Scalpers

'What do you think about the cut?” she asked.

Dean placed a hand on hers. “You're going to be as pretty as ever, Peggy.'

'I don't mean that. Is it the Scalper, or a copycat?'

'One and the same. The neatness of the incision, even in the heat of a fight, with your gun going off in his ears.... Yeah, it's the same guy, all right.'

'You learned a lot from me today, didn't you, Dr. Grant?'

Dean bent to kiss her again, saying, “Yes—maybe more than I should have.'

'My father always said you can never have too much of a good thing—knowledge,” she teased.

Dean went to the phone, asking if he could call a cab. “I've got my car in the garage downstairs,” she told him. “We're both going downtown. If you'll wait, I'll just be a few minutes getting dressed.'

She rushed to do so, and when she returned, she was in her patrolwomen's uniform. It looked great on her. “No undercover work for a while,” she explained.” It was the one argument I couldn't win.'

Dean laughed as they walked to the car.

SEVEN

The recent scalps were suspended on a thick, fire-blackened lug pole that Van had set into the old fireplace. Also dangling from it was a large black kettle in which other, older scalps were lovingly placed and stewed. Pubic hair, armpit hair, and droplets of skin and hunks of fat were tossed in. When called for, freshly clipped nails taken from scalping victims were added.

Steam rising from the brew was occasionally caught by holding a clear jar over the cauldron, condensation from off the soupy surface collected droplet by droplet. The special vapor provided a decidedly unholy water for anointment at the outset of the ritual feeding. Van used a small scepter, stolen by Ian from a church many years before, to toss the human dew.

Van and Ian lived more for this moment than for the scalpings, for it was as He had said. The potions and elixers and nourishment they took from the boiling cauldron gave them unlimited power and abilities over others. Through the union of Van's knowledge of darkness and Ian's ability to live in two worlds, to be in a position to influence adversaries who vowed to stop them, and to continue to lure such catches as the last one into the net ... these works were remarkable and good. By their deeds Ian and Van had pleased the Dark One now dwelling in their hearts and growing stronger there through each grim scalping.

Van had savage eyes. His little body was covered with hair, his features masked by the long, coarse strands, each one of which would in time become a full-blown demonic force, the legions of which were daily being released into this world through him. He had a double row of teeth, like that of a dolphin, and the extra teeth forced his jaw out, gorilla-like. His every movement, his every word held Ian in captive wonder; it was almost hypnotic. His mind kept Ian in tow.

Van's black robe, making him look like a creature somewhere between man and ape, had become a powerful symbol of the solemn occasion. It would soon be discarded and he would stand before the fire and cauldron and altar in full splendor, a mass of hair from face to foot. Only his scalp was bald, the pity being that this small portion of skin without hair kept Van in a state of incompleteness and impotence, as the Dark One could not blossom whole until Van was covered over completely with hair.

Van's lips thrust out now as he hummed the mantra he often used, a low, howling, doglike sound. The lips were huge and deformed and gaping, like the edges of a wound. The little nose was nonetheless too large for his face, with flat and flaring nostrils. His ears were strangely like cabbage leaves, and clumps of hair hung from the lobes like moss. Thick sideburns ran across his lower cheeks to merge into a heavy mustache. The brows were bushy, hiding the eyes. His large eyes were jaundiced and narrowed to pin-points of coal at the pupils. There was, Ian knew, an angry agony and hatred in their quiet centers, in the glazed, unwavering stare. Ian knew that Van hated all mankind, even Ian himself, and yet Ian understood and loved him all the same. It was a growing love, a love generated from guilt in the beginning, but now it was a love borne of admiration and respect, because little brother was doing it ... he was bringing evil into the world, he was carrying Him and a host of demons about in his thwarted body.

And they showed their growing approval in many ways.

The Dark One wanted Van's head. They wanted his entire body, including the cranium, for their plot, to grow in and out of his living cells and tissue, to penetrate the earthly plane. It was to this end that Van and Ian took scalps, fashioned the meals and soups and stews, and collected the DNA of others, for He and his legion partook of the meals too. And it was beginning to work. They both had seen signs of it, even on Ian's body, being prepared now for a second plot through which the demonic might plant seed, grow, and harvest in the physical world. Demons were just lost spirits, ghosts condemned to walk the earth without muscle or sinew, and he and Van were now providing them with what they needed.

'It's ready ... ready,” said Van, taking up the water steamed off the stew and sprinkling first himself and then Ian once more, giddy with excitement. Ian, too, was delighted in the black baptism, the reverse ritual that spat in the face of Christ. After all, the persecuted were now the persecutors, and the Anti-Christ had instructed them to rejoice in their debauchery.

'I feel them ... I feel them working through me.'

'This time it will work,” Van assured Ian.

'Yes, yes ... yes.'

He spooned out the soupy stew into deep bowls at the little table where Ian had to sit cross-legged to feed with the dwarf. “Wonderful,” he said, taking in great whiffs of the steam rising from the bowl.

Ian stirred the fatty chunks under the surface of the milk-gray mixture. They were like alchemists of old, searching for the formula for gold, except that their gold was everlasting life, via the power of the Dark Way. Ian could feel that power bursting at the confines of the little room where he was crouched, could feel it wanting to escape into the wider world, scratching to get out. Soon ... soon, Ian thought.

'Happy?” asked Van, who slowly disrobed, showing his hairy top first, then letting the robe slip away entirely.

Ian then stood and tore away his tie, shirt, and pants. Van examined him closely, touching, seeking for the new hairs that must be on his chest now, but looking disappointed. “You're coming along,” Van reassured his brother.

'Not fast enough,” Ian disagreed.

'Drink, eat, pray to Him who is our lord, seek Him in the flames there.'

Ian did all these things, and when he finished, Van came to him with the freshly drying scalp, unable to wait any longer. “Put it on me,” he said.

Ian worked on the gooey gel that would attach the knatty, freshly taken scalp, and together they looked in the full-length mirror in the corner at their work. Ian, standing nude behind Van, had his face cut off by the mirror. Ian was tall at six-two, while his twin brother, under three-four, hardly reached the center line of the mirror. Their figures in the mirror seemed dark and smoke-like, ghostly even by the steady candle glow. They looked like Jack and the Giant, but in this case, little Jack was the creature. They looked like two people who had stepped out of time and come from the Dark Ages into the 1980s all of a sudden.

Little Van stood beneath Ian's armpit.

'It's got to work this time,” Van said.

'It will ... I just know it will.'

'Come ... come to bed with me now,” he said.

They stepped to the bed in the corner and lay in one another's arms, Ian rubbing himself into the hair, trying desperately to gain strength from it. In their embrace, both began to cry.

'He is with you, Ian.'

'I know ... I know....'

'And He commands we try again, forever if necessary.'

'Yes, yes,” replied Ian, amazed at Van's strength. “Of course I understand, dear brother. The soft, down hair covering Van made Ian feel like a fetus.

'It'll come ... we will not always be weak.'

'One day the world will be ours.'