I woke up with a Rushmore-size headache in a dark little cell that made San Quentin look like the Biltmore. My bruises had been bandaged, and I was dressed in a light blue hospital gown. The smooth white walls teetered a bit as I sat up.
I eased my mistreated body up to walk around the cell. My shoulder intuitively sought the wall for support.
The smell of Formalin and acetone in the air forced the sluggishness out of my head. The phrase that most readily came to what mind I had was, what a sap. Ann and I both captured. They'd probably left one mug to cover their escape. And the call-a diversion.
I hadn't expected such a reaction to an insane proposition. Maybe the Big Man was worried.
Heavy footsteps approached, slow and ponderous. A series of latches clanked back. The door opened inward without so much as a Lugosian creak.
In the doorway stood the largest piece of beef I'd ever seen on less than four legs. He had to duck to pass under the doorframe, which hung a foot higher than my head. His ghost-sheet pallor brought out the tints of red in his thin, strawberry-blond hair. The whiteness also contrasted nicely with his black clerical frock.
"I'm not ready for last rites," I said.
"Shut yer trap, Ammo, and set down. You ain't going nowhere." He talked like a rock polisher.
"Sure, Demosthenes, sure." I sat. The bedsprings groaned.
"Watch yer language, geezer. It ain't reverent fer a man yer age."
He leaned against the doorframe, blocking my exit as well as most of the door.
I knew any punch that I could throw would only tickle him and would split my knuckles open. So we waited.
For ten minutes he stood there, staring at me with calm green eyes that conveyed intelligence greater than his words communicated. I met his gaze, striving not to reveal my intentions through any involuntary motions.
I broke the silence first.
"Look, Demosthenes, why don't you go bite open a few coconuts while I toddle along? Kidnapping isn't the best way to gain converts."
"Ammo-" his cement-mixer voice rumbled. "Whyn't you close your mouth so Brother Bannister don't have to come in and wire it shut to keep it from danglin'?"
He turned upon hearing distant footsteps. The creak of bedsprings when I stood brought him spinning around.
"Siddown, brother. Father Beathan's coming."
I swallowed a crude rejoinder and stood as tall as I could, wishing I had a cigarette. My nose itched madly under its bandage.
The steps grew louder, echoing down the corridor.
Demosthenes crossed himself and genuflected quickly. Through the door entered a man about half the lummox's height and a quarter of his weight. Old and withered, he carried an equally aged doctor's satchel in one wrinkled hand. He eyed me with a pair of pale greys that seemed too large for his small head. His gaze darted around the cell.
A second man followed him in. He wore a black frock and white collar the same as the other two. He stared past the old man at me and scowled.
"This won't do at all," he said to no one in particular.
"What's wrong this time, Father?" The old man scratched at his ear with impatience.
"Brother Matheny, how many times must I repeat? Setting. Setting is as important as set and dosage. This is a science, not some crude torture."
From the way he used the word science, I might have preferred crude torture.
Brother Matheny parted his desiccated lips, looked at me as though it were my fault, and turned to the Hulk.
"Brother O'Rourke. Find out where Father Beathan wants the sinner taken and take him there. And this, too." The satchel landed on the marble floor with a clatter. The little man stormed past Beathan and the ox.
It was a pitiably small storm.
Demosthenes stared dully at the departing Brother Matheny. Beathan stooped over to pick up the bag. He had a couple of inches height on me, though I outweighed his trim, athletic form. Thinning hair the color of an old battleship lay straight back, close to his scalp. His gaunt face was that of a dedicated Jesuit scientist-strong features; a calm, inquiring gaze; thin, tight lips.
He produced a hypo from his bag, filled it partially from an ampoule. Clean fingernails tapped the syringe to loosen a stray bubble that he subsequently squeezed out.
"If that's how I'm getting the holy water," I said, "I don't want to stick around for Communion."
"You won't be around, Mr. Ammo." Beathan smiled wearily. "I'm afraid we'll have to… sedate you for transportation. Brother O'Rourke." He turned to the walking sequoia.
Demosthenes cracked his knuckles and reached for me.
They wanted me alive for some reason, so I felt I could risk my next move. Sitting down on the bed, I braced against the wall and kicked both feet into O'Rourke's crotch.
He huffed like a bull and backed off to raise his fists.
"Easy, Frank!" Beathan reached out to calm the big man.
The fists unclenched. "I forgive you," the rumbling voice said, "as even Jesus forgives you." He moved in again.
I kicked him harder.
In an effort to gain my attention, Beathan tapped me on the side of the head with a double fist. This time I saw stars.
Through a minor galaxy of multicolored lights and throbbing noise, I saw Demosthenes rolling on the floor clutching his groin. A needle approached my neck. Voices faded in and out and buzzed a million miles away.
"JesusJesusJesus damn him to hell…"
"Shut up and get him to Dissection."
"Make `im burn Godalmighty it hurts!"
"Get up!"
Something eventually reached through the fluffy cloud of fuzzed sensation that enveloped me. I was dragged from the bed. Something stung in my neck again, and the constellations collapsed into black holes.
The universe vanished like God waking up.
God started dreaming again, and I awoke in a dark place. I wasn't sure I was completely awake, though. Something felt very wrong.
For starters, the floor rumpled and wiggled beneath me. The single light bulb hanging over me grew and shrank, pulsating opalescent colors. The ceiling squirmed like boiling pudding in slow motion. I tried to stand.
And watched my feet melt into the floor.
At first, I thought I'd slipped and fallen. When I grabbed for a nearby table and watched it twist away from me, I knew something wasn't straight, and it was I.
Blotchy hands, horribly withered, hung from my wrists. Beneath the hospital robe my body swelled and contracted. So did everything else. The whole room behaved as if it were hideously alive.
What Beathan had said about set, setting, and dosage suddenly came back to me in a thousand tiny voices. Something black and red flickered the word stoned. I knew it then and there. And the most frightening realization was that there was nothing I could do about it. I had to ride it wherever it would take me.
Somewhere deep back in what was left of my mind, I guessed that they'd drugged me to imprint something on my consciousness. Psychedelics-such as the one currently making me see the skeleton under my skin-have the effect of opening the mind to suggestion. The thought slithered through my mind and vanished the instant I laid my hand on the table. And put my fingers into someone's liver.
The cold, hard liver nestled in the middle of a corpse. Its skin had been folded away in sheets of yellow-grey to reveal its cold, hard organs.
The trouble was, the body squirmed around on the table, looking at me with frosted eyes. A tongueless mouth lectured me from beneath gauze wrapping.
"It is logically impossible to find God," the corpse said. Its liver turned into a bloated, bloody worm that ate into its lungs. "The object of the search is the searcher forever beyond your grasp. He is that and that is you."
"Shut up," I said, flowers parachuting out of my mouth. My skeleton turned into Malto Meal, and I slid once more to the soft marble.
All the other tables crowded in on me. I was surrounded by death and the smell of science. The tables shrieked back in a blaze of scintillating yellow. My tongue burned just watching the smells.
I stood again to walk like a fly across an inverted floor. My feet puddled and dropped bits of electric-blue shadow behind them.
I could see in both directions at once. All around me lay the gutted remains of medical cadavers. They'd all endured a good deal of use over the years.
That didn't bother me. My concern was that some of them writhed. Some groaned and gurgled. One was tap dancing.
An idea dripped acid green. They're trying to scare the shit out of me. That's the reason for the cadavers.
"Profound conclusion," said a face that pushed itself up from my wrist. "But why?"
"God is why!" mimicked a truncated torso, giving off an angry taste of violet.
"God is wry!" blinked a skinless hand.
"God is rye rot, right?"
This was getting unruly. The deceptive part of it was that my mind seemed to be alert. It wasn't like being drunk. Yet I saw these things.
A door pulsated like a heart at the end of a row of carts. Rubbery feet carried me through a sluggish stream of pink noise. Gnarled hands pushed the tables aside. I approached a massive blockade.
The door had a thousand locks on it, all covered with spikes. They smelled black all over. I stared for hours at them in an instant. Not knowing what else to do, I heaved my body against the barricade.
My skin broke open and splattered against the door. Locks and spikes dissolved into pools of noisy, noisome vomit. The stinking, vibrating mass flowed up the walls and away to reveal an open door and blinding bright hallway.
The hallway became a hole stretching down into white oblivion. I gripped fervently at the doorjamb. My fingers crumbled and split. Crickets and silverfish crawled out of the joints to jump and crawl over my arms.
I wasn't making much progress.
I let go and slid down the hole in a scream of lilac and ammonia. I shrieked all the way until I hit bottom. Panic bars reached out to pound me in the gut. A clear, white light surrounded me. It burnt my flesh, dazzled my eyes. Flakes of skin sloughed off like snow. Everything roared.
"Too loud!" I screamed. "Too loud!"
A hundred black and scarlet hands gesticulated in the sunlight, casting their own twisted shadows. Snake-tongued fingers pointed the way.
I looked in their direction. A lion crouched there, lurking in the distance. With a shattering growl it pounced and ran toward me. My feet sank into yielding pavement, holding me fast.
Soft brown paws burrowed up from the ground. They grasped my ankles. The lion raced nearer. As it did, its paws metamorphosed into hooves, its mane transformed into antlers.
A stag rushed at me, blood streaming silver and smoky in its path. In its eyes glowed fury and pain.
I stood my ground bravely-the paws and pavement that gripped my feet defied escape. Dust howled about me. The stag swerved at the last instant, pelting my body with gravel. Each rock cried out with indignity as it hit home.
"Get in!" The voice was an astonished, blurring rainbow. A white hand beckoned out to me.
I crawled my focus along the arm until I reached a face. Ann Perrine gazed at me, as clear as unaltered reality.
My hands groped for the smooth metal siding of the car that filled my vision. Suddenly I hung from it, dangling over an infinite, empty space. I screamed.
"Quiet!" a voice hissed. "They'll hear you!"
Time flowed below me like a sewer. I tried to convince my rational, panicky mind that none of this was happening. It didn't do much good. I pulled myself up to her, never letting my million eyes lose sight of her. I clung. I inched.
I was inside.
"You're safe."
I tasted her words-they felt good.
"It's me," she said. "Ann. What've they done to you?"
My voice rebounded with irritating volume. "I've got more dope in my veins than half of Woodstock Nation." That was all I could get past the clog of mealworms in my mouth. I stared down at my hands. The skin was blotched red and blue. The muscles palpitated erratically.
"You're safe," she repeated. Her arms reached out to hold me.
All I saw were scorpion claws, sickles, razor-edged boomerangs. I pushed her away.
"No," my voice fuzzed from somewhere. "Fear imprint." My mumbling sounded like waves of mush.
She stomped the pedal to squeal us out of the driveway and away. That didn't sit too well with my current condition. The acceleration pushed me through the seat cushion until only a black, hazy smear of Dell Ammo remained.