circumstances Ripley’s place might have made me laugh. As it was, my appreciation of the ironic was running at a low ebb.
My thoughts returned to my fight with Ripley. Not just because my ribs ached. Actually, I didn’t remember much about the fight at all. What I remembered was the way Spider’s eyes shone with hatred and embarrassment when I saw the silver crucifix hanging around his neck.
It was a strange reaction. Funny. Pathetic. Revealing.
At least I hoped it was revealing. Just as I hoped Spider’s crucifix meant what I thought it did.
Otherwise, my coming here was a waste of time.
The windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm. Surf Glenn Lane curved toward the coastline. A quarter mile from Spider’s place, I spotted a weathered LOT FOR SALE sign and a dirt road that descended into the trees.
I turned off. The lot was hidden from the road. Overgrown with ferns, it didn’t exactly look like a real estate agent’s hot property. Even if it was, I doubted that a prospective buyer would be scouting undeveloped acreage in the rain. The odds were good that the truck would be safe.
I parked and armed myself, concealing one of the pistols and my K-bar just as I had earlier in Cliffside.
As I walked up the road, I wondered what secrets Spider Ripley’s pyramid held.
If I was lucky, I already knew.
There wasn’t any traffic on Surf Glenn Lane. Still, I stayed close to the treeline. The rain was steady but gentle, and the trees were thick enough to keep me from getting too wet.
I started down the gravel road that led to Spider’s pyramid. Closer in, the place seemed less amusing. I didn’t like those opaque windows. Anything could be inside. Or anyone.
There was only one way to find out. Two sides of the pyramid were visible from the main road-one of them being the main entrance, which faced the gravel driveway-so I went around the back.
No miniature sphinx. Just a little garden choked with weeds, several pink flamingos, and a pair of copulating ceramic gnomes.
I picked up the male, and I had to laugh. His equipment was way past elfin. The little guy was hung like a troll.
But copulating ceramic gnomes weren’t anything to get excited about. The good news was that no cars were parked in Spider’s garden, and that made me happy. It wasn’t incontrovertible evidence that no one was home, but I took it as a pretty solid indication of same.
I spotted another door-sliding glass and black as midnight. Completely opaque. The only thing I saw as I approached it was my own reflection waiting for me on the glass.
It was a stone cold fact that I’d seen better days, but I didn’t let my appearance slow me down.
I heaved the gnome through the glass and followed it inside.
Dark as a pit in there, and cool.
I took a deep breath.
Decay and death, with just a hint of pestilence. Exactly what I was looking for.
Four rooms on the first floor of the pyramid. Three of them were fairly narrow, one on each wall, with the fourth in the center.
The latter was Spider Ripley’s living room-if a pyramid could contain such a room-and considering what I knew about Ripley, the decor ran true to form.
Circe had told me that Spider was a member of an Egyptian revival cult before joining her father’s church. It was common knowledge that Whistler’s own brand of religion drew heavily on the Egyptian beliefs concerning death and rebirth, so it wasn’t surprising that Spider’s pyramid was decorated in a style that could only be described as very late Egyptian…or very early Diabolos Whistler.
In a series of papyrus friezes that hung on the walls, a pharaoh who looked very much like Diabolos Whistler traveled the cycle of death and rebirth. The furniture was simple, black, and spare. There were statues and small idols everywhere, intricate portrayals of Egyptian gods and Whistler’s own deities. Fortunately, most of the statuary bore small name-plates-a necessity for an unbeliever like myself.
There was Bes, the Egyptian god of a happy home, a strange bearded creature who reminded me of the gnome I’d tossed through the window, though Bes wasn’t quite as well-endowed. Bastet, the cat goddess, crouched at his side. Korthes’h-the hideous creature tattooed on Circe Whistler’s back-loomed on a low table, hovering over Sakhmet and Anubis, Manth’ss and Krake.
Many of the pieces were museum quality, elaborate statues inlaid with lapis lazuli, turquoise, and carnelian. Even so, the room reflected an almost childlike sense of completion and display, as if Ripley needed to reinforce his faith by surrounding himself with icons. I could almost imagine the freakish giant acting out Whistler’s modern mythology of new gods that slew the old like a kid with a set of very expensive action figures.
But I wasn’t here to play psychiatrist. I climbed a staircase to the second floor. Only two rooms there, and they held more of the same.
A bedroom and an expansive master bath. I guessed Spider spent most of his time in these two rooms. Both had televisions and telephones…and several boxes of Ramses condoms, birth control fit for a pharaoh.
Besides that, the bedroom contained a kingsize-plus bed with plenty of room for the seven-foot bodyguard, a female guest, and its current occupant-a realistic looking mummy that on closer examination turned out to be a doll. Staring at it, I couldn’t help remembering the all-too-real mummies stacked in Diabolos Whistler’s study. Maybe the things were de rigueur when it came to cultist decorating… Beyond that, I didn’t want to dwell on the implications of a mummy-be it authentic or ersatz-in a kingsize-plus bed.
I didn’t want to think about the sarcophagus-shaped tub in the bathroom, either. Or the Canopic jars with lids shaped like the heads of Whistler’s gods that stood on the toilet tank in the pissoir.
No way was I going to lift the lids of those jars and peek at the contents. I left them behind, along with a collection of pleasant-smelling incense burners and scented cones that stood on a shelf above them, and I followed a sharper, less appealing scent that led me to a trapdoor set in the ceiling above the kingsize-plus bed.
A man of Ripley’s height wouldn’t have had any trouble reaching that door. I had to climb on top of the bed to slide it open.
It clicked into place and disgorged a black ladder that I barely dodged. Nothing was going to slow me down now that I was on the proper scent. I climbed the ladder and entered a cramped chamber that filled the uppermost section of the pyramid.
Votive candles flickered here. Crucifixes gleamed. A wooden Christ spilled splintered blood, while a statue of Mary wept glass tears. The Christian symbols didn’t surprise me. After all, I’d seen the crucifix eclipsing the ankh branded on Spider Ripley’s chest.
It wasn’t hard to discover the cause of Spider’s latest conversion. The thing itself rested on the triangular black table in the center of the room.
An iron box covered with welded crucifixes, barred in the front, and padlocked.
The contents: Diabolos Whistler’s head.
Dull, hazel eyes stared through ropes of long white hair that hung across his face. Whistler’s left cheek had flattened against the bottom of the backpack during our trip, cementing his lips in a strange expression that could be a sneer or a smile depending upon the light.
He wasn’t pretty. That much was certain. But I didn’t much care how he looked. Diabolos and I were old friends. We’d traveled together. Talked through the long, empty night.
Or I talked and he listened. Diabolos was a good listener. Excellent company, as far as I was concerned. Hey, I’d duct-taped his head to the Toyota’s differential and he hadn’t complained one bit.
Oh, maybe he sneered a little if the light was wrong, his twisted lips curling cynically in that bristling white goatee. Maybe he was having his own private joke at my expense. But how far was a sneer from a smile? Really?
It was all a matter of perspective. Just like locking Whistler’s head in an iron box. Perspective driven by fear,
