harry.

How any human being's anatomy, much less his sanity, could have survived such vicious reconstruction was beyond comprehension. But survive he had, and with countless other parts of his anatomy also sliced and shaved and hammered and threaded, the man loped up the stairs toward Harry with distressing ease, as though this was a condition with which he had been born.

“And time to go,” Harry said to himself, though his curiosity was a long way from being sated.

He knew how he was going to seal the door, presuming the conventional method of reversing the work—closing the box that had caused the connection to be made in the first place—was not available. He'd use one of three pieces of magic—Universal Incantations (magicians called them U-eez)—that would do the job without need of much preparation.

The bisected man continued to lope up the steps toward him when a penetrating voice rang out from the mist.

“Felixson. Hurry.”

The bisected man froze.

At last, the presence of this mutilated thing upon the steps made sense. It was not here alone. It was the property of some greater power, which had apparently quickened its ascent, so that its form slowly became clearer. It was male, dressed in the ageless black vestments of the Cenobites, an infernal order of priests and priestesses.

But this wasn't just any Cenobite going about his business of catching souls in a net of promised ecstasies. This was a figure in Hell's pantheon whom many who could not have named three angels could recognize. Somebody had even thought up a nickname for him that had quickly grown in popularity. He was called Pinhead, a name, Harry now saw, that was as insulting as it was appropriate. A pattern of grooves resembling the rigorous design of a chessboard, its squares, as yet undifferentiated, had been carved into his sickly flesh, and where the lines crossed, the pins that had earned him his moniker (not pins at all, in truth, but hefty nails) had been hammered into bone and brain.

Harry didn't let the shock of recognition hold him for more than a moment. He took a backward step into the narrow, chaotic room behind him and uttered five words of a Universal Incantation:

“Emat. Thel. Mani. Fiedoth. Uunadar.”

The demonic Hell Priest heard the incantation and yelled up to his beast:

“Take him, Felixson! Be quick!”

Already the matter between worlds was knitting together in response to Harry's instruction, a thickening veil between this world and Hell.

But Felixson, the bisected man, was quicker than the incantation. Before he even reached the top of the stairs he leaped for the breach, his body tearing the veil open as it plunged through. Harry retreated to the door that took him out into the empty gray room. But the morbid curiosity, one of countless shades of curiosity Harry possessed, kept him from leaving the tiny hidden room before he had a closer look at the creature named Felixson who now entered the narrow room and seemingly forgot his purpose the moment he did so. Harry watched as this halved man lowered his abominable head to scan the remnants of Goode's library.

And then, to Harry's' astonishment, Felixson spoke, or came as close to doing so as his divided palate allowed.

“… Bookshh…” he said, specks of spittle flying from his mouth.

A kind of tenderness had come into his manner, and he went down on his haunches, both sides of his head smiling.

“Books?” Harry murmured as Felixson lovingly picked over the litter of Carston Goode's secret library.

Harry's voice was enough to break the creature from his reverie. Felixson dropped the book he had been lovingly examining and looked past the fallen cabinet at Harry.

“You! Shtay!” Felixson said.

Harry shook his head.

“Nope.”

Harry raised his hand and slid it behind the bookcase that stood between him and Felixson, pushing with all his might. The room was far too narrow to allow the bookcase to fall very far. It struck the shelves on the other wall, shedding the last of its contents.

As it toppled, Harry pushed against the door, which had swung closed, and stepped out into the gray room. Behind him, he heard the noise of splintering wood as Felixson tore at the cabinet so as to get to the door. Harry turned back and slammed it closed. It locked automatically, and the invisible door illusion was instantly complete once more. It didn't remain that way for long, however. Seemingly possessed with an inhuman strength, Felixson thumped against the door with intent. It flew open, splintering off its hinges.

“Die now, Detective!” Felixson said, stepping out of the small room. Before Harry could process Felixson's impossible knowledge of his profession, a light within the narrow room blazed with sudden ferocity, illuminating everything with the deranged lucidity of lightning blasts. As if punctuating the display, a hook-headed chain leaped out of the tiny room and whipped toward Harry, whining as it flew in his direction. Felixson's response was to instantly drop to the ground, doing his pitiful best to protect his heads as he did so. Meanwhile, the tattoo Caz had recently added (“because,” Caz had stated, “you fuckin' earned it, man”) was itching wildly, its unpleasant news flash unequivocal:
This is a death threat
.

But Harry wasn't the hook's target. Its bull's-eye was the door behind him, and the hook and chain threw themselves against it with considerable force. The door slammed shut and the hook snaked down to the handle, wrapping the chain around the mottled metal knob several times. Finally, interest gave way to a more levelheaded panic, and it was then that Harry scrambled to the door and attempted to pull it open. He succeeded in getting it open a few inches before he felt a sharp pain in his neck and a rush of wet heat, which divided at his shoulder, running down over his back and chest.

An unseen hook had pierced him, but Harry paid it no heed and continued trying to haul the door open, gritting his teeth against the pain he knew would come when he tore himself free. Loosing a stream of profanities, Harry pulled on the door, but the hook in his shoulder dug in deeper and then the chain to which it was attached tightened, and Harry was hauled away from the door and any hope of escape.

 

8

“Do not bother to run, Harry D'Amour,” said the Cenobite, releasing Harry from the chain's grip. “For there is nowhere to go.”

“You … know my name,” Harry said.

“And you, no doubt, mine. Tell me, Harry D'Amour, what words you've heard whispered that have moved you to put aside the comforts of the commonplace to live, as I am told you live, engaged in constant conflicts against Hell.”

“I think you got the wrong Harry D'Amour.”

“Your modesty nauseates me. Be boastful while you have the breath for it. You are Harry D'Amour: private investigator, scourge of Hell.”

“Sounds to me like those nails are touching too much gray matter.”

“You are a magnificent clich
é
. And yet, you have sown hope in too much undeserving dirt. Against all expectations it grew and spread and, wherever the chance of its survival was slimmest, it prospered, your gift to the damned and despairing. A gift I shall now extinguish.”

The Cenobite made a gesture with his left hand and another hook and chain came through the door, this one weaving over the boards like a snake and then suddenly leaping at D'Amour's chest. Harry felt the design of interwoven talismans Caz had inked on his chest convulse, and the hook was thrown back with such force that it slammed against the opposing wall, burying the sharpened point into the plaster.

“Inspiring,” the Cenobite said. “What else have you learned?”

“Hopefully enough to keep me from looking like that poor shit,” D'Amour said, referring to the still-deferent Felixson.

“Appearances deceive. You should know that. You are in the presence of one of your world's most renowned magicians.”

“What—” The words suddenly struck a chord in D'Amour's memory. Over the last several years, the world's most powerful magicians had been systematically and ritually slaughtered. Nobody knew why. Harry, acting like some kind of detective, was beginning to put the pieces together.

“Felixson?” he said. “I know that name. That's … Theodore Felixson?”

“Last of the High Circle.”

“What the fuck happened to him?”

“I spared him his life.”

“If that's what salvation looks like, I'll pass.”

“War is but a continuation of diplomacy by alternate means.”

“War? Against who? A bunch of pampered magicians?”

“Perhaps you'll find out. Perhaps not. Thank you for accepting your bait by opening the box.”

“Bait? This was a fucking setup?”

“You should be honored. Though I fail to see what sets you apart from the rest of the vermin, your reputation precedes you. I propose a test. I'll leave Felixson here to do away with you. Should he fail at his task, I shall return to you with an offer you'd dare not refuse.”

The Hell Priest turned to leave.

“You want me to fight this crippled mess?” D'Amour said.

“As I said, appearances deceive.”

With that the Cenobite unclipped a machete and a hook from his belt and threw them down before Felixson, who quickly snatched them up, feeling the weight of them. A mischievous double grin, all the more grotesque for its simple sincerity, appeared on his broken face.

“Hook!” he shrieked in excitement to the Cenobite, who was making his way back to the passageway into Carston Goode's hidden library. “You never … give…” He was working hard to shape the words. “… hook.”

“To the victor I will bestow more spoils.”

There was, briefly, a noise like very distant thunder. Then it was gone, and so, Harry sensed, was the Hell Priest.

“Just the two of us then,” Harry said, and before Felixson could move to attack, Harry took out his gun and fired twice into Felixson's heart. The bullets put two holes in Felixson's heart, but they did not kill him, and the magician's mouths turned upward in an arrogant sneer.

“Stupid Da More. Can't kill Felixson. Not never!”

“You say that like it's a good thing.”

“Is best!”

“You are so wrong,” D'amour said.

“You die. Find out who is wrong,” Felixson said, flicking the length of chain toward Harry like a whip as he came toward him.

Felixson pointed toward Harry and spoke incomprehensibly to the hook. It flew from Felixson's hands, came at Harry, and dug into his groin, cutting through tender flesh and exiting out through a second spot: two wounds for the price of one.

Harry howled in pain.

Felixson wrenched the chain back and tore through the flesh of Harry's thigh. The hook returned to him and he addressed it once again. Once again, the hook came at Harry, and caught his groin in the opposite flank.

“Good now,” Felixson said. “Only one more hook hook then bye to
little
Da More.”

Harry barely had time to react to Felixson's promise of unmanning. His attention had been drawn to the door out into the passageway. It was shaking violently, as though stampeding animals were trying to break through.

“What
is
?” Felixson asked, his attention now focused on the door as well.