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Prolog
—iii—
San Tomas, California: Relentlessly, the mocking spirit tormented Dr. Johnathan Smith, D.D. by whispering cruel and dirty things in his head. You have one foot in hell already, it said laughing, you can’t beat me and you can’t get me out of your head and I’m going to take you to the pit of demons with me!
In the cheap rented room, torn plastic curtains had been drawn. Sunlight angling through made a dance of dust motes striking a tangle of clothes half in, half out of a suitcase. The cover flap of the suitcase lay open like a screaming mouth. Tangled pants suggested disembodied men trying to run away. Rumpled shirt sleeves suggested ghosts waving for help.
In a corner stood the wooden statuette carved centuries ago in Africa. The statue’s scarred face suggested maniacal amusement at Smith’s pain. The statue’s insides had been hollowed out centuries ago by its Togolese creators; and the core had been filled with a a strange heavy-black substance like iron, which Smith was convinced was a bit of alchemy directly from Satan’s retorts. The statue, retrieved by missionaries in Africa, now brought him to San Tomas.
Courage, the aged fundamentalist thought, twining his arthritic fingers together over his ragged shirt and heaving chest.
The telephone rang.
The old man reached out, drew back his hand, then picked up.
“Smith, this is Mulcahy... ...Hello? ...Hello?”
“Thank God, it’s you finally.”
“Smith, what’s wrong?”
“It’s tormenting me terribly.” Inside his head, a red-eyed demon chuckled.
“Is there some way I can help you?” Mulcahy sounded tired and dubious.
“You don’t seem to believe me, but I have a piece of Satan sitting here in the room with me. It’s the evidence we need, Mulcahy. We can prove the existence of Satan, therefore of God.” (‘...Up to your ass in dirty sex,’ the devil interjected in Smith’s head.)
Mulcahy said after a moment’s consideration: “I could walk over and meet you by the Zoo entrance.”
“Please! I need a witness.”
“It’s all nonsense, you know. There has to be a scientific explanation. There is, if we look for it.”
“You fool,” Smith said, feeling contempt mixed with anxiety to confront Satan. “We’re so close. Why do you keep crapping out on me?”
An hour later, as lights winked on in office buildings silhouetted against the darkening sky, Smith shuffled toward the main entrance of the San Tomas Zoological and Botanical Gardens. Under his arm, wrapped in a dirty pillowcase, was the statuette, weighing heavily. The zoo was closed, and the last one or two of its office staff were just leaving. They avoided the old man. He barely noticed them.
A sudden cawing sound; a large bird thing threw itself between branches. Smith looked up into towering eucalyptus trees. “I know you’re here,” he whispered.
Someone—or something—chuckled in the darkness. A merciless sound. I’m going to kill you! I’m going to tear out your heart! Ha ha ha...
“For God’s sake, Mulcahy, where are you? Hurry!”
Something stirred under the trees, something wrapped up in a darkness more total than the blackness of night. Smith’s mouth opened, and once again his heart beat wildly. He stepped back, short of breath. He held his hands to his aching chest as though he must somehow relieve the pressure. He felt powerless to run. Where in God’s name was Mulcahy?
Oh God, the stars.
The thing he had pursued and that in turn now pursued him, stepped between Smith and the sky. Loomed over Smith. The statuette fell clattering to the sidewalk. The demon pulled back its cowl to reveal its face. It looked ... the thing was... what? Ancient, inscrutable, Egyptian... part man, part jackal?... But instead of jackal ears, it had three small crooked horns. Three eyes burned like pools of hot red wax. Its carrion teeth were exposed in a predatory grin.
...Is THIS the face of Satan?
In his final moments, as the hideous demon loomed over him, he had a vision of the end of the world. He didn’t understand the pieces of the puzzle, but he understood the vision as a whole for it fit with everything he’d studied in Revelations. There was something under the sea—a huge ship of some kind, long and black, its corridors pearled with strings of lights. Nearby lay a broken airplane with one light on inside, and that light was the engine of a nuclear furnace that would bring the end of the world. The demon face closed on him, and he took his last breath.
—iv—
San Tomas, California: Gilbert Burtongale, a tall scraggly man of 40 with long dirty hair and beard stubble, sole heir to the town’s oldest and greatest fortune, stood in the darkness outside the zoo his family had founded in the 1800’s. Gilbert wondered why the red-eyed presence in his head had made him come here. Some old fool shuffled up the walk holding something in a bag. The old man cried out in the windy darkness, and Gilbert only heard part of what he said: “...Mulcahy...are you...hurry!” Gilbert looked about uneasily. The old man cried: “...know you’re there...” Gilbert fingered his switchblade knife, ready to open it. But things took care of themselves, as the Thing in his head had promised, not with words, just with feelings.
There! What flew through the air? A large bird. No. Something...furry. A bear? Yes, a flying bear. The old man looked up in horrified, frozen silence as the animal flew over the zoo wall and directly into his face. The old man fell down, and the bear blanketed him. The animal snarled once, briefly, tearing the old man’s heart out in one digging motion, one rip of its claws.
Gilbert stared in fascination. But the Thing made him turn his head. Far away on a moonlit path, a figure in black strode along smoking a cigar. The cloud of silvery smoke hovered over Mulcahy’s head like a crooked thought. Gilbert brought the knife out, with a snarl of his own. He’d been long wanting to— But No. The Thing did not want... It was most important to...
The bear vanished. Evaporated as Gilbert watched. The old man lay sprawled and broken in a lake of blood. His heart lay yards away where it had landed during the frenzy. Gilbert picked up the statuette, whose battered face smiled wickedly, a blurry and mysterious visage in wood. Its metal core seemed to throb with poisonous love.
Gilbert climbed into the driver’s seat of his van. He stashed the statuette under his seat, slipped the door shut, and drove away on quiet cylinders before Mulcahy could probably notice. Gilbert drove up to the zoo entrance a quarter mile away and honked the car horn. As he waited for the night guard to open up, he cherishingly regarded at the old, tattered photograph taped to the roof: A beautiful young woman, smiling with sunny innocence, her hands clasped by her chin in sensuous indolence. I will possess you, Mary-Shane, he thought, and we will die together, yet live forever. Soon, my love. Soon.
Continue...
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