Wildest Dreams Part 16

He said, "Those men outside are dead."

I glanced past the p.r.o.ne bodies, happy to see their crippled shades stumbling into the woods beyond the parking lot. At the same time the undertaker peered over my shoulder, investigating his own concerns-namely the battered doorway, the shattered stained gla.s.s doors, and the wrecked coffins in the chapel beyond.

"I suppose a discussion of payment for damages is out of the question," he said.

"You might say that."

He stepped past me and entered the chapel. Seeing his back, I was surprised to see that the old codger had a crisp white ponytail.

The fashion statement amused me, but it didn't do much for Spider Ripley. He was too busy to notice-wiping his slashed face with a length of funeral bunting from one of the floral displays. The undertaker stepped over him like he wasn't there and knelt before the woman's corpse.

She wasn't exactly looking her best. Her wig had slipped to one side, and gray patches of dead flesh were visible beneath her smeared makeup. Her mouth had been jarred open by the collision, and her dentures lay in a bed of pale pink roses.

The undertaker wiped them with a handkerchief. "Poor Mrs. Cavendish," he sighed. "We've already gone through so much, and it seems more trials lay ahead."

"She can get in line," I said.

The undertaker's brows wrinkled. "Meaning?"

I reached into the Explorer and grabbed the iron box that held Whistler's head. I inserted the notched bar of Spider's crucifix into the lock. A twist and the lock popped open. The barred door opened next, and then I had Whistler's head by his long white hair.

Whistler's goatee was peppered with ants. I brushed them off as best I could and raised the dead man's head for the undertaker's inspection. "This," I said, motioning toward Whistler's coffin, "goes with that."

"Very well." The undertaker smiled knowingly. "Very well, indeed."

The undertaker's name was Albert Parsons. I didn't like the smell of Parsons's work room any better than I liked his company. I didn't like show tunes either, but that was what blared from Parsons's stereo. Specifically, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera.

The music of the night.

There was no use complaining. I wasn't setting the soundtrack for this scene, no matter what I thought. The man in the black suit was.

Parsons bent over Whistler's coffin, tsking and tasking over the dead man's remains. I ignored the undertaker's running commentary. I didn't want to know what he was doing or how he was doing it, as long as Whistler's head ended up attached to his body.

I turned my attention elsewhere. Spider Ripley lay on a stainless steel worktable, his hands and legs bound with black funeral bunting. The satin pillow from Mrs. Cavendish's casket was jammed under his head. Fear shone in his eyes, black pupils pulsing as he watched the undertaker going about his work.

I imagined that Diabolos Whistler's tortured gospel was racing through the bodyguard's head. Ripley struggled as the undertaker fussed and fidgeted. I glanced at Parsons out of the corner of my eye, but I didn't look long-the stainless steel instruments that filled his hands made my gut churn.

But disgust was quite different from fear. I was convinced that there would be no twisted miracle in Whistler's coffin. As far as I was concerned, I'd tested the tenets of Whistler's faith at the bottle house. The result amounted to nothing. It would be the same with his corpse once head and body were reunited.

I was sure of that. Soon enough Ripley would feel the hard slap of reality, and I knew I had to get to him before that happened. I had to find out what he knew about Circe Whistler while he was still afraid.

Parsons came toward me, gore on his rubber gloves. "Excuse me," he said. "I need an instrument from the cabinet behind you. Can I get it myself, or would you like to do the honors?"

"Get it yourself," I said, and as he stepped behind me I asked, "How much longer to finish the job?"

"You say it doesn't have to be perfect?"

"Or pretty."

"Then I'd say about five minutes should do the trick."

"Hear that?" I took Spider's crucifix from my pocket and dangled it before his eyes. "Like they used to say at the Roman Coliseum-you've got five minutes, Christian."

Ripley didn't reply. He didn't have to. He bucked and writhed on the table and nearly fell off. I hit him once, hard, in the mouth. All of a sudden he stopped moving-everything but his eyeb.a.l.l.s, which rocked and rolled as if they were trying to escape his head.

I dangled the crucifix above his nose, and Ripley managed to focus on it. "Tell me about Circe," I said, "and maybe I'll let you get out of here before Daddy wakes up."

Spider took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Behind me, Parsons closed the cabinet door.

Spider's eyes flashed open, and I recognized the cold cast of those black pupils.

I didn't like what I saw.

Spider said, "You're a stupid f.u.c.k, Saunders."

"Yes, you are," the undertaker agreed.

A pistol filled his gore-stained grasp. He told me to get my hands in the air and I did. Then he came toward me. I glanced at Spider, and he was smiling.

"What do you think, Albert," Spider said. "Should we do this f.u.c.ker the same way we did Lethe?"

"I'm not so sure," Parsons said as he reached under my belt and took my weapons. "I've got a brand new trocar I'd like to try out."

"Whatever," Spider said. "Just as long as I get dibs on Saunders's knife...and his face."

A dry laugh parted the undertaker's lips. I felt his breath on my cheek. He was that close.

"I guess I was misinformed," I said. "I heard they had to twist your arm to get you to handle Whistler's corpse. But it looks to me like you're a true believer, after all."

"Oh, yes. I'm a religious man, baptized in darkness by Father Whistler himself. In fact, I used to be one of Diabolos's doubles in the days before he moved south of the border."

I wanted to kick myself. I'd recognized the resemblance-the long white hair, the goatee, even the stern expression-but it hadn't given me pause.

Parsons knew he'd put one over on me. He flipped his ponytail over his shoulder and smiled, a living mockery of Whistler's deathgrin. "Of course, I didn't really see the light until I met Circe. She provided me with a retirement job, financing my funeral home with funds from one of her less controversial corporations. I've always had a certain apt.i.tude for mortuary science, but I find it best to keep my religious affiliations to myself. That's the prudent policy for a man in my business. I've always found that it pays to be prudent."

"Prudent doesn't always cut it," I said.

Parsons arched an eyebrow.

A fraction of a second, a fraction of an inch.

The same amount of time it took to bury Spider Ripley's crucifix in the undertaker's eye.

Parsons got off one shot before I could finish him, of course. The prudent ones always do. I was lucky. The bullet missed me.

It didn't miss Spider Ripley, though. The slug splattered his face like a ripe melon.

I dropped the bloodstained crucifix on Spider's chest.

On the stereo, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom sang of loneliness and desire. I stood on one side of the table, staring down at Spider's corpse. Ripley's ghost stood on the other. I asked him a few questions, hoping he really did know something about Circe, but he didn't seem to hear me at all.

The wispy revenant Spider Ripley had left behind didn't say a word. That thing was no heavier than a breath, and it stared down at its own b.l.o.o.d.y corpse, at a crucifix covering an ankh scar.

Spider's ghost tried to pick up the cross. Again and again and again, spectral fingers dipping through dead flesh and bloodstained silver.

I watched him do it. Maybe the angels in heaven watched him, too. Maybe the devils in h.e.l.l had ringside seats.

But if they were there, I didn't see them.

I only saw Spider Ripley.

A dead man scooping up handfuls of nothing.

3.

As I drove, Whistler's coffin did the shake, rattle, and roll in the rear compartment of Parsons's Cadillac hea.r.s.e. I didn't take it as a sign of life.

I took it as a sign that the hea.r.s.e wasn't designed for four-wheeling. But the black Caddy got me where I wanted to go-down the b.u.mpy dirt road that cut through the forest where I'd first met the little girl and across the beach that led to the bottle house.

Dark combers licked the whitewall tires as I traveled a hard-packed strip of concrete-colored sand, following the familiar curve of the scythe-shaped beach. I downshifted as I crossed the dunes at the southern end of the beach, but it was still rough going.

Another fifty feet and the whitewalls threatened to dig their own graves in the softer sand. I pumped the brakes and the Caddy slid to a stop. As far as I was concerned, one spot was as good as another for a funeral.

Outside, the rain had returned to a steady rhythm. Beach gra.s.s clawed the cliff like angry fingers, whipped by a wind that promised more violence.

It seemed inevitable. Violence, leaving pain in its wake So far I'd gotten off easy, with a rack of sore ribs and a bullet crease on one arm. But I wasn't out of the woods just yet.

The undertaker's trench coat wasn't much of a fit, but at least it was dry. I slipped it on as I climbed out of the hea.r.s.e. Then I opened the rear door and pulled Whistler's coffin off the rolling slab that held it in place.

The coffin thudded onto the sand. It was heavy, but I managed to drag it around the front end of the hea.r.s.e. There, in the glow of the Cadillac's headlights, I opened it, glad that the whipping wind spared me the stink of Diabolos Whistler's remains.

As far as I could see, the trip hadn't done the old boy much good. Whistler still wasn't showing any signs of life. His body lay twisted-knees c.o.c.ked south, shoulders hunched toward the north. But Whistler's head was the big problem-it lolled on his neck, frayed as a worn doll's.

Parsons's unfinished st.i.tchery lay in a tangle on Whistler's Adam's apple like some horrible spider-web tie, while the undertaker's threaded needle speared in the dead Satanist's cheek as if it were a meaty pincushion.

I jerked the needle free and set to work. After all, a deal was a deal. I intended to keep my end of the bargain. I could only hope that Whistler's shade would do the same.

Whistler's corpse didn't so much as twitch while I worked. I glanced at up at the bottle house, looming on the cliff like the last loose tooth in a skeleton's jawbone. The bottles twinkled weakly and an orange glow was slowly swallowed by the blackening entranceway-a trick of light as the fire I'd built earlier died in the hearth.

Diabolos Whistler's ghost was up there somewhere. I was sure of that. So were his daughters-Lethe and Circe-at least the part of Circe that I cared about.

I finished my preparations. There was no way I could drag Whistler's heavy coffin up the twisting trail. Anything that was going to happen would have to happen here on the beach. I tried to rouse Whistler's shade. My shouts rang in the night, but the wind brought me no answer.

I wondered if Whistler waited in the temple he had helped build with his own hands, watching for the first sign of the dark miracle he saw as his destiny. I didn't doubt that Whistler truly believed his own prophecy, as did Spider Ripley and so many others who had surrendered themselves and their faith to the old man.

But faith could only take you so far. No matter what you believed, no matter what G.o.d you worshipped. Sooner or later you had to trust your eyes and not your heart.

For Diabolos Whistler and his followers, that moment was now. Whistler's remains lay in a coffin like any other, a big metal box with a heavy lid designed to hide the truth. But the lid of Whistler's coffin was open, and the rain beat down and made puddles of his hollowed eyes, spilling trickles that traveled his deeply lined cheeks like tears.

Behind me, I heard a sob.

I turned and saw Whistler's ghost, that spiked collar of shadow still holding his severed head to his body like a twisted crown.

Our eyes met. For the briefest moment I saw everything Whistler hid there-the wounded pride, the hurt, the shame and the anger. All of it roiling inside a body that was as substantial as a child's breath lost on the wind.

By the time the next raindrop struck my face, Whistler managed to mask his pain. He stared into the box that held nothing resembling a miracle, and his voice rang out as if he were preaching from his iron pulpit. "I have spent a great many years waiting for the dark one to choose His moment," he said. "I can wait a little longer, if need be."

"I can't," I said. "I kept my end of the bargain. Now it's your turn."

"Very well." Whistler's tone was dismissive. "Take what you've come for."

He didn't have to tell me twice. I grabbed a flashlight from the hea.r.s.e and slammed the door, but Whistler only had eyes for his corpse. Even now, his faith refused to die. "It won't matter what you do," he said. "Very soon, it won't matter at all. Take the child, if that is what you want. Take her and be done with it-"

"No!"

It was a single word, but it sounded like a scream, and it came from a thicket of beach gra.s.s near the trail. Lethe Whistler's ghost crossed the hard wall of light thrown by the hea.r.s.e's headlights, a nightmare of bone and gore on stark display.

"He takes nothing," Lethe said. "Not until we have what we want."

Whistler's gaze did not stray from his casket. "Satan will choose His own time, daughter," he said.

Lethe stared at her father's corpse as he rambled on. She was dead and I was alive, but we saw the same thing when we looked into Diabolos Whistler's coffin-the rot, the haphazardly st.i.tched neck-all the cruel rewards of a prophecy that would never be fulfilled.

Lethe had no more patience for her father's words.

The moment had arrived, and she'd reached her own conclusion.

She said, "You lied, father."

Lethe started toward me, cleaved cheekbones gleaming in the flashlight's glow. "I don't know what your game is," she said. "I don't know what's between you and my sister and that little girl, but you're not walking out of here, and you're not taking her with you."

"My bargain was with your father," I said. "Besides, there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"But I can do something to that little girl. I'll finish the job I started, only this time I'll rip her to shreds."

"You'll do nothing, Lethe," Whistler commanded.