The Scarlet Gospels (11 page)

Very far off, in the place from which his consciousness was departing, Harry saw somebody approaching him through the crowd: a bald, pale, diminutive man with a stare so penetrating that he could feel its intensity even though he was almost a world away. The man moved through the crowd with uncommon ease, as though some invisible presence cleared the way for him. The sight of the man lent Harry's besieged senses a reason to hold on a little longer, to resist the encroaching emptiness that threatened to erase the place where he walked. It was hard, though. Much as he wanted to know who this intense Lilliputian was, Harry's mind was closing down.

Harry drew a ragged breath, determined at least to tell this man his name. But he had no need.

“We should leave now, Mister D'Amour,” the man said. “While everyone is still distracted.”

The man then reached out and took gentle hold of Harry's hand. When their fingers made contact, a wave of forgiving warmth passed into Harry's hand and the sting of his wounds retreated. He was comforted as a babe in its mother's arms. And with that thought, the world went black.

 

9

There were no dreams at the beginning. He simply lay in the darkness, healing, and now and then he would rise to the surface of consciousness because somebody was talking about him near the place where he slept or perhaps in the hallway outside. He had no desire to wake and become a part of the conversation, but he heard the talk, or fragments of it at least.

“This man belongs in a hospital, Dale,” said the voice of an elderly man.

“I don't believe in hospitals, Sol,” said the man who was Dale, his voice a playful Louisiana drawl. “Especially for someone like him. He wouldn't be protected there. At least here I know nothing can get to him. For Pete's sake, there was a
demon
at that house on Dupont Street.”

“The same house he leveled?” the man called Sol replied.

“
He
didn't do that.”

“How can you be so sure? I don't like it, Dale,” Sol said. “Anyway, what the hell possessed you to go over to Dupont Street in the first place?”

“You know about my dreams. They tell me where to go, and I go. I learned a long time ago not to ask questions. That's just trouble. I showed up, there
he
was. I only got him back here by giving him a little of my energies. He was close to collapsing the entire time.”

“That was foolish. Skills like yours should be kept secret.”

“It was necessary. How else was I going to get him out of there unseen? Look, I know it's crazy, but I know we need to help him get well.”

“Fine. But once he's healed, I want him out.”

Dale
, Harry thought. The name of his savior was Dale. Harry didn't know who the other man in the conversation was but was sure he would meet him when the time was right. Meanwhile, there was that comfortable darkness to curl up in, which Harry did, certain in the knowledge he was safe.

There were other conversations, or fragments of conversations, that came and went like night ships moving past him in the darkness. And then came the day when, without warning, everything in Harry's dreaming state changed. It started with Dale talking to him, his face close to Harry's so he could tell him what he needed to in a whisper.

“Harry dear, I know you can hear me. You're getting a visitor today. Solomon's just gone to pick her up. Her name's Freddie Bellmer. She and Sol have been friends for a long time. Sol thinks Miss Bellmer may be able to get your body to mend a little more quickly. Though between you and me I sometimes wonder if you're not perfectly happy stayin' asleep in there. I know you've had some hard times. That spill you took being one of them. Oh, and I'm sorry to report that your cell phone did not survive the fall. But I digress; as soon as Solomon got you cleaned up, and I don't mind telling you I was a tiny bit jealous he didn't let me stay and watch, he called me in to see your tattoos. I don't know what all of them mean, but I know enough. They're protections, aren't they? Lord, you seem like a man that needs a lot of those. I … How shall I put this…?”

He paused, as though looking for the right words, or, if he already had the words, he was looking for the most diplomatic way of using them. Finally, he began to speak again, though it was plainly difficult.

“I … I always knew—even when I was small, y'see—I knew I wasn't quite the same as the other boys. When my mother died—I never did know my father—I came to live with my uncle Sol. I had just turned six, and the moment old Uncle Sol laid eyes on me he said, ‘Lord, look at the colors coming off you. That's quite a show.' That's when I knew I would have to live a different life than most folks. There'd be secrets I'd need to keep. Which is fine. I'm good at keeping secrets. And I don't know what it is about you, but I just wanted you to know that whenever you do decide to wake up, I will gladly lap up anything you want to tell me about the world outside this stinky old town. And I look forward to the trouble we'll get into together. I don't know what it is yet, my dreams haven't shown me, but I know it's a doozy—”

Then, the whispering was replaced by Solomon's deep voice.

“Are you kissing him?”

“No,” Dale replied calmly, without turning around. “We were just talkin'.”

It wasn't Solomon who replied, but a new voice, that of Miss Bellmer. Her voice was deep and severe. It wasn't as softly feminine as Harry had expected. But then neither, as Harry would soon find out, was the owner of the voice.

“If you're done playing doctor, I would recommend that you step away from the bed,” Miss Bellmer said to Dale, “and let me take a look at the patient.”

Her voice grew louder as she approached the bed; then Harry heard the springs protesting as she sat down. She didn't touch Harry, but he felt the proximity of her hand as it moved over his face and then down his body.

There was nothing said; both Solomon and Dale were too much in awe of Miss Bellmer to interrupt her during the examination of the patient.

Finally, Miss Bellmer spoke:

“I don't recommend keeping this man under your roof a moment more than you need to. The physical wounds are healing nicely. But … I have somewhere…” she said as she rummaged through her bag, “… something that will get him up on his feet a little quicker.”

The weighty Miss Bellmer got up.

“A teaspoon of this in half a cup of warm water.”

“What does it do?” Dale asked.

“It will give him bad dreams. He's a little too comfortable in the dark. It's time he woke. There's trouble coming.”

“Here?” Solomon said.

“The entire world does not revolve around you and your house, Solomon. It's this one here—your Mister D'Amour—that has some very bad things coming his way. Call me when he wakes up.”

“Is he in danger?” Dale asked.

“Honey, that's an understatement.”

 

10

Before leaving, the provocative Miss Freddie fed Harry his nightmare potion. The subtle energies her touch had released still pulsed through his body long after his three caretakers had left him to sleep. It was a different kind of sleep now, however, as though Miss Bellmer's tonic had subtly reordered his thoughts.

Fragments of meaning flickered in the darkness, two or three frames cut from the home movies of
The Devil and D'Amour
. No two demons were ever quite the same. They all had their own monstrous proclivities and they rose to visit Harry from deep within his subconscious. There was, of course, the clay-faced creature who had murdered Scummy and pleasured himself to the sight. There was also a chattering imbecile called Gist, who had come very close to killing Harry in a plunging elevator, a decade ago or more. There was Ysh'a'tar, the New Jersey Incubus Harry had caught giving Holy Communion one Sunday morning in Philadelphia. Another was Zuzan, the unholy assassin who'd taken the life of Harry's friend and mentor, Father Hess, in a house in Brooklyn. Others Harry couldn't even put a name to, perhaps because they didn't even have names. They were just dreams of mindless malice that had crossed his path throughout the years, sometimes on an empty street long after midnight but just as often on the crowded avenues at noon when Hell's creatures went about their vicious business in plain sight, defying human eyes to believe that they were real.

After a while, however, the parade of atrocities dwindled, and Harry sank back into the darkness from which the arrival of Miss Bellmer had stirred him. How long he stayed there, recovering his strength, and healing, he had no idea, but certainly many hours. When he did finally rise from that healing darkness again it was to the sound of rain. And it was no light shower. The rain was lashing against the window, and the din reminded him suddenly of how very much he needed to piss.

He forced open his eyes and saw that he was in a room lit only by the illumination from the lamps outside in the street below. He threw off his sheet. He was completely naked, and he saw no sign of his clothes, which had been in a dusty, bloody state after all that had happened on Dupont Street. Noticing his nudity, he saw, for the first time, the wounds that he had been dealt. He looked down at them. The flesh looked raw, but when he touched the place he felt no more than a mild discomfort. These people who'd rescued him clearly knew their business as healers. He pulled the sheet off the bed, wrapped it loosely around his torso, and left his sickroom in search of a place to relieve himself. There were three candles set in simple, white bowls along the wall just outside his room. Harry saw that he was on the second floor of a somewhat large French Colonial–style home.

“Hello?” he called. “I'm awake. And naked.”

Except for the sound of rain beating down on the roof, Harry's calls were met with silence. He moved on down the carpeted hallway, passing two more bedrooms, until he finally found a bathroom. Its tiled floor was chilly beneath his bare feet, but he didn't care. Unwrapping the bedsheet, he raised the toilet seat and unleashed the contents of his bladder with a blissful sigh.

He went to the sink and ran the hot water. The pipes chugged and stuttered, the noise they made echoing off the tiled walls. He splashed some water on his face and examined his pallid complexion in the mirror. The noise in the pipes was getting louder; he realized he could now feel their lamentations through the floor. Then, there was another sound, rising from the chug and shudder of the pipes.

It sounded as though somebody was throwing up—here, in the bathroom with him. It wasn't hard to trace. The noise was coming out of the bath, or rather out of its plughole, which, Harry now saw, was throwing up a gruel of dark gray water, bringing up with it a tangled mass of long black hair and what looked like recycled chunks of excrement. An unmistakable stench came to meet him from the darkness, that of human remains.

It was a smell with which Harry was woefully familiar, though it still carried power. The smell wasn't just repugnant; it was also a distracting reminder of rooms he'd stood in and trenches he'd uncovered where the dead lay in corruption, their skins barely containing the maggot motion they were home to.

Caz's handiwork twitched. No doubt about it: Harry had been awake for less than five minutes and already he was in trouble. The filthy waters and their sickening freight had come to do him harm. How exactly they might do so was not a puzzle he had any desire to see solved. He snatched his makeshift clothing off the edge of the bath, wrapped it once more around his middle, and tucked it in on itself as he went to the door. He'd closed it when he'd come in, but given that there was neither a key nor a bolt to secure any further privacy, he was surprised to find that when he pulled on the knob the thing refused to move.

It was an unwelcome reminder of the doors on Dupont Street—some of which had been visible, some contentedly wrapped in hooks and chains, all conspiring against his next breath. He turned the polished knob in both directions, hoping to chance upon the trick of its release, but there was more than a faulty mechanism keeping the door from opening. He'd been sealed up in here with—with what, he didn't know.

He glanced back at the bath. The hairs that had appeared from the plughole had now risen up from the surface of the water in several places and were knitting themselves together, forming what was unmistakably the rough outline of a head, the cavorting waters rising up into it, like fish caught in a net. Harry dragged his sight off this bizarrity so as to focus his attentions on getting the door open. He grabbed the knob with both hands and proceeded to shake the door with deserved violence, coaxing it to open.

“Open up, you sonofabitch!”

But there was no movement, no sign, however minimal, that the door was succumbing to his assault. He gave up on the handle and tried another approach: pounding on the door with his fists and yelling for someone to save him. He shouted over and over, but there was no reply—only the sounds of the thing that was with him in the room. Twice he looked back at the bath as he pounded on the door, and on each occasion the raw human form being sewn together with hair and water and shit was closer to completion.

With the first glance, Harry saw only the head, shoulders, and rough sketch of its torso. On the second glance, the torso had been completed, all the way down to its sexless groin, the boneless arms moving more like tentacles than human limbs. The hair hadn't even attempted to craft hands from its tangles. Instead it slithered and coiled together until it had given itself two hammerhead-shaped fists, one of which it slammed against the wall with astonishing force. The tiles it struck shattered, sending shards far enough to prick Harry's skin.

The excremental stench had steadily grown in intensity as the creature rose up and out of its birthplace, the sting so sharp it brought tears to Harry's eyes. He wiped them away with the heel of his hand, and with his sight momentarily cleared he looked around for something he could use to defend himself. All he had was the sheet he was wearing. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. He untucked it, glancing up at his hammer-handed adversary. The creature was stepping out of the bath now, shedding globs of gummy, greasy fluid as it did so.