The Damn Disciples (12 page)

“Ahh, you feel it now, do you not?” The black-robed figure spoke, and Stone swore that the man was God, the way his voice
thundered into his ears. It was as if he were inches from a thousand-watt amplifier. The black-robed figure raised both arms
to the ceiling, which, Stone noticed as he followed the motion, seemed to be painted with things—angels, demons, dragons?
He couldn’t see clearly, because the room was lit by only a few oil lamps around the walls and candles that some of the dancing
figures carried in their hands. Stone thought his mind felt as if it was a rubber band and it was being pulled in about five
directions at once.

Suddenly it was as if lightning bolts were coming down from the ceiling and into the robed figure’s fingers. The man stood
up straight, and though Stone couldn’t see any features beyond an ugly bunch of shadows, he could see the two glowing ruby-red
eyes within. They weren’t the eyes of a human. Even in his increasingly drugged mental state, Stone at least knew that much.

“I am the Transformer, the High Priest of the Perfect Aura,” the black-robed figure bellowed out. Again, to Stone’s ears it
sounded as though a jet plane was taking off. His brain hurt from the sound, burned as if nails were being driven into it.
And even as he tried to focus his eyes, two women danced their way forward, writhing like belly dancers, and poured yet more
of the golden liquid into his lips.

“You have been chosen as one of the lucky ones, to have your aura changed from black to blue, from depression and pain to
happiness, bliss and—order.” The eye glowed ever redder beneath the enclosing hood. Stone got a blurred glimpse inside for
a flash. He saw what looked like the face of a man long dead—not yet a skull, but definitely no longer a living being either.
The muscles were all twisted, the skin brown and rotted in places. Stone felt as if his skull was going to explode.

“Man is imperfect,” the Transformer said. “His aura is dark and riddled with pain.”

“
His aura is dark
,” the dancing robed figures screamed back as they all circled faster around Stone, closing in, whirling like tops as they
waved their gray-robed arms around in front of them like windmills. Stone could feel that he was falling into some deep spell,
almost a coma. Everything was already golden with a haze, as if he was Looking at an old photograph instead of real people.

“The Perfect Aura is golden—that is why we drink the golden liquid.” He pulled out a cup of his own and lifted it to his lips.
Stone heard a slurping leathery sound come from within the hood and then the Transformer threw the goblet across the room.
“Perfection is no fear.”

“
Perfection is no fear
,” the dancing robes screamed back, now reaching a frenzy. Suddenly they pulled out skulls from beneath their robes and held
them out in front of them in both hands. Stone gasped as they moved in closer, shooting around him almost at full run. The
High Priest pulled back and stood just outside the revolving circle. The skulls danced and waved all around Stone’s head,
being slammed toward him, coming within inches of his face.

“There is no death. There is no life,” the Transformer screamed, raising his hands. And Stone swore he saw sparks shooting
out of the tops of them. Although just how much he could vouch for the accuracy of what he was seeing, he wasn’t placing any
bets on. For even as he drifted into some weird places in his brain, Stone, or at least some part of him, knew that he was
on drugs. That this wasn’t real. Wasn’t all real. Or was it?

The Nectar hit him more, and he felt his whole body turning to rubber, without sensation, his mind becoming like an infant’s
or a savage’s mind, no longer able to judge or even think, just watch and feel terror and fear and. … The skulls seemed to
smile now too, and chattered to one another and to him, their teeth slamming on and closed as they flew complex patterns in
the air all around him. It might have gone on for seconds, minutes, or even years for all Stone knew. He completely lost track
of time, of anything except the blurred circle of skulls, eyeless sockets looking at him, screaming incomprehensible things
in unknown languages.

Suddenly there was a great crashing sound like a thousand garbage cans being thrown off a rooftop, and as Stone tried to focus
he saw that the skull-holding modern jazz dancers had pulled back into the shadows, where they continued to do a little two-step
to a much slower tempo.

“There, you see—death is not an enemy. You must learn to dance with the monkey of death, with the gorilla of termination.
Do you understand? Your aura is imperfect—l can see with my priest’s eyes. We must correct that by draining you of all fear.
As a leech drains the blood of disease, thus shall we drain the impurities of your mind, your soul.”

“Soun’s like jes’ what I wuz lookin’ fer.” Stone managed to mumble, though his lips felt as though they each weighed about
a ton. “Gettin’ my aura leeched.”

“Bring in the Death Lover,” the High Priest screamed, and again Stone’s ears felt as if they were about to come off their
hinges. Either he was losing his hearing as well as his mind, or this fellow had been given a lung transplant from Godzilla.
Stone’s eyes managed to focus for a few seconds on a large wooden box that was being carved in from the shadows. Five robed
men stood on each side of the seven-foot-long, three foot wide and -deep box as naked women with skulls on their heads danced
around them seductively, hissing like animals in heat.

“Down,” the Transformer commanded, pointing right in front of Stone. The robed carriers faced each other and lowered the thing.
It was heavy, crude. And Stone could see, even in his brainless state, that it was a coffin.

“Open it,” the Transformer ordered, his red eyes glowing like twin suns in the shadowy darkness of the twisted face. Hands
reached down and pulled had, and the top flew back. And Stone gasped—even in his rubber-brained state he let out with a sharp
sound as his jaw hung open. For inside the coffin was a woman. A dead woman, lying on a bed of royal purple velvet. The velvet
was as perfect and smooth as the woman was ugly. He’d seen a lot of corpses in his day. But this one seemed to have been picked
for an unusual state of repulsiveness, ugliness, with rot and worms and bugs and slimes all over the damn thing.

He felt his stomach start to heave, and he an to hold back his rising lava of sickness.

“Yes, vomit it out,” the Transformer commanded. “Vomit out your imperfect ways, spit up your poisoned aura. For now you shall
find your new one, your golden aura. And she”—he pointed to the flesh-dripping corpse—“shall lead you down the path. She shall
take your virginity of disease. She shall be your Death Lover.” And as Stone looked down on the rotting pile of sludge that
resembled a human in shape only, he did in fact upchuck much of the morning’s meal. It splashed out over the corpse. The High
Priest let him look at the thing for another minute or two as the drums began pounding again in the background. Then he raised
those dreadful skeletal arms again and pointed at the box.

“Put him in,” he said simply. The three most horrible words Martin Stone had ever heard. For even with enough drugs in him
to take out a bear, he knew he didn’t want a one-night stand with that. But it didn’t appear he had a hell of a lot of choice.
For suddenly hands were all over him, releasing him from the stake, untying his hands and feet. Stone clumsily tried to lash
out. But he was so spaced out, his brain so unconnected to his body, that he just sort of flopped around like a puppet without
a master as some of the dark faces even smiled at his ridiculousness. And even as he sputtered and felt his heart speed up
as if it was doing wind sprints, Stone felt himself being placed down into the box with—it.

“Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus,” he mumbled under his breath over and over again, as if the words might somehow protect him from
the filthy slime below.

“No—no more of the old religions,” the High Priest commanded, walking around the coffin. “Now there is but one God—that is
Yasgar. And there is but one truth—that of the Perfect Aura.”

“
The perfect aura
,” they all echoed, circling the box, shaking the skulls in their hands. Stone felt himself coming right down on the corpse
woman, squashing into it. It was like mud, and it smelled like death itself, with a sickening putridity to it that threatened
to make him heave again. And Stone could see, even as his drugged eyes opened slightly in horror, that it was coming up to
kiss him. A kiss without lips, just worms, and eyes that looked lovingly at him and seemed to blink with lashes made of cockroach
wings and pupils of maggot. Every part of him sank into her as they pushed down from above.

“Don’t be shy.” The Transformer laughed. “She is a good lover. She will take you where you want to go. She is completely uninhibited.
In all ways the perfect woman. Close the box.”

Words that Stone didn’t want to hear. Hands appeared all around him even as he lay sprawled out on top of the dead thing like
a man trying to mount a woman.

“No! No!” Stone screamed out as they closed the top and the flickering light of the oil lamps and candles around the room
disappeared. And as they pushed it down, they pressed him closer into her, like an aunt trying to be a matchmaker. Such nice
young kids. Martin Stone, with his brains and looks, and what’s-her-name, so thin and always ready for action. Stone felt
the top of the box grinding him into her so that she squished up all around him and began oozing over his legs and back. His
lips were pressed right against hers, and because his hands were tied he couldn’t even move. And as he sputtered and tried
to breathe in air amidst the stench, a worm exited through the moldy porridge of her mouth and sought entry like an excited
tongue into his.

Stone spat it out, and the thing flopped off down the melting face. He tried to pull back off the thing, away from her. But
there was nowhere to go. Nowhere at all. And once the top was closed, they lifted the coffin and began dancing with it around
the floor, shaking it and turning it this way and that as they screamed and banged on it. The motion of the turning made the
corpse woman grab at Stone, her dead leathery mold-covered arms flapping all around him like a passionate woman giving her
all, her fungus-covered thighs slapping opened and closed. And her face—nuzzling him, rubbing against his cheeks, seeking
a kiss. A hot kiss for cold soupy lips.

Thus, Stone spent the night with a corpse. A first for him, but something he would have just as happily gone without. In a
weird way the drugs saved him from total madness. They began hitting him so hard after about ten minutes that he fell into
a semicoma, where his eyes closed and he sank into a state of deep breathing. Which, all things considered, was about the
best he could have hoped for. The devotees on the outside continued their dancing and chanting, their skull-juggling, as they
paraded around the room with the box long into the night. Then they placed the coffin in front of the altar so that the lovebirds
could be one together.

When the Transformer at last opened the box a good eight hours later, as the sun was just peeking through the glassless windows,
Stone was looking straight up at him, his eyes open as much as the wearing-off drug would allow.

“I hope she don’t have anything,” Stone muttered as the robed face glared down. The face seemed to act confused for a minute
as if trying to decipher what Stone had just said. Then he spoke.

“I see you are trying to be funny. That is not good. There is no humor in the state of the Perfect Aura. That means you are
hanging on to your black aura ways. Fighting this world of perfection that we offer.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Stone muttered. “I just don’t want to join a club that makes me sleep with corpses.”

“Then you must suffer the initiation of the Vermin Room. You must learn to give in, Stone, to submit. For you will join us
sooner or later. All have. All—or die. It is just how much suffering and pain you wish to endure before you realize that perfection
lies in the acceptance of your diseased state. And the surrendering to me of your mind.”

“Hey, pal, you can have the rotten thing,” Stone said, trying to force a brave smile, though he didn’t feel too brave. If
they were going to put him through something worse than this, he didn’t want to be around to see it. Only, he was. “It hasn’t
done me a hell of a lot of good.”

“You say that,” the Transformer bellowed, his red eyes lighting up with rage. “But it is not what you believe. You are still
filled with human failings. I can see them, can see right into your aura—completely twisted.”

“I’ve got men coming,” Stone lied. “Fifty of them, and they’re tough as shit. They ain’t going to like it if—”

“You lie, Stone,” the High Priest barked within the shadows of the hood. “There are no others. You travel alone. We know more
than you imagine about you. That is why we have chosen you to be an honored member of our society. I offer you nothing less
than total freedom, freedom to soar above the chains of mortal man.”

“Been fine this
way up till now
,” Stone
interjected
. But he barely got the words out when they were pouring more of . the golden liquid down his throat. He tried to shake his
head, but with three of them holding him and two pouring it down, it didn’t take long before he had swallowed a pint of the
stuff. And just as his brain had been clearing, Stone suddenly felt it clouding up again, all fuzzy and rubbery. And though
it took away some of the pain that he had begun feeling again in his leg, it also made him quickly lose track of where he
was or what was going on.

“Over to the door,” the Transformer commanded his underlings. Four of them carried the box with Stone still lying amidst the
corpse sludge beneath him, hardly anything left of it now, as they had food-processed it through the night, with Stone as
the blade. They came to a black circle in the floor, and the Transformer motioned for some of the robed lackeys to pull back
the trapdoor hidden there.