“It should. I’ve been to the ritual circle. Almost a year later, I can still feel something
dark
there, something you obviously never expected. Something that
still
scares you. If you tell me what happened, I might be able to make you a little safer.”
Wissex glanced around. “Safer than maximum security?”
“Maximum security is for threats from
this
world.” Donovan paused to let that sink in. “You drank too much and smoked a lot of weed. I’ve done both and it didn’t make me homicidal. ‘Reefer Madness’ this wasn’t.”
Wissex stroked his beard, weighing his options. Finally he spoke, and his voice was no longer honeyed or soft. Unease coursed through it. “I was raised in a pretty open household, you know? Outside of Boston. Religion was this thing stupid people needed because they couldn’t handle the real world. I never really thought it about it one way or the other, but Greta, my old lady, was into Wicca. She introduced me to Cernunnos, and started the whole ‘Churners’ thing. I figured religion might be a good rallying point for my business, to maybe try and work the Rastafarian angle if there was trouble.”
“Weed as holy sacrament?”
“
And
religion was a pretty good way to build an identity.”
“A god of fertility was your corporate logo?”
“Branding, man.” The muscles of Wissex’s neck rolled in a shrug. “I took a few marketing courses.
“Anyway, at the harvest last summer, she thought since we were taking from the earth, we ought to offer something back, our ‘energy.’ I kind of suggested sex was the best energy and man, she
loved
the idea. She started to search her books and the Internet for a sexual Thanksgiving ceremony. I got to tell you, we had some hot hippie chicks hanging around, working for us, so the idea grew on me, too.”
“What can you tell me about the ritual?”
“Not much. Greta organized it all. She picked out the herbs, the candles, everything.” His voice faltered. “It was a real project for her.”
Donovan remembered the crime scene pictures and wondered which ones had been of the big man’s girlfriend. “Where did Coletun come into it?”
“Ah, man.” Wissex swiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “You know about his dad, right? Eddie was one of my beer salespeople, peddled some weed on the side. He was an asshole, hanging around, trying to score with some of the Churner chicks. He used to bring his kid around and pimp him out, you know, like a prop to get the girls to come talk to him. If Coletun didn’t play along, I saw some bruises the next time. Used to tell his kid, ‘I’m bigger and stronger than you, so do what I tell you.’”
Bigger and stronger?
Donovan thought.
“Eddie used to suck up to me. Thought it was cool to brag about using Coletun to drop off some of his weed deliveries. Thought I’d be amazed at how he ‘insulated himself’ from the cops. Asshole.” He shook his head. “Kid was smart, though. One time he did get nailed by cops he managed to ditch the stuff in a river, so it got swept away and couldn’t be used against him. Cost Eddie some money, though. The next time I saw Coletun he had a broken arm.
“At that point, Greta came to me. She loved the kid, said there was no future for him in his family. She wanted to adopt him like a stray, but Eddie said his wife would never give him up. I thought Eddie was a jerk off who might go away if he got a lump of cash, and, you know, I kind of liked the kid, so I bought him. Eddie would have killed him eventually, man.” Wissex gave him a matter-of-fact look. “I saved his life.”
Donovan refrained from commenting.
“Anyway,” Wissex glanced around before lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Greta said the Thanksgiving ritual would be like our own private Burning Man. You know, that festival out west? Partying, sex, music?”
Donovan knew firsthand about Burning Man. “But on a smaller scale, obviously.”
“Oh, yeah. There could only be thirteen of us, so Greta kept it secret from everyone but me. No uglies, no fatties, no Eddies—assholes—were invited. The people who
were
invited weren’t told where until the day of. The only thing Greta said was for everyone to bring something from their lives that represented a desire they had. Like, I brought a picture of Greta and a scrap of…wedding dress.” Remorse filled his face. “I don’t know what happened. I remember it was a cool night, and I remember the clearing wasn’t barren at all, when we got there. We built this huge bonfire. We were stoked, fucked up on the best crop of White Widow I’d ever grown, pounding down Jack Daniel’s, Grey Goose, a couple of kegs of Heineken. Greta had made some brownies that were fucking
amazing
. Everyone was fucking everyone, and I remember at one point Greta got us all in a circle. She started to chant and threw some herbs into the fire, and things started getting real intense, you know?
“The flames were roaring, man, and the wind started blowing, and we were all fucked up and chanting and dancing, and Greta says to throw our desires into the fire. It was supposed to open the way to achieve them, she said. We all started doing it, and—” He shook his head. “And suddenly I saw Coletun. I don’t know how he got out there, or how long he was watching. But when everyone else was throwing their stuff into the fire, Coletun ran up and threw in this picture he had of Eddie and Lola. He always said he wanted to be bigger and stronger than
them
—I guess to pay them back, you know? Anyway, he threw the picture into the fire and…everything changed.”
“Changed how?”
“The fire turned
black
, man. One second it was normal, all red and yellow and orange. Coletun threw his picture in and it was like a switch got pulled. Everything got so dark…you couldn’t see your
eyelids
, man. The flames were a dark purple and there was no more heat, and
that
freaked me out—a fire that was cold? Everybody else freaked, too, and let go of each other’s hands and started stumbling around. Man, was that the wrong thing to do. All we did was isolate ourselves. Once we did that…something else came out of the fire. And then…” He shook his head, staring down. “I don’t remember.”
“Don’t remember, or won’t?”
Wissex eyed him. “Geek for scary stuff, hunh?” His jaw tensed. “Okay.
“I was the one closest to the fire. I saw something—it was kind of white, but you couldn’t really see it, because you could only see it in, like, slashes. Like there was a strobe light, but not so bright. Wherever any light shined—and there wasn’t much, because the fire was, uh, whatever it was—you could see, but where it was dark didn’t seem to, I don’t know, exist. Like the white parts were windows into whatever was hiding in the dark part. And what was hiding in the dark part…” The big man shivered and exhaled with a kind of harsh laugh. “You want to know what’s really messed up? The last thing I remember is I was mad that Coletun had fucked everything up. You believe that? I was mad at a nine-year-old kid for fucking up my orgy.” He took a long, slow breath and sat back. “Unreal.”
Donovan saw nothing positive coming from a pursuit of that. “That’s the last thing you remember? Then how did you end up calling the cops?”
“Well, it’s the last thing I’m
sure
I remember. After that, it gets…I felt a really, really cold
something
stab me in the stomach. It felt like someone took a spear made out of ice and rammed it into my guts, but instead of going all the way through me it stopped in my spine and started to flatten and spread inside me. And I was still me but I wasn’t, and all I cared about was that I was so
pissed off
at Coletun, and I was going to make him
pay
, but before I could do that I’d have to get rid of these people who would stop me, and…” His voice, which had grown harsher, dropped in disgust. “I did. I think. I think I did those things I saw in the crime scene pictures. I think I chopped every single one of them into…” He paused. “I don’t know how. Cops never found any axes or hatchets.
“I think I grabbed Coletun and threw him into the fire, and someone, maybe me, said something in Latin or something. Some words—‘
innocentia
,’ and ‘
recursus
’—I remember. Hell, they’re ice-picked into my brain. But almost as soon as I threw Coletun
into
the fire, something, some
one
, came out.” He shook his head, not believing what he was saying. “Coletun. He was huge now, and naked, and I could see his skin looked like it had been stretched to cover him. He had some kind of designs tattooed on his arms and chest, all kinds of symbols, and his muscles…he was bigger than I am now. He was like an ironhead gone apeshit on steroids and working out. I didn’t know human beings could get so…
big
.”
“How did you know it was him?”
Wissex laughed without humor. “He grabbed me by the hair. I tried to hit him but he slapped my fist aside. He pulled me really close, and I felt this…energy coming off him, like body odor, you know? He pulled me close and looked right into my face—how he knew it was me, I have no idea, his eyes looked like they were covered by cataracts—he looked right into my face and said, ‘I have to find someone, then I’m gonna come back for you. You hurt me, but Mister Fizz made me bigger and stronger than you.’”
“Mister Fizz?”
“I swear to God, I thought I was dead. I think he knew I was thinking it, because he let me go and started to laugh. That was fucked up—it sounded just like he used to, before…”
Donovan remembered the giant’s laugh from the aquarium. Its memory chilled him. “‘Ha-ha-ha-ha!’; like that?”
Wissex’s face told Donovan his mimicry was accurate. “You
have
seen him.”
Donovan nodded.
“Next thing I remember is the cold that’d been inside me was gone. The fire became normal again and I could see, and I saw the circle we’d set up in. When we got there it’d been all green and full of life. Now it was like the surface of the moon, man. The only colors were dark, purples and blacks and grays. I saw the…pieces of my friends, Greta…” He took another breath, wetness shining his eyes.
Donovan was astonished by the story, even more because he believed it.
You’re not in the classroom anymore.
“So something used you.
You
didn’t kill the twelve others.”
“I might as well have. I ran things, it was my girlfriend who organized the ritual. I have to take responsibility. And Coletun…”
Suddenly Wissex’s behavior at the trial made sense to Donovan. “You think maximum security is the safest place to be to protect you from him?”
Wissex stared for a few moments before responding. He seemed to be putting his mental armor back on. “There’s always a lot of light here. There are no open fires, and no one is into Cernunnos or any other weird stuff.” He angled his head towards the Holy Rollers. “And I’m surrounded by Christians. Yeah, I feel safe.” He regarded Donovan expectantly. “What kind of protection can you give me, better than maximum security?”
“How about if I stop Coletun in New York?”
“The kid walked through a fire from Hell and became some kind of giant monster. How, exactly, are you going to stop him?”
“I’ll figure it out. Can you remember what Coletun’s tattoos looked like?”
“It was a big design, up one arm, across his chest, and down the other arm.” Wissex scribbled a few lines on a piece of paper and tore it out of his notebook. “I couldn’t see all of it—it was pretty detailed—but I remember there was a big pentagram at the midpoint, right on his chest.”
“A pentagram?”
“And there were these.” He handed Donovan the paper.
Donovan inspected the symbols Wissex had drawn. They looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t identify them right away. He folded the paper and put it in his pocket. “‘
Innocentia
’ I think I can guess—they were probably referring to Coletun. But the—”
“‘
Recursus
’ means return.”
“Return? Of what?”
“You’re asking me?” Wissex stood. “Even if I understood what happened out there, I don’t have the first idea what to do about it.”
Donovan remained seated. “And you aren’t exactly straining to find out.”
“Like Jake said before, I’m paying my penance.
You’re
the expert on esoteric things, dude.” He shrugged. “Isn’t doing something
your
job?”
TWELVE
RESURRECTUS MALEDICAT
“S
omeone’s coming.”
Paolo Tullmo rolled out of his cot, his foot kicking an empty bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan. The hollow clink it made as it struck the cell’s far wall drew a wince. Through bleary eyes he saw it was nearly three o’clock.
A.M. or P. M.?
His brain hovered halfway between a hangover and the drunk he’d been riding for the past hours.
“On your feet, fellas.” A hard female voice roused him and the other three members of the Christian Yeoman Association held captive with him. The overhead lights snapped on. “Time to move out.”
All of them had been riding the drunk, actually; each had been given two bottles of scotch earlier in the day. Doug McQuail thought the liquor was a final drink before they were to be killed. Joe Lopter thought it meant a celebration that they were going to be released. Skip Czerki just drank; without cocaine he grasped for any intoxicant. Tullmo shared none of their perspectives. Whoever had subjected them to this ordeal, whatever was going on, he didn’t believe for a second what they’d been told, that they were “political hostages.”
Tullmo regarded his three colleagues with disdain as they staggered upright.
No surprise I’m first.
“What’s going on?” He forced himself to focus through a lingering amber haze. Although still wearing the running gear he’d had on when he was kidnapped, he tried to exude an authoritative demeanor towards the vulpine-faced girl with the Bruised Plum lipstick. “We were told we’d be given notice of any change to our status, including moving us from one place to another.”
The silent, skeletal Jogger slipped in behind her, followed by a black man in a top hat. The black man jacked a round into the chamber of the shotgun he held. “
Dis
your notice,” he laughed. “Everybody against the far walls, hands over your heads.”