The Terminals Page 4

  Siam opened his eyes, and his jaw dropped. Sandstone pillars shot into a night pregnant with stars. Standing before Siam, a woman rubbed at her neck, which gaped bloodlessly. The gods of the Egyptian pantheon eyed him, their backs pressed against each pillar. Behind the columns, walls shone like amber caught in firelight. Deeply etched into their glow, hieroglyphs detailed the Book of the Dead; a last chance to cram before entering the underworld to face its threats.

  Siam whimpered. He knew exactly where he was; the Halls of Ma’at, the Egyptian purgatory where his heart would be judged. He stood at the end of a long line of dead, last until a dwarfish-man materialized out of nowhere. Upon arrival the man stumped around on shortened legs and inspected his arms as if he’d never before seen them.

  A shriek pierced the otherwise silent mortuary temple. The dead shuffled forward. Siam craned his neck in time to see a slender feminine foot disappear between the lips of a creature with crocodilian head, hippo haunches, and the forelimbs of a lion.

  “The Devourer,” he whispered, shrinking from the beast.

  Anubis, the jackal-headed god, pelt as black as Nut’s night sky above, presided over the scales. One scale was dark with dried blood, but empty. Upon the other shone a golden feather.

  The next dead man stepped before Anubis, and Siam’s breath caught in his throat. He was in luck. The cult leader stood before the slavering jaws of the Devourer, though he was much changed from the picture Siam studied in New York. The heavily muscled cult leader towered above the other dead; shadows flitted across his skin and hid in the hollows of his pectorals. But the close-set eyes and heavy brow ridge were unmistakable.

  Siam realized his own form had changed as well. Beneath an Egyptian tunic, his fingers traced over muscles he hadn’t felt in decades. He had a full head of hair, and his potbelly had vanished. The age spots which had begun to stain his hands were missing and everywhere skin had tightened—youth retrieved in death.

  He remembered the psychic’s words: “The hell you know is the hell you’ll see. What you feel is what you’ll be.” The words suggested Siam’s mental representation of himself would transfer to the afterlife. Here, Siam was the same, but looked the age he usually thought of himself as being. However, whatever youth he imposed on himself was nothing when compared to the cult leader’s self-image; he was a dark demigod.

  In a sudden jab, Anubis plunged his fingers through the demigod’s ribcage and hauled out an oversized heart. It thudded on to the scale. Blood splattered against Thoth’s linen robe. The cult leader staggered, gaping at the hole in his chest.

  Thoth leaned forward, pebbly Ibis eyes evaluating the result of the teetering scales. His stylus scratched at a papyrus sheaf. Osiris, Judge of the Dead, stepped from the shadows of a great portal. One eye gleamed like the moon and the other glared as the sun.

  The cult leader’s voice rumbled against the walls, but Siam could not hear the garbled recitation. He looked down at the crystal that hung at his neck, seeing only his distended reflection. It cued him to his purpose.

  “He makes his confession,” Siam whispered into the crystal. “But I need to sneak closer to hear.”

  The crystal hung from a leather thong, a duplicate of the doorknob Attila had fondled—opposite side of the same door perhaps. The crystal didn’t respond, and Siam wondered what the lag time was for messages between the dead and the alive—his chest burned with the reality that he’d never see his children, never again touch his wife. Yesterday he’d fished with his son; he could have done the same tomorrow. But here, he was alive still—if only in spirit. One final connection remained to his earth-bound family, and Siam needed to make good on his promise.

  The cult leader continued reciting his sins. Siam glanced up into the tender gaze of Isis, her burnished eyes outlined in kohl. He smiled at her as he crept past, coming only to the height of her knees. Horus squawked alarm from across the colonnade, and the baboon-headed god Hapi swept a great golden ankh at him. Siam dodged and hid behind a pillar. The dead in line murmured to one another. He still couldn’t understand the words of the cult leader; something rasped across the sandstone floor toward Siam.

  He risked a glance around the column. Above him, Hapi’s ankh rose and then shot toward Siam’s head. He dove to the right and rolled, coming up against the wall. Rock fragments exploded from the crater made where the ankh struck. As Hapi whirled, Siam dashed beneath the golden ankh, whose edge shone keenly.

  “I have not committed sin.” The cult leader intoned as Siam caught his breath behind a column, chest heaving. “Nor robbery with violence.”

  Siam dared another look. Anubis glared at the confessor as the scales continued to surge too high and too low, not yet settled to a balance. Hapi peered beneath Horus’s legs and was rewarded by a shrill squawk.

  “I have not stolen,” the cult leader’s voice was clear and melodious. “I have not slain men or women.”

  Osiris’s eye flared, and Hapi’s attention shot to the cult leader. Attention momentarily distracted from Siam, he moved to stand behind the reciting man.

  “I have not stolen grain.”

  Anubis began snarling, and the balance bobbed, heart sliding from one side to the next.

  The cult leader stammered and then silenced.

  Anubis stated awkwardly through canine fangs, “Truth.”

  “Well, I …”

  Osiris’s sun-eye burst with a ray of light that struck the cult leader’s chest. His voice began to drone and took on a nasal, bitter quality. “When I was sixteen, I stole the keys to my ma’s car and fenced it for cash. I clubbed the neighbor’s dog to death at age seventeen …” On he listed his sins, the petty and the great, until finally coming to the end. “I convinced my followers to commit suicide with the next solar eclipse.”

  These last words Siam echoed into the crystal.

  Finally, the scales slowed their undulations and settled. The heart tipped the balance, weighted by sin.

  “But it is my right,” the cult leader explained. “I am their pharaoh. I am their god.”

  Anubis clasped the cult leader’s wrist as the Devourer slunk forward.

  “My followers are mine. Mine!” the cult leader objected.

  Jaws opened and then with a great lunge, the Devourer clamped its mouth over the head and torso of the cult leader and lifted the kicking legs into the air before swallowing him in three chugs, the demigod no more.

  Siam pressed his back against the rough column. Thoth’s scribing was the only other sound. Hot breath blew in Siam’s hair, and slowly, he turned his head. Anubis’s snout curled around the pillar. One tooth poked out from under his lip.

  Siam shook his head slowly, not yet ready, not wanting to miss his son’s graduation, his youngest’s piano recital, or his wife’s caresses.

  “He’s listening to the cult leader’s confession?” In my reflection, I caught the touch of my wonderment. The gray-blue lips were parted, brown blood-shot eyes wide, and I drew quick breaths.

  Within Purgatory, Attila looked at the window and shook his head. “You’ve got your answer.” He snickered. “All you have to do is stop the movement of the moon.”

  “Shit,” the general said. “Kiss two thousand people goodbye.”

  “What … sometimes this doesn’t work?” I tugged at the general’s sleeve, and he jerked his arm away.

  “Oh, it worked,” the general replied. “It’s not up to us to halt the procession of heavens. We leave that to the FBI.”

  In the room, Attila continued to stare into his doorknob and relay what Siam spelled out in level tones: “No … I … don’t want to die. No. Ugh.” Attila brought one hand to his temple. “Oh, god, my heart. My heart.” His lack of inflection curdled my stomach, and I had to hold back both vomit and the vitriol I wanted to spew at the man for forcing me to listen. Bile pushed at the back of my throat. I glanced around for a garbag
e can.

  The general pressed the button. “Take the crystal off of him, I don’t wanna hear this.”

  Attila looked into the mirror where the general stood. “He really didn’t want to die after all, General.”

  “Yeah, yeah, and I don’t pay you for commentary.”

  Attila snorted.

  “Somebody find me a new psychic, so I can kick this one’s ass,” the general muttered.

  “I’ve uploaded the details of your operative to the iPhone,” Morph explained, and it took me a second to realize she spoke to me. “Some monastery in the middle-of-nowhere Vermont. Helicopter will take a few minutes to warm up.”

  I held the phone in the palm of my hand and stared at it. What had I just seen? A man had died; that was for certain. But to what end? I didn’t care what the general said; it was a failed mission. And it still didn’t prove the unit was for real.

  “Colonel?” Morph eyed me with concern.

  “Sorry, Morph.” I shook my head and placed my hands on her shoulders. “Good luck … with your mission.”

  “Ready to meet my maker.” She shuffled on feet shod in white ballet shoes.

  “I bet he’ll have his hands full.”

  A touch of envy curled about my heart, and I relinquished my grip on Morph and turned to the general. I wondered how long I could wait—the chance to save children was the only thing keeping me from shoving the gun back into my mouth. Or had he been so desperate to bring me on board because he knew Morph wasn’t long for this world? I refused to be controlled in such a way.

  The general’s bushy eyebrow lifted and a rheumy eye regarded me. “It would help if you believed in something. Pick one of the majors. We could use more Hindus on the team.”

  “You worried I’m gunning for your job?” I asked. “Funny that your case has never come up.”

  “Every other veteran is a Christian,” he retorted. “We’ve got them in spades.”

  I looked him up and down and waved my hand toward a bottle of booze.

  “Better use yourself before your heart puts you out of your misery ahead of Deeth,” I warned.

  The general blanched. “That’s the problem with a suicidal; you don’t give a fuck what you say.”

  “People might think you don’t really want to go,” I pressed, enjoying myself.

  Anger turned his face florid, and he reached out to his desk, coughing. The fit redoubled and he sidled around the edge to fumble with the oxygen tank. After three deep breaths into a mask, he settled and turned.

  “Get the hell outta here!”

  As I walked out, I tossed my hair over my shoulder and muttered: “Or what, you’ll kill me?”

  Chapter 6

  The monk looked at me and scratched his stubbly skull. I’d agreed to convince this man to die and chase a ghost through hell. Outside of Purgatory, the whole operation now sounded ludicrous.

  “You need me to—what?” he asked.

  Under his kind eyes I shifted, not sure how else to put it. Maybe I didn’t care enough to rephrase. I sighed and tried again. “We need you to die for us.”

  The monk folded his hands in his lap in a very monkish way.

  “That’s what I thought you said.” He looked disappointed. “Some nerve.”

  I told myself that just because someone took a vow didn’t make them better, or more charismatic, or due any more respect. After all, this man had been a monk for almost forty years and he hadn’t even risen in rank to Prior.

  Brother Charlie Harkman was pushing sixty and the chemo had given him a deathly pallor, but had not yet extinguished lively hazel eyes. His tonsure was patchy and the skin beneath so thin I could see the networks of veins beneath. The parentheses framing his lips suggested a benevolent man who usually smiled, even if he wasn’t currently. The cell was spartan: a small wardrobe, a washbasin, and a towel. On the plaster wall above where he rested his head hung a crucifix. To me, crosses had always looked too much like upside-down swords.

  I believe you can learn a lot about a soldier based on what personal effects they bring on deployment. I’d brought books of poetry by Blake and Milton, good sunglasses, letters from my godfather and a photo of Julian, the German Shepherd I’d given up for adoption when I received my deployment order. This man had a cross, a washcloth, and what appeared to be a gold bracelet of a snake eating its tail. It wasn’t much to go on. Either he’d never really settled in for the long haul, or he strictly followed the ascetic aspect of his faith. Why then, a thick gold bracelet?

  “Suicide.” He snorted and then smiled as if he knew a punch line must be in the offing. “I’m a monk!”

  “We don’t use the term suicide.” I pressed the scars on my wrists against my wrinkled gray pantsuit. As I’d headed out of Purgatory, Morph had suggested that a change of attire might help with my mission. I hadn’t worn this suit since attending my mother’s funeral.

  “You’re serious.” He licked his lip. “And how then do you rationalize this?”

  “Go terminal. You’ll go terminal.” I flushed. In the Army, it was easy. I gave orders and I followed orders. I could control the ones I gave, and I could control how I executed the latter. I wasn’t used to explaining myself, and my embarrassment trod a thin border with anger.

  “And that makes a difference?” He cocked his head to the side.

  “Suicide is killing yourself to escape the pain of living and usually when you would expect to have years left to live. What we do is free your soul at a specific time, when you’re already going to die soon, allowing your inevitable death to serve as a chance to retrieve information that can save lives. You are making the ultimate self-sacrifice. A suicide is selfish, going terminal is selfless.” My cheeks heated; it might actually be true, that this spark of hope was what had brought me to New York. But suicide could also be righteous. Mine could be. The monk’s face pinched with skepticism.

  I was convincing no one, but had few options. For Doctor Deeth to approve terminals, they had to understand the faith of the deceased at a minimum. How many dying Gnostics or Gnostic scholars could there be? And, if the articles in my satchel were an indication, this guy was an expert not only on the religion, but also on Hillar the Killer.

  I shrugged off my leather handbag and dipped into it, pulling out sheaves of laminated paper. These I dealt on to the bed like baseball cards.

  “The location of eleven abducted children died with Hillar McCallum, and we need someone to follow after him.”

  On the cot lay newspaper clippings. I knew each well, having studied them on the helicopter flight, along with the pitch Morph had used on her missions. If it’d worked for her, it wasn’t for me.

  From a pocket of his robe, Charlie plucked a delicate pair of reading glasses.

  “It’s nice to have a lady in the monastery.” He leaned forward and smiled at me over half-moon lenses. “I don’t receive many, even with the cloister nearby.”

  Since earning the burns along the one side of my face, I’d been uncomfortable beneath the stares of men, more so now with the bandages removed. I moved my head so that my lank hair covered the still-raw wound. My insecurity annoyed me, weakened me, but here I was tossing my head at being ogled by a dying monk. Oddly, the injury had the opposite effect on men than that I would have expected; far from dissuading them, wearing my hair down to cover the scar had given me a femininity that I’d never before cultivated. Civilian clothing and the trim pantsuit had replaced the chunky military wear, though I still wore army boots. They’d take those off the day I went tits up.

  “And why me,” Charlie asked, looking up from one article. “I’ve told the FBI everything I know.”

  “Only someone who understands Hillar’s religion can follow him into his afterlife,” I explained. “Otherwise, I’d be chasing after him myself.”

  “Quite amazing,” the monk whispered and returned his
attention to the press clippings. He took each in turn and read while I waited, knocking off the headlines in my mind.

  Six cooked at campground barbecue—source says; eyes missing. These were the first deaths of eighty that crossed sixteen state lines. No evidence to speak of, simply the partially charred remains of six unfortunates and the mystery of the missing eyes.

  Dental hygienist murdered at ‘pain-free’ clinic—eyes, teeth and tongue removed. Perhaps due to the horror of it, no reporter touched the obvious irony in the second attack. The coroner believed the young woman died over the course of several hours while she bled out. After the MO of the murderer was made public, a man stepped forward and suggested that the killer might well be his son—Hillar McCallum; the boy had a history of slaughtering animals, once choked a girlfriend unconscious, and had an obsession with eyes. He’d disappeared to Thailand for nearly a decade before returning six months ago, tattooed and disinterested in renewing a relationship with his father. I wondered how many eyeless corpses might be littering Thailand.

  A search of McCallum’s last known address had added to the conviction, uncovering snuff videos, pornography, and a chamber that would have made the Marquis de Sade blush. Symbols and texts believed to be twisted versions of Gnostic glyphs papered the walls. But the food in the fridge was months old. It was a collage of black caviar, tiger shrimp, aged Stilton and uncorked wine, like he were some lowly-educated Hannibal the Cannibal who sampled one bite of everything, but ruined it all.

  The rotten food and pile of flyers beyond the front door mail slot suggested Hillar was gone and might never return. He’d left one surprise, however. When a detective had opened the door leading to the hidden chamber, a bomb had exploded, killing her and two other officers. The father figured it had been meant for him.

  Bus stolen with children still on board: Worst feared. The monk fingered one of the latest clippings.

  The final clipping I handed him featured two headshots side by side, a photo of Brother Harkman and another of Hillar McCallum. Gnostic Expert Charles Harkman believes murderer wants victims’ ‘sparks.’ In the article, the monk had gone on to explain how Gnostics believed that a spark of the divine lay within each of us. Hillar took this rather literally. The pages went limp in Brother Harkman’s hands.