The Impaler

Cindy’s muscles went rigid and the room began to spin. And amid a swirling kaleidoscope of pain, she could hear a young woman begging God to make him stop.

But as Edmund Lambert sank his teeth again and again into her flesh, a voice that sounded a lot like her father’s told her that God was busy elsewhere.

Chapter 88

The taste of the goddess’s flesh was indescribably delectable—sent shock waves throughout his entire body—and brought with it the chorus of the god’s return.

C’est mieux d’oublier! C’est mieux d’oublier!

The General saw it all so clearly now. There was no need for the lion’s head. The Prince had made that clear when he came through the doorway—a flash of revelation that was for the General both momentary and endless.

And now the Prince had transported them both back in time. No, the General understood— outside time. They were still in the attic, yes, but also in the Underworld palace of Ereshkigal, their surroundings both familiar and strange—the stone pillars, the high vaulted ceilings, the lush fabrics that adorned the goddess’s bed chamber. And there on the other side of the room was the bathtub in which the goddess had let the Prince glimpse her nakedness for the first time.

The General could feel the eyes of the dead, the eyes of the other gods on his back. But his mother was there, too—hanging by her neck from the rafters, watching him. And there was the little boy looking up at her, smiling with under- standing as the lines of the impaled stretched out along the road as far as he could see. There was no fear now. Only the end of the road; only the temple at Kutha and the hordes of worshippers calling his name; the battlefields and the souls of the impaled rising in the smoke to join with him in the stars.

C’est mieux d’oublier! C’est mieux d’oublier!

The twinkling stars—so many of them now that the sky looked silver—swirled around them and penetrated their flesh. The General could feel them inside and out; and suddenly he understood that the stars were not twinkling—they were trembling with fear!

I have returned! the entire universe seemed to cry, and all at once it was laid out before him; everything one in the same now amid the unimaginable bliss of total understanding—time, place, even his body did not exist for him anymore. Everything had been given up for the Prince; the scales had fallen from his eyes and the Prince had rewarded him with the vision of the gods. Soon his flesh would fall away, too. Soon, the doorway would be open for him, and he would join with his mother in spirit—a sense of joining that he did not understand until now.

“C’est mieux d’oublier,” he heard her say, and the General understood that the Prince had been the true path all along. Ereshkigal was the enemy. Ereshkigal had tried to trick them. And the Prince had brought her to the attic, to the threshold of the doorway to devour her into his spirit just as he had devoured Edmund Lambert and his mother; just as he most certainly would devour the General. The nine and the three, the return, the dots connected to make a new equa-tion—an equation that the General could not have possibly understood until now.

“My body is the doorway,” said the General, said the Prince.

And then he bit into her again.

Chapter 89

Markham closed his fingers around the cold steel knob and pushed. The door cracked open. The Impaler, in his haste, had forgotten to lock it. Thank God!

He stepped cautiously from the cellar into a pool of blood. There was blood everywhere—on the walls; footprints and a thick smear tracking away from the cellar door as if someone had been dragged across the kitchen floor. Not Schaap, he thought. No, this mess leads to someone else!

He took another step, wincing as his shoes peeled from the linoleum—then he heard a dull thwump from above his head. He stopped and listened, then saw the handguns on the kitchen counter: FBI issue, .40-caliber Glock 22s. His own and Andy Schaap’s.

Markham traded his hammer for the guns, checked the ammo, and followed the blood trail from the kitchen into the hallway. Now he could hear whimpering and squealing coming from the second floor. He mounted the staircase—when suddenly a deafening roar sent a shiver through his veins.

“Please, God, no!” the woman screamed, and Markham flew up the stairs like a ghost—kept his ears trained on the cacophony of crying and growling and roaring and quickly negotiated his way through the darkened upstairs hallway.

He ended up in one of the bedrooms; saw light coming from the closet and went for it. He stood there for a moment, panting in the doorway as he gazed down the long, narrow passage to the door at the far end—open, light streaming downwards, and more stairs. They were in the attic.

Markham swallowed hard—could hear muffled sobs and grunting and then the word “Ereshkigal” spoken in that low, growling voice.

Ereshkigal, he thought. The Nergal myth—the rape of the goddess in the Underworld!

In the next moment he was bounding up the stairs with his pistols thrust out before him like an outlaw. The old boards creaked noisily beneath his feet, but what greeted him in the attic froze him dead in his tracks.

It was a young man—naked, bloody, and impaled on a stake that had been driven into the attic floor. There was a large, gaping hole in the ceiling, and the young man’s neck had been broken—his head tied back so that his lifeless eyes stared toward the stars. On his chest, in streaks of blood still shiny, the words I HAVE RETURNED had been carved into his flesh.

Markham, his veins running cold, digested the entirety of the scene almost at once—but it was still enough time for the Impaler to react.

Another scream, and at the far end of the attic, on the other side of the impaled young man, Markham saw move-ment—a blur of bloody-sweaty muscles that glistened in the light from the single overhead bulb.

The Impaler growled and gnashed his teeth.

Then he fired.

The first shot burst through the dead man’s side—missed Markham’s head by inches, and buried itself in the wall behind him. Markham dropped to his stomach and slid back- wards down the stairs—returned fire blindly as two more bullets whizzed past him. The Impaler kept firing—three more shots and the woman began screaming hysterically. Then the sound of movement—creaking and something falling—and Markham peeked his head over the top step.

A ladder lay on the attic floor.

The Impaler was gone.

Markham sprang to his feet—could hear footsteps above his head as he covered himself with his pistols. He skirted around the impaled young man, around the hole in the roof, and headed for the girl. She was on the floor, naked and sobbing and curled up in the fetal position near a stack of trunks—her face, her arms and legs, almost her entire body a glistening crimson.

Markham, his eyes darting back and forth from the hole in the ceiling, was about to speak, when two more shots from the Impaler rained down on him. He dove to the floor, knocked over an old dressing dummy and covered the young woman. More bullets buried themselves in the dummy’s heavy torso, while others popped and splintered the exposed wood beams on the wall behind him.

A brief silence, and then Markham heard the Impaler scrambling across the roof. He fired both pistols, sending a trail of bullets through the attic ceiling in the direction of the footsteps—then a loud thump at the other end of the house.

Markham paused, wondering for a microsecond how many bullets he had left. Fully loaded, his Glocks held