Rules of Deception

44

Sixty kilometers to the south, in the mountain hamlet of Kandersteg, the lights blazed in a small hotel room where a slim, muscular man stood naked in front of the mirror, shuddering violently. He was a sight from a grotesquerie. Great daubs of blood painted his cadaverous flesh. Feverish black eyes peered from sunken hollows. Strands of lank hair were pasted across his damp forehead.

The Ghost was dying.

The poison was killing him.

One of his own bullets had ricocheted off the bullet-resistant glass, entering his abdomen above the liver. The wound was barely the size of a sunflower seed, but the skin surrounding it had colored a sour yellowish brown, like a week-old bruise. With each heartbeat, rivulets of blood slid down his flat, hairless belly. He could feel the lead lodged close to the surface. The impact of the bullet against the glass had shattered the hollow-point jacket. It was only a sliver, and coated with bare micrograms of the poison. Otherwise, he would already be dead.

A spasm wracked his body. He closed his eyes, willing it to pass. Already, his breathing was growing labored and his sight dimming. His fingertips tingled as if being pricked by needles. In the recesses of his mind, he looked across the abyss. He saw shapes there, beasts writhing in torment. He saw faces, too. His victims cried out his name. They were keen for his arrival.

He drew back from the precipice and opened his eyes. Not yet, he told himself. He wasn’t ready to pass over.

In one hand he held his knife. In the other a gauze bandage, dampened with rubbing alcohol. With his fingertips, he located the sliver of lead and positioned the blade above it. He stilled his shuddering, then cut deftly and quickly, freeing the sliver. The bandage burned terribly.

Afterward, he forced himself to drink tea while he sat on his bed. He remained there for three hours, doing battle with the poison. Finally, the spasms ceased. His perspiration lessened, and his breathing returned to normal. He had won the battle. He would live, but the victory had left him weak, both mentally and physically.

Though exhausted, he could not permit himself to sleep. He showered to cleanse the blood from his body. He dried himself, and then set up his shrine on the windowsill. The shrine was composed of sticks from a banyan tree, a pinch of soil from the farmland near his home, and drops of water from the sacred headwaters of the Lempa River. He prayed to Hanhau, the god of the underworld, and Cacoch the creator. He asked that he be allowed to find and kill the man who had escaped death earlier that night. When he was finished, he dashed the water around the foot of his bed to guard him against malicious spirits.

Only then did the Ghost crawl between the sheets.

And as he slept, a voice warned that he would never see his home again. It said that he would not kill the American, but that Ransom would kill him. It begged him to take his own life now. It was Hanhau, trying to lure him to the shadow world. In his dreams, he laughed to show Hanhau that he paid him no mind.

He woke at dawn with only one intention.

Kill Ransom.