Father and son, Max thought, rising up on his haunches. Two Horus Whitesides. The older man, massed in bandages, a bag of bones lying on the sheets exuding the sweet corruption of rot— he was the man who tortured me years ago. The other is his son. That was certain from his looks alone. Legacies. A succession of monsters. Madness passed on like heirlooms. And power. Linkage with the underworld.
“The transfusions give him headaches,” Horus the Younger said from his hospital bed. A purr as it lowered him prone. “Without them he would be dead.” He looked over at the husk of his father. “More dead than he is,” he added.
Max sat up between the beds, dragging himself away.
Pinroth guarded the door.
“My father believes in immersion in the world of thought, extreme denial of the flesh. He is a literalist. Over the years, he performed many of the procedures on himself, under local anesthetic. Distractions must go, he said. Ever seen a human tongue severed? It takes two hands to do the job right. Tongs and a blade. I held the tongs. We perforated both eardrums repeatedly until he met the goal of silence. Using a mirror, he eviscerated his left eye. That was a real breakthrough. Amazing control displayed. His visions increased a hundredfold. The dead appeared to us. They spoke. My initial reluctance faded along with my doubts. Pinroth
and I kept him from bleeding to death. From dying of shock at each maiming. Manhood, the year I took the right eye. As his body weakened, his mind grew stronger. Pain and pleasure reversed beautifully. He stopped eating and drinking a decade ago. We use a feeding tube. Vaseline his mouth. I am the caretaker. It is tedious business keeping a human body on the brink of death for years and years. From that precipice, though, he sees everything. The transfusions help to stabilize him. We are a perfect blood match. He speaks directly to my mind. He is the master of the Pitch. We serve him.”
“Does he see me?”
The Stick Man cackled. “I see you on your knees,” the Elder said.
Strange laughter hissed again.
Max was getting better at understanding him. The decaying man’s lips weren’t moving. The voice, he realized, spoke right into his head. It made his stomach convulse.
“Dad hasn’t lost his humor,” Horus said.
The transfusion catheter connecting him to his father flooded red. The dead thing drank life through its arm. Max imagined he could hear blood squelching as the cadaverous veins sucked nourishment.
“Max is dying, too,” the corpse Whiteside said. Its shrunken head bobbed like a voodoo doll’s brainless stuffed sack.
“Not fast enough,” Max said.
Bandaged hands clapped. Dust motes floated in the medicinal stuffy air.
“Stop it before you pull out your needle,” the son said.
“What if I do? My time is come to be born.”
Max rose to his feet. Unsteady, dizzy, claustrophobic. His balancing stride brought him closer to the exit. He pulled up short. Pinroth’s hawk face and the black zero of the Luger trained on him.
“What does he mean?” Max shifted toward the beds. “To be born?”
The younger Whiteside rested a pale arm across his forehead. “The stone is the key to his freedom. He will depart this house once and for all. The Tartarus Stone is more than you realize, Max.”
“It points the way to Hell,” Max said.
“It is Hell,” the skeleton replied.
The thought sobered Max. If Hell was real, couldn’t it be inside a rock? Why should Hell have to be a place far away? What size is a soul?
“Why do you need it?”
The Stick Man held up his twig fingers. He mimed an old child’s finger-game.
Here is the Church. And here is the Steeple.
Open the Door. See all the People.
“And set them free.” He wiggled his twig people. The light in the room dimmed.
Then it went out.
“Fuck it.” Horus yanked the needle from his arm. “Pinroth, get Father into the ambulance. There’s a bag of blood in the minifridge. We’ll do the full transfusion later. I can’t have him dying on us now. There’s no time for this.”
“Time is not important,” the Stick Man said.
Pinroth handed a bandage to his boss standing next to Max. Son of Horus, Max thought. The younger man put his lips to Max’s ear. “Time isn’t important to him. But I have to live in this world. Chained to his side from the moment I first saw him. Better off in the asylum? Don’t think I never considered it.”
“Stop t-t-talking about me,” said the voice, like ash collapsing in a fireplace.
“Pinroth.” Horus pointed to the bed. “Ambulance.”
Pinroth rolled the hospital bed with the Elder out into the hall.
“Why don’t you let him die?” Max asked.
“Let him die! I won’t permit him to die until I have what’s mine. He wants to reign in the spirit world. I want power on earth. To be king to his pagan lord is good enough for me. He promised
it would happen. I’ve paid with my blood. I need him alive. When the wasteland comes, I want a skybox seat.”
“You’re both insane.”
“Insane? God is a lie. We stomped on His face for two generations. Yet we experience not the slightest retribution. Evil, on the other hand, is infinite. No matter how far I push inside, there’s always more room, another turn, another crevice to squirm into. It accommodates. I’ve spent my life’s work on this project. Evil alone exists. When I’m down in the very thick of it—the greasy, stomach-churning, shocking pit that is, indeed, bottomless—I am not myself. Nor am I by myself. I have company in the shadows. Some pretty big fish are swimming the depths with me. The unnamable. They’ve always been there, under the surface of things. Haven’t you sensed them? Whispering and waiting. Ancients. Man-eaters. Devourers. They’re hungry for sacrifice. To abandon their realm of unseen influence, take form, and inhabit the earth. The bad news for most of humanity isn’t that there’s no God watching us. But there’s no nothing, either. The old man taught me well. What’s waiting in the stone is actively evil. Father will free it soon. And it owes me big-time.”
He stuck his finger under the bandage in the crook of his arm. A red smear from the needle puncture—he wiped a crimson eye on Max’s forehead.
“I’m not going to kill you, Max. Do you remember what I told you to do? When I had you relaxed on the bed?”
“No ... I don’t remember anything.”
“Good. Then sleep.”
He pinched Max’s shoulder and Max’s head dropped to his chest.
“Wyatt, Opal, Adam, and Vera are your enemies. They secretly wish to kill you. Bring me the stone or return soaked in their blood. That is the path of your survival. The stone will cure you of your pain. It’s the only chance you have. Awake and go to the motel. No one will stop you.”
Horus slipped the Ruger under Max’s belt, at the small of his back. He helped him into his parka.
“Wake up, friend,” he said, escorting Max from the room, along the carpeted hallway, and out the front door. Putting his hands on Max’s shoulders, he pointed him through the jerking fiery darkness from the Totem Lodge to the highway beyond.