Ripper (47 page)

Hell is a chaos of S&M delights. Deep in the underworld of Leviathan's throat, the demon Tartaruchus tends the flaming pit. Wreathed in blinding, smothering smoke, hellfire is black and burns without giving light. The damned live in fire as fish live in the sea, but fire that burns within as well as without. The blood of those who breathe it boils in their veins, roasting their hearts, entrails, and brains. The pit stinks of all that's gagging and foul, a filthy mix of sulphur, graverot, dung, offal, and scum. Here the damned are tortured by demons with half-gnawed faces who flay, behead, castrate, eye-gouge, and impale with glee. Hell is a cacophony of gibbering shrieks, mixed with unholy laughter and the biting off of tongues. Hell is a chaos of mass hysteria.

Cut . . .

Cut . . .

Cut . . .

Skull carved the third triangle into Katt's skin.

As he signed the symbol, his Doppelganger flew, sending the fetch to ritually warp vibrations from the real, conjuring Satan and his Legions in the here-and-now.

Hell under Skull's control.

A hell-raiser's fantasy.

"Lucifer * Belial * Moloch * Mammon * Beelzebub * Ouyar * Chameron * Aliseon * Mandousin * Premy * Oriet * Naydrus * Esmony . . ." he chanted.

The blowhole beckoned like the white light preceding death, calling him, calling him,
Come to me, son . . .

The hole grew . . . shrank . . . grew . . . a zoom lens out of control. Consciousness shoved past him, a state he couldn't hold. He knew if he let go he'd be gone for good, yet something in him yearned to let go all the same. The shore heaved like Buckwheat, his childhood rocking horse. His neck too frail to support his head, his cheek struck rock. Zinc dug his fingers into his palms for someone to hold onto, as if gripping himself might stop this fall into bottomlessness. Panic a breath away and fear rising, rising, he heard his angelic mother calling him. He wanted nothing more than to return to her arms . . .

Alex, Carol, Travis, Deborah, you, I've had enough.

Hush, son. Time to sleep. You did your best. In this bleak world, no one can ask more.

A book came out of nowhere to bash him on the head, whipping his face toward the Plowman Poet.

Stand back, woman,
his father growled, rheumic eyes and ruddy cheeks lost in whiskey fumes.
I'll not raise an illiterate lout.

Courage, brother! do not stumble,

    Though thy path is dark as night;

There's a star to guide the humble:

    Trust in God, and do the Right.'

Think lively, son. Name the bard.

Macleod, Pop.

Get up.

". . . Eparinesont * Estiot * Dumosson * Danochar * Casmiel * Hayras * Fabelleronthon * Sodirno * Peatham * Satan * Come!"

Like Tautriadelta in Miller's Court, Skull was seized by a frenzy to rip Katt apart, overcome by the power of his Great Occult Event. For down the now Open Path from the Occult Realm, backed by the black glare of Hell's sulphurous flames, through the ruinous arch between the real and the reflection, summoned closer by each rip slitting the skin of the altar, surrounded by hell-hags itching to fly every person who'd ever crossed him here in their talons, a lifetime of taunts and ridicule with Hell on Earth his revenge to settle the score, come armies of lesser demons from the torture wells, flop-eared, warty monsters of mingled human and animal parts: rhinoceros horns, matted fur, dragon scales, insect shells, and the leathery wings of bats; armed with jutting fangs, claws, and protruding tusks; with bird beaks, googling bloodshot eyes, elongated noses, and piggish snouts; some with extra faces on their bellies or buttocks; others with too many or too few limbs . . .

Skull yanked the rope through the rings to arch Katt faceup over the Ripper's trunk.

He swung the knife in a wide arc to slash her throat.

The blade descended.

Satan is covered with coarse black hair. His soaring wings barely clear the ruinous arch. Bloody froth drips from his chin. Like the graven image in the castle's Ballroom, the Lord of Chaos has cloven hooves evolving into claws, goat's horns, a stubby tail, and a rapist's cock. His cruel lips curl in a repulsive leer, and his sunken eyeballs glare opaquely like a rotting cod. The four Princes of Hell—Belial, Moloch, Mammon, and Beelzebub—oversee the carnage wreaked on those the hell-hags bring. Lobotomized by Belial as they wail in despair, writhing nudes are repeatedly buggered by spindly beasts with fiery clumps and whorls instead of hair. Bloated Moloch is a blubbery hulk of lips and holes, each orifice—mouth, nostrils, ears, and anus—puckered and enlarged. His fat hands seize the plump ones to swallow whole, absorbing their flesh like an amoeba before excreting the bones with loud farts. Others wallow in a vat of boiling pus, filled with green mucus that dribbles from Mammon's bulbous nose, before they're pronged on hooks protruding from a flaming wheel, hung to roast slowly as they choke on their own smoke. Pigeon-chested, hunchbacked, skipping insanely about, Beelzebub lusts after the Dianics. Forcing them onto saddles studded with red-hot phallic spikes, he drives them before him on the backs of mutant hogs. Others hang by their hair as he sucks their breasts dry, leaving emaciated sacs with toads clamped to their sex, then every woman in this Hell has the face of Brigid Marsh.

The Ripper's knife was inches away from slashing Katt's throat when Skull's head snapped back in a spray of blood. Fingers of both hands splayed wide by shock, he dropped the weapon which clattered to the ground. The rope around his other arm uncoiled, uncoiled, uncoiled . . .

Casting aside the crossbow he'd converted to a stonebow, Zinc crawled in through the blowhole in the cliff. He waded into the frigid brine of the black lagoon, struggling against the water's pull like an ox at the plow.
"Trust in God, arid do the Right,"
the mantra on his lips, he neared the opposite shore where the cedar idols creaked,
tick. . . tock . . . tick . . . tock
his ordeal in overtime.
My dad could stall his fits by self-distraction,
Alex had said.
He'd wiggle his fingers in front of his eyes.
Zinc wiggled his fingers as he sloshed from the lagoon, fighting desperately against the oncoming fit, when suddenly Skull loomed up behind Katt who was still stretched over the trunk. His face twisted red and white from blood, paint, and nasal bones, the stone wedged where his nose should be like the bulb of a demonic clown, Skull raised the Ripper's knife above Katt's heart . . .

Ten feet away, Zinc began convulsing.

Flailing one arm, Katt pulled the rope free from the pentagram ring, then released her other wrist and one ankle. As she kicked her last limb, Skull grabbed her hair, cracking her head against the trunk, stunning her. Vision blurred, Katt lost focus on the Ripper's knife.

"Fuck you, Mother!" Skull yelled, plunging it down.

* * *

Zinc's head revolved on his neck like a wobbly top. The fit knocked the wind out of him, catching him short. His legs were rubber, like in a bad dream. The first convulsions made his amis flop. As his neck arched, his eyes began to roll. Pitiful mewling sounds came from his lips. He lunged forward as consciousness gave out.

Zinc couldn't stop the knife in its plunge.

He did the only thing he could.

He threw himself between the descending blade and Katt.

Epilogue

Doppelganger

It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman
     Which gives the stem'st goodnight.

                                                —
Shakespeare,
Macbeth

Skull Without Crossbones

Approaching Deadman's Island
     9:17
P.M.

"There," said the Mad Dog. "Near the top of the cliff." He aimed the helicopter searchlight at the bluff.

"It's a dog," Craven said. "Impaled on a spike."

"No. Lower down. On the precipice." He dropped the beam to the narrow ledge twelve feet down the cliff where Adrian Quirk's wheelchair had hit during its plunge. There a woman clung to the rock of the natural cradle, blood streaking her cheek as if she'd struck her head. "From the angle of her leg, I'd say it's broken."

"Show her the livery. Then set down," ordered DeClercq.

The Bell LongRanger II had circled west, coming at the island from the ocean side. A hundred and sixty miles as the crow flies, they'd bucked the wind for two hours bumping from Vancouver to Nootka Sound while shredding clouds fled east to reveal the stalking moon. Face on, the chopper looked like Huey, Louie, or Dewey Duck, big-eyed cockpit windows with a small blue bill. DeClercq sat in the passenger's seat beside the pilot, a Cariboo bronc-buster nicknamed the Cowboy. Chan, Ghost Keeper, Craven, and the Mad Dog rode in back. The pilot banked the Bell by the woman on the cliff, close enough so she could see the royal blue RCMP livery on the side, then hovered the helicopter over the gardens beyond the house.

Snow billowed up as they entered ground effect. The Cowboy lowered the collective pitch lever to set them down. "Someone's in the maze," Craven shouted, indicating the overgrown tangle to the right. The
whup-whup-whup
of the airfoils died to a whistle.

Remington pump in hand, Heckler slung over his shoulder, the Mad Dog opened the port doors and jumped down. Guns drawn—DeClercq, too—the others joined him, facing the maze the searchlight lit as bright as high noon.

Two trees flanked the entrance to the labyrinth. About fourteen, with fear in her eyes, a girl wrapped in a rug stumbled toward them. DeClercq shuddered with
deja vu.
He was
living
the dream that had plagued him for years.

In the Shakespeare Garden of Stanley Park stand two trees: "Comedy" lush as you like it, and "Tragedy" as stunted as Richard III. between their trunks, arms outstretched, Janie runs toward him, her frightened voice crying "Daddy!" plaintively. No matter how hard she runs, she draws no closer to him.

Then before he knew it, Katt was in his arms, teeth chattering like tap-dancers from the cold, hypothermia seeking his warmth.

She wasn't his daughter.

But she might be.

When sorrow is asleep, wake it not.

"You're bleeding."

"He cut me."

"Who?" DeClercq asked.

"Adrian Quirk. We thought he was dead. But he wasn't."

"Where's Zinc Chandler?"

"Dead," cried Katt. "He threw himself between me and the knife."

"Your name?"

"Katt Darke."

"Where's your mother?"
Luna Darke
was on the guestlist found at Ravenscourt.

"Dead."

"And your father?"

"Don't have one. Now I don't have anyone in the world."

Chan took off his parka and held it out for her. Katt dropped the rug and put it on. When that didn't quell her shivers, DeClercq added his. "How'd you escape?"

"Quirk tied me over a trunk." She showed him the cuffs. "I got free and ran just after Zinc was stabbed. Upstairs inside the cave and out a trapdoor, then into the Hall and out of the house. I grabbed a rug to keep me warm and hid in the maze. Stop for clothes and I'd be trapped in the cloakroom."

"Katt, I'm Chief Superintendent DeClercq. I want you to guide us to this cave."

"No way," the teenager said, shaking her head. "He's still in there with all his traps."

"No one's going to hurt you. You're safe with me."

Katt saw concern and humility in his eyes. Doubt crossed her face.

"You're safe," Chan echoed, so she turned to him. His eyes, too, revealed the pain of a lost daughter. The doubt remained.

"Kid," said the Mad Dog. "See this gun?" He held the Remington 870 12-gauge in front of her face, the ejection port at eye-level so when he pumped the action she saw a shell drawn from the magazine go into the firing chamber. "Anyone lay a hand on you,
I'm
going to blow his head off."

The irony was, with him she felt safe.

While the Cowboy, Craven, and Ghost Keeper rescued Alex Hunt, Katt led DeClercq, Chan, and the Mad Dog to the hole behind Satan's hooves. "I'll stay here with her," Chan said, so Mad Dog gave him the shotgun, then he and the Chief Superintendent descended the grotto stairs.

Flashlights knifing the dark as down they came, the Mounties passed limestone formations wreathed with torch smoke, some stalactites and stalagmites apart like giant's teeth, others joined at the skull like Siamese twins, then the Whalers' Washing House came into view. A naked man with blood on his face stood among the idols, flailing his arms at demons confined within his mind. Blood trailed from the shrine to the shore of the black lagoon, where Chandler lay facedown with a knife in his back.

DeClercq sensed he was in the presence of
two
numbered men, the connection rising from his occult mind. The one in the shrine whom Katt called Adrian Quirk, he recognized as Samson Coy from the Havelock Ellis photograph. Angus Craig III—who the sleuths knew as Glen Devlin—lay dead with six others at Coy's feet. The number of this man was the number of the beast: 666.

Twenty-three was the number of the man by the lagoon.
He threw himself between the knife and me,
Katt said, sacrificing his life so she could live. DeClercq had lost two wives and
a
child to fate, so he knew how Zinc's heart had bled for those taken from him. Number 23 made the same sacrifice, climbing the steps to the guillotine in Dickens's
A Tale of Two Cities
to save another man, his final thoughts a fitting epitaph for Zinc:

It is afar, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is afar, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

DeClercq's foot touched the bottom step as one of the torches flared, and at that moment he thought he saw Zinc's hand move. Did it happen? Or was it wishful thinking? "Check his pulse," he said to Rabidowski. Samson Coy continued to flail within the Magick Place, awed by the demons besieging his overwrought mind, crying, "The Beast from the Sea! The Beast from the Earth! Gog and Magog! All true! Now I can't control them! I got the Ritual wrong! The Hanged Man's Mirror of Venus hangs upside down! I hanged the cunts
right side up\"
In the occult, the trick is to get the symbol right. Coy would spend the rest of his life in a padded Riverside room, feverishly penning his own
Patristic Gospels
to atone to God, begging the Almighty to drive his demons back.