cold and lifeless. No cars out in front of the restaurant, but the sign in an otherwise dark window blinked: Dante’s. There was no one else around, and the second floor above the restaurant appeared deserted, most of the windows blown out or boarded up. Rooster looked to the end of the block, checking the corners in both directions. If he was being watched or tailed, they were the best he’d ever encountered.
He moved through the door, which alerted those inside to his arrival with the jingle of a little bell. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dim lighting as he was met with a blanket of thick, oppressive heat. A series of tables with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and small candles encased in glass orbs at their centers lined the walls to his left and right. The open area between them provided a path through the narrow restaurant to, he assumed, the kitchen in back, but it was so dark he couldn’t make out much beyond the first few tables. The smell of burned food hung in the air, and although there was a podium for a maitre de the restaurant appeared empty, perhaps closed.
“Here,” a voice said from the rear of the room.
Rooster casually slid a hand to the gun in his belt and moved down the center aisle toward the direction of the voice. As the shadows parted, the candlelight danced along the floor and walls, flickering about, alive in the dark. As he cautiously approached the only occupied table in the place, the silhouette of a man’s head and shoulders emerged.
“Mr. Cantrell.” Not a question. Said with what almost sounded like adoration. “Nasty rain out there this morning.”
“Who are you?”
“My name’s not important,” he said. “Call me whatever you’d like.”
Same aged and drained voice as on the phone, Rooster was sure of it.
“Mr. Snow seemed fond of Poindexter.” The man motioned to the chair across from him with a spindly arm, his hand brushing through the circle of candlelight cast across the table. Skeletal and liver-spotted, his pale flesh was laced with bulbous blue veins, the fingers gnarled with arthritis. “Not terribly original, but we can go with that if you’d like.”
“Snow’s dead.”
“Yes.”
Rooster looked behind him. He could see the front door and the light beyond, though it seemed farther away than was possible.
“It’s all right, Mr. Cantrell, you’re safe here. Please. Sit.”
He pulled the chair out, slid it to the side so he could still see the door then took a seat. He’d never cared for sitting with his back to doors. “Who are you?” Rooster pulled his gun and laid it flat on the table, barrel pointed at the man. “I’m not asking again.”
Until then the man’s face had remained in shadow. He sat forward enough to allow the candlelight to reveal a glimpse of a loose-skinned face ravaged by age, his features sharp and birdlike. A pair of eyeglasses with black frames sat high on his needle nose, the flickering flame from the candle reflected in lenses so thick they might have been comical under different circumstances. “Don’t be an ass,” he said wearily, “put that away. Our time together is limited.”
Rooster reluctantly returned the gun to his lap.
“Are the headaches getting worse?”
He nodded.
“It happens as the mind recovers and remembers more and more. Truth always comes with some measure of pain.” He folded his damaged hands before him on the table and sat back, his face again engulfed in darkness. “Does The Kingdom Project mean anything to you?”
Faraway screams tore at him. “No.”
“Named for the famous Eliot poem ‘The Hollow Men’ which speaks of ‘death’s other kingdom’ compiled with numerous books on demonology and the occult that consistently referred to the darkness on the other side as a ‘kingdom of shadows,’ The Kingdom Project was a top secret program begun in the late 1970s and continued until the mid-80s. The occult has always been of interest to the powers that be. Hitler spent a fortune on its study and possibilities. Many of the same scientists that worked for the Third Reich ended up here, in the United States, after World War II. They weren’t all rocket scientists, Mr. Cantrell. Many were those who worked on the Reich’s most classified occult projects. Their work not only continued here in the states, it expanded and went farther than even Hitler could’ve imagined.”
Outside, the muted sounds of a siren rose then fell away to silence.
“The early programs of the 50s and 60s met with failure,” he continued. “For much of the 70s nothing changed, and the majority of programs were scrapped. Many concentrated on psychic phenomenon or the like, but The Kingdom Project had different, more sophisticated ideas. Our goal was to discover a connection—a bridge, if you like—between our reality and the underworld. We weren’t concerned with an afterlife that could only be entered through death, but rather alternate existences existing simultaneously with ours.”
A waiter materialized from the shadows holding a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and a goblet of red wine. He placed them before Poindexter without comment then slipped away.
“I understand you’re not a man of science, so I won’t bore you with the technical details, but suffice to say it all boils down to physics and mathematics. Our existence, our entire universe, this entire dimension, is based upon them. They all are. It’s simply a matter of finding the correct equation then executing it via the proper tools. What we as well as the others before us failed to realize was that in a psychological sense, the physical world is essentially an illusion. The path to the other side, to the power we were searching for—the darkness, that place of pure primal terror and evil—isn’t something one can find in the depths of the Earth or on a saucer ride through space or any of that nonsense. It exists in the limitless caverns of our minds. Our minds provide the gateway to the other side…the underworld…the darkness. It wasn’t Heaven Hitler was searching for, Mr. Cantrell, and neither were we. In the end, these programs all have military—or similar—applications. The Kingdom Project was no different. We focused specifically on the dark side of the occult, the concept that things like demons, devils, demonic entities—whatever you’d like to call them—literally existed on some level, if not on a physical plane then perhaps a purely spiritual one. Think about it, beings of pure, unadulterated, unapologetic evil. Beings of pure rage, pure violence, pure hatred. Imagine if that level of evil truly existed in a conscious, intelligent form. Imagine the possibilities of literally summoning such creatures. Imagine harnessing their power, the very essence…of Hell.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“No, but unfortunately you are. And I’m largely responsible for it.” He took up a fork, poked at the food on his plate. “Our push, specifically with The Kingdom Project, was largely chemical-based. We believed that once the bridge was found, if it truly existed outside theory and mathematical probability, could only be crossed in a spiritual way. In-other-words, psychologically, as the real-world applications of physics and mathematics had to be merged with spiritual, non-physical, synthetic components.”
“Synthetic,” Rooster asked, “as in drugs?”
“Yes, and it was only if and when these two areas were in perfect synchronization that our goals could be achieved. The mind itself had to be altered in order to access the other side. There was no question about that. You could get there from here, as it were, and the key was right before our eyes. Many ancient cultures, from Native Americans to countless tribes of people worldwide—people we considered largely inferior savages—already possessed the process we’d been searching for. These peoples used it to commune with paradise, to find nirvana, God, peace and transcendence. And they all used mind-altering substances to achieve it—roots, leaves, plants, things of the Earth—ingested before these journeys were taken. It’s precisely that angle I studied and brought to the project. There were numerous formulas over several years that used pieces of these various concoctions from different cultures. And of course, as a chemist, I implemented my own mixtures, including LSD derivatives and other mind-altering substances. Many did nothing more than standard hits of LSD. The initial versions were far too strong and brought on brain damage, permanent insanity, even death in a few cases. Eventually we were able to isolate the aspects we required and produced what I believed was the perfect elixir for The Kingdom Project. Once the right formula was found the challenge became finding proper test subjects. No one sane would knowingly volunteer for such a thing,
