The Devil in Gray

"No . . . you don't have to do that. I have a social evening in Richmond tonight. I can meet you around nineteen hun­dred hours."

"Okay . . . you know where we are?"

Hicks said nothing when he returned to headquarters but went directly to his desk and started to sort through the ma­terial that he had amassed on the family backgrounds of Jerry and Alison Maitland, George Drewry, and John Ma­son. After a while Decker went over to him and said, "Lis­ten, Hicks. My humblest apologies. Asking your wife to hold a séance . . . that was something I decided to do on the spur of the moment, and I just knew that you wouldn't go for it. But, come on, you have to admit that it worked. We made a serious breakthrough here . . . and if we can per­suade all the other witnesses to remember what they saw—"

Hicks tossed his pen onto his desk and sat back, looking deeply unhappy.

Decker said, "If you want me to pull you off this investiga­tion, I'll understand. Rudisill's pretty much up to speed on it."

Hicks furiously shook his head. "I want to find this sucker as much as you do, Lieutenant. I just don't want my family compromised. You really think that all of those other wit­nesses are going to stand up in open court and testify against Queen Aché?"

Decker said, "That isn't the point. The point is we need Queen Ache to help us find this So-Scary Guy. You think I want to work with her, after what she did to my Cathy? But life is all about priorities."

"My family is my priority, Lieutenant. My Rhoda. My Daisy."

"I don't think your family is in any danger at all. This guy

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is working to a very specific agenda. In fact I'm pretty sure that the next person on his list may be me."

"You? Why you?"

"He's not killing people at random. He has a list, and he's working his way through it one by one."

"You have evidence of that?"

"Nothing substantive. Only more nightmares, more voices, more illusions. I thought I saw Cathy in my bedroom last night and she warned me that Saint Barbara would be coming after me within forty-eight hours."

Hicks raised his eyebrows. "I don't know whether it's my place to say this, Lieutenant. I mean I'm not a psychoana­lyst or nothing. But don't you think that maybe you're imag­ining all this crap? It could be just stress."

"Stress can't write on your apartment walls in blood, Hicks. Stress can't leave briar scratches on your feet when you're only dreaming about running through the underbrush. This investigation doesn't just have connotations of the su­pernatural, Hicks. It is supernatural. It's totally strange and abnormal and weird. Besides, Moses Adebolu's daughter warned me that Saint Barbara was coming for me, too, ex­cept that she used Saint Barbara's Santeria name, Changó."

"So that's what she said to you. But why you?"

"I'm not one hundred percent certain, but I think it has something to do with my great-great-grandfather. Something he did when he served in the army of northern Virginia."

"You really think that these killings are connected with the Civil War?"

"The Devil's Brigade, yes. Something happened in the Battle of the Wilderness, Hicks. Something so goddamned awful that it never went away."

Captain Morello came into the office at 7:00 P.M. sharp. Decker glanced up when she appeared, but in that first in‑

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stant he didn't recognize her. Her dark wavy hair was un­pinned, and her lips were glistening scarlet. Instead of her neatly pressed military uniform, she wore a black-sequined bolero, with a short black dress that clung to her hips, and glossy black panty hose.

"Lieutenant?"

Decker looked up a second time, and then he jumped up and saluted. "Yes, sir!"

She smiled and said, "At ease, Lieutenant. I'm off duty now."

"You look—well, you certainly look off duty."

"Thank you." She lifted a brown leather briefcase and said, "I discovered these papers yesterday afternoon in one of Major Drewry's research files, and I've been reading them for most of the night."

"Oh yeah?" Decker said, dubiously.

"Major Drewry bought them in October last year, when he went to an auction of family effects from the Longstreet family, out in Hopewell. He hadn't even had the chance to read most of them, let alone categorize them."

She opened the briefcase and took out a sheaf of old dis­colored papers, tied together with gray string, which still had fragments of crusty yellow sealing wax clinging to it.

"Listen," Decker said, "do you think I can twist your arm and persuade you to do this some place more comfortable? I could really use a drink around now."

"All right," Captain Morello said. "Consider my arm twisted."

They left police headquarters and walked along East Grace Street to the Raven Bar, which was one of Decker's favorites. It was decorated to look like a turn-of-the-century library, with oak paneling and Tiffany lamps and deep leather banquettes. Decker guided Captain Morello to a

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corner booth, underneath a framed engraving of Edgar Al­lan Poe, his forehead like the full moon.

"Beer, please, Sandie," he asked the waitress, who was dressed in a mobcap and floor-length apron. "And what's it for you, Captain?"

"Old-fashioned, plenty of ice."

"Wouldn't have taken you for a whiskey drinker."

"Just goes to show that even hotshot detectives can mis­judge people sometimes."

He rested his elbow on the table and stared at her nar­rowly for a full thirty seconds. She met his inspection with unflinching boldness, her eyes challenging him to tell her what kind of a woman she was.

"Daddy was something high-ranking. Mommy was a dancer."

"Wrong again. Daddy was in recycled paper products. Mommy was a paralegal."

"So why did you join the army?"

"My best friend, Marcia Halperin, wanted to sign up, so I did, too. After three weeks she decided that she hated it, and quit. But I loved every minute, and I still love it. I guess I'm the kind of woman who likes discipline and organization."

"And history?"

"Sure—but this is history with an up-to-date purpose. Most people think that the Office of the Command Histo­rian does nothing but keep musty old archives, but the Pentagon always consults our records whenever they're planning to go into offensive military action. They can see how tactical problems were tackled in the past—what went right in the gulf and what went wrong in Somalia. An army that knows its history, Lieutenant, that's an army that knows its strength."

"Well, thanks for the lecture."

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Their drinks arrived, along with a bowl of mixed nuts. Decker took a deep swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Captain Morello laid her brief­case on the table and flipped open the catches. "I kid you not, Lieutenant. These documents are real historical dyna­mite. These are the personal diaries that Lieutenant General James Longstreet kept while he was in the hospital after the Battle of the Wilderness.

"Of course he wrote an official report of the action, but he never admitted to the First Army Corps what really hap­pened, and most of those men who had inside knowledge were killed that night, or at Spotsylvania, or Appomattox, or else they refused to discuss it and took what they knew to their graves."

She untied the papers and spread them out. They smelled vinegary, like all old papers, but they had another smell, too, which reminded Decker of dried lavender that has al­most lost its fragrance. "Here it is, over ninety pages of it, a firsthand account of the Devil's Brigade. It's amazing. Over the years there must have been scores of rumors and myths about it."

She picked up a photocopy of the front page of a Civil War newspaper. "The Memphis Daily Appeal, June 1864. This is the first public mention of what could have been the Devil's Brigade. A young soldier named Josiah Billings was sent home after he lost his left forearm in the Battle of the Wilderness. He said that during the evening of May sixth he and his fellows had been trying to reach the unfinished railroad from Gordonsville to Fredericksburg when they be­came lost in the thick undergrowth behind enemy lines. All of a sudden they were surrounded by 'crackling bolts of lightning, not solid shot,' and he saw a Union soldier 'riven by a lightning flash from his head to his groin, so that he

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looked like a split-open side of beef.' He saw another Yan­kee turned inside out—'easy as a pulled-off glove.'

"Then he said that 'fires started all around us, sponta­neous, and the woods were burning so fierce that hundreds of men were trapped and burned alive."

Decker nodded. "Billy Joe Bennett told me a similar story. You know Billy Joe Bennett? He runs a Civil War memora­bilia store on Cary Street."

"Oh, sure, the Rebel Yell. Known Billy Joe for years. He's absolutely obsessed with the Civil War, isn't he? But he often turns up original maps and diaries and rare Civil War arti­facts and he always brings them down to us to take a look. About a month ago he brought me a tiny square of silk . . . it was part of the battle flag of the Second Company How­itzers. After the Confederate army had surrendered at Ap­pomattox Courthouse, the company's guidon cut it up into pieces and handed them out to the artillerymen as keep­sakes. Only a tiny square of silk, but what history it repre­sented. What emotion."

Decker scooped up a handful of nuts. "This stuff really means something to you, doesn't it?"

"Of course it does. It's real. And so are these documents. Think about it. The first account of the Devil's Brigade by the man who actually formed it."

Decker picked up the first page. The writing was in faded purple ink—a scratchy, sloping script he could barely deci­pher, except for one or two odd words.

"You can read this?" he asked.

"You get used to it. The trick is to tilt the page at an angle." "Hmm," Decker said, trying it. "Still can't work out more than one word in ten. What's 'paffage'?"

" 'Passage.' His double Ss always look like Fs. Here . . . I've done a transcript for you."

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Decker took the thick sheaf of double-spaced print. "Thanks. But why don't you tell me the bare bones of it yourself? You have the time, don't you?"

"Well, okay . . . I don't have to be at the Berkeley Hotel till eight."

"You really have to go? I don't often have the opportunity to go out with a woman who's dressed as fancy as you."

"It's an American Legion fund-raiser, and, yes, I do have to go. But thank you for the compliment anyhow."

She opened her purse and took out a pair of gold-framed half-glasses. She leafed quickly through the transcript of Lieutenant General Longstreet's diary, and then she said, "Here it is.

"On April eleventh, I received orders at Bristol from the ad­jutant and inspector general to report with the original por­tion of the First Corps (Kershaw's and Field's divisions and Alexander's battalion of artillery) to General R.E. Lee, commanding army of northern Virginia. On the twenty-second I marched my command to Mechanicsville, and en­camped in the near neighborhood thereof. I was advised by the commanding general that a portion of the enemy was advancing swiftly and had reached the Culpeper Mine Ford on the Rapidan River and were preparing to cross into Or­ange County.

"During the night of June twenty-ninth I was unexpect­edly approached by Colonel Frederick Meldrum from Heth's division, who was accompanied by his Negro ser­vant, a man known only as John. Colonel Meldrum in civilian life was a wealthy tobacco planter and a man of considerable presence and intelligence. He said that he un­derstood that our military situation was now parlous, and that General Grant was on the point of breaking through

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our Confederate lines and driving us all the way back to Richmond herself.

"He asked if he could speak to me further in the condi­tions of greatest secrecy, to which I agreed. He informed me that his servant John was an adherent of a magical religion from West Africa called Lucumi , or Santeria, or sometimes voodoo. Being a man with a greatly inquiring mind, Colo­nel Meldrum had taken the trouble to learn the religious be­liefs of his servant, and had persuaded him to demonstrate some of its rituals and spells.

"You may understand that I was very tired and preoccu­pied with all manner of other considerations, in particular the late arrival of my reinforcements, which was occasioned by want of transportation on the railroad. Yet Colonel Mel-drum asked me to witness one Santerla spell to demonstrate its effectiveness. John produced some stones from the pock­ets of his vest, as well as strings of black and green beads, and proceeded to chant monotonously and at some length. I was beginning to grow impatient when before my eyes his skin appeared to melt away, like brown butter melting in a hot skillet, and he became a skeleton, a man of bones, still dressed, still animated, but completely fleshless. To say that I was horrified and frightened would be an understatement. For a moment I doubted my sanity, and thought that the pressures and conditions of war must have turned my mind.

"But the skeletal John rose from his chair, and ap­proached the mockingbird which I always keep caged in my quarters as a mascot. He raised both of his bony hands and it was plain that the poor bird was highly agitated. It screamed and screeched and dashed itself wildly against the bars of its cage. John spoke no more than two words to it, and these were instantly followed by a sharp rapping sound not unlike a musketball hitting a cartwheel. The bird in‑

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stantly exploded into a tangle of feathers and bones and grisly intestines, and dropped dead to the floor of its cage.

"Gradually, John's flesh began to reappear, as if they were shadows collecting after the sun has gone down. Be­fore half a minute had passed, he was fully clothed in his own skin again, and smiling at me with a knowing impu­dence that I found profoundly disturbing. I am a religious man, but to witness such a powerful manifestation of hea­then magic shook my faith to their very core.

"Colonel Meldrum explained to me that in times of war the West Africans could call upon their various gods to pos­sess them, and that John had been temporarily possessed by a fearsome god called Oggun, who represents war and death and the act of slaying. Even here in America, he informed me, our slaves continue to worship Oggun by pretending to their masters that they are worshipping Saint Peter. It was Oggun who had given him the ability to be able to kill the mockingbird through fear alone, because the poor creature had turned itself out rather than face the terror which Og­gun inspired in it.

"I now began to grasp what Colonel Meldrum was sug­gesting to me. If we were to form a brigade of perhaps a dozen volunteers, he said, his servant John could perform the necessary summonings and incantations, so that these volunteers would be possessed by some of the most powerful and warlike of Santeria's gods. They would wreak such havoc among the advancing Union forces, and spread such elemental terror, that our enemy would flee from the battle­field and never have the courage to return.

"I asked Colonel Meldrum to give me time to reflect on his suggestion. After all, we were Christian men, fighting a Christian cause, and to call on the forces of African dark­ness would be tantamount to admitting that we did not

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ourselves have the strength or the moral courage to defeat our foe.

"In the morning, however, a dispatch rider came to my quarters to inform me that the Union forces had crossed the Rapidan River. Generals Hill and Ewell had been heavily engaged and were retreating in confusion. I knew now that the South was on the brink of being overrun, and that Rich­mond herself was in immediate peril.

"I considered sending a letter to General R.E. Lee, ask­ing his permission to employ the magical forces of Santeria, but I knew that he would never consent. Even if I had been able to spare the time to locate him, and to give him a demonstration of the powers that Colonel Meldum's ser­vant had already displayed to me, I doubt very much if he would have agreed to it. He was a man of such unassailable honor and integrity, and his belief in the Gospel was so strong, that I believe he would rather have surrendered our army there and then rather than call upon the works of any devil.

"I prayed for forgiveness if the choice I was about to make flew in the face of everything that we in the South held to be glorious and dear. Having done so, I summoned Col­onel Meldrum and his servant John and instructed Colonel Meldrum to select twelve of his most competent men, with my authority, for a special duty. He was to explain to them clearly what was expected of them, and to make it explicit that what he was asking of them was entirely voluntary.

"Only one of the officers and men he approached de­clined the assignment, even though it was clearly explained to them that they would be surrendering their minds and their bodies to un-Christian influences. The one who re­fused, Captain Hartnett, was the son of a fundamentalist preacher.

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"Consequently—and in utmost secrecy our brigade was prepared for their strange and terrible task. Colonel Meldrum himself said that he would be possessed by Og-gun (Saint Peter). The remaining officers and men were as follows:

Major-General M.L. Maitland (commanding) (Yegua, the bringer of death, often known in Santerla as Saint Erasmus.)

Lieutenant H.N. Stannard (Oya, the goddess of the cemetery, often syncretized in Santeria with Saint Anne of Ephesus.)

Lieutenant R.F. Mason (Ochosi, or Osowusi, the night watchman, Saint Cecilia.)

Sergeant W.B. Brossard (Babalu-Aye, the god of con­tagious diseases, Saint Lazarus.)

Sergeant L. Taylor (Orunla, the only god who tricked Death, Saint Francis.)

Corporal C. Hutchinson (Allaguna, one of the mani­festations of Obtala, a fierce fighter on horseback, Saint Luke.)

Lieutenant Colonel H.K. Drewry (Osain, who terri­fies people in the woods at night, Saint Cyril.)

Major ED. Martin (Osun, the messenger of imminent danger, Saint James Intercisus.)

Corporal W. Cutler (Eleggua, the trickster, Saint Mar­tin of Pones.)

Major J.H. Shroud (Changó, god of lightning and fire, Saint Barbara.)

Captain G.T. Brookes (Orisha-Oko, the god of sacrifi­cal blood, Saint Barnabas.)

"In spite of the warm and humid weather, each of these volunteers was to be issued with a greatcoat, since during their period of possession by their respective gods, they

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would appear as the Negro servant John had appeared, as an ambulant skeleton, or even invisible to the naked eye, and we were anxious not to put our own men in fear of them. They were also to be issued with slouch hats, with bands of crow feathers around them, which John insisted would enhance their magical power."

Decker laid his hand on top of the papers, and Captair Morello took off her reading glasses and looked up. "Who could have seen this diary?" Decker asked her. "Apart fron Major Drewry and you? I mean, recently?"

"Nobody. It's been kept in the archives under lock anc key."

"Do you think there could be another copy of it some where?"

"I doubt it. It was tied up and sealed, presumably by Lieu tenant General Longstreet himself, and I'm pretty sure the sealing wax was original."

"So nobody could have seen this roster of names sine( 1864?"

"Not very likely, no."

"Yet three of our four homicide victims were descendant of one of these men. Maitland, Drewry, and Mason. And it' conceivable that Alison Maitland was descended from on( of them, too."

He hesitated, and then he said, "For that matter, so am I That was my great-great-grandaddy-----Frederick Decke Martin."

"But why should anybody want to kill them?"

"Grudge, I guess." He didn't want to tell her anything about his nightmares, or the way in which Cathy had ap peared in his apartment.

"Hell of a long time to bear a grudge."

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"I don't know."

"Maybe your perpetrator is somebody whose great-great­grandfather was in the Union army, and got turned inside out, or struck by lightning, or whatever." She shrugged. "Just a wild guess. You know more about criminal motivation than I do."

"Well . . . you're right. People kill other people for the strangest reasons. Old guy in the Fan District strangled his wife last year for serving him spinach every day for thirty-eight years. But—go on—tell me more about the Devil's Brigade."

"Oh, for sure, because this is where it really gets interest­ing. Very early in the morning of May sixth, Longstreet marched his divisions up to Parker's Store on the Orange Plank Road, including the Devil's Brigade. They arrived about dawn. The whole line of the Union army was ad­vancing through the woods, and up in front of them Heth's and Wilcox's divisions had broken, and they were running for their lives.

"It was at this point that Longstreet deployed Kershaw's division on the right of the plank road, and Field's on the left. They managed to check the enemy's advance, but it was impossible for them to make any real headway because the underbrush was so thick."

She started reading again from Longstreet's diary.

"The line of battle was pressed forward and we came in close proximity to the enemy. The dense and tangled under­growth prevented a sight of the opposing forces, but every man felt they were near. Everything was hushed and still. No one dared to speak above a whisper. It was evening, and growing dark.

"Then a man coughed, and instantly the thicket was illu‑

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mined by the flash of a thousand muskets, the men leaped to their feet, the officers shouted, and the battle was recom­menced. Neither side would yield, but I could see that some of the bravest officers and men of my corps were falling all around me, and I realized that our line was close to break­ing point.

"I called for Major General Maitland and Colonel Mel-drum and advised them that I wished to send forward one of their special brigade to see what assistance he could give to our divisions. Colonel Meldrum argued that we should send for­ward at least four or five of them, but I was reluctant enough to send any at all. The Negro servant John said that if I was adamant that we should send only one, we should call upon Major Shroud to be possessed by the god of fire and lightning, Changó, since the woods and the thickets were highly inflam­mable, and the wind was in our favor, from the southwest.

"Major Shroud came forward and, witnessed by only four or five of us, performed a ceremony involving stones which he called '^thunderstones,' and the crushing of a snail, whose juice he dropped upon the stones, and oil. Then he brought forward a rooster and cut its throat, dropping its blood upon the stones also.

"The fighting was very close now, and musket balls were snapping through the underbrush and striking the trees. John made one last incantation and hung a necklace of red and white beads around Major Shroud's neck, which he ex­plained were the sacred colors of Changó.

"The transformation of Major Shroud was appalling to behold. Like the Negro servant John, his flesh appeared to melt from his face like candlewax, leaving him the appear­ance of a grinning eyeless skull. He furled his greatcoat, and as he did so I could see that his chest was nothing but a bare rib cage.

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"John took a lighted cigar and blew a stream of smoke to­ward the enemy lines, uttering some words that were com­pletely incomprehensible. Major Shroud turned and began to make his way in that direction. He appeared to be able to walk through the underbrush with no difficulty whatsoever, more like a terrible shadow than a man.

"Only a few minutes later, the woods were luridly lit by lightning, a hundred times brighter than the flashing of mus­ketry. Lightning struck in eight or nine places all at once, and was followed by a peal of thunder that shook the very ground beneath our feet. Fires sprang up on every side, and in a very short time the woods were fiercely ablaze, here, there, and everywhere.

"Men scream in battle, when their bowels are penetrated by a musket ball, or their leg is torn off by solid shot, or their arms crushed by a minié round. I was familiar with such screams.

"But that night in the woods of the Wilderness I heard screams that sounded as if they had been uttered by souls being shoveled wholesale into the fires of hell. They were screams of such hopelessness that my very skin shrank, and when I turned to Major General Maitland and Colonel Me'drum to adjudge their reaction, I could see that they were similarly affected. Major General Maitland was so deathly white as to resemble a ghost of himself.

"The lightning continued to strike with a horrendous crackling and the thunder continued to split the skies. As the fires burned furiously northeastward, our divisions were able to make a general advance in their wake, since most of the entangling brush was burned away. At this time I gave orders to Lieutenant Colonel Sorrel to take the brigades of Generals Mahone, G.T. Anderson, and Wofford and to conduct a flanking movement behind the enemy's left and

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rear. The movement was a complete surprise and a perfect success. With the woods afire all around them, and our vol­leys striking them on three sides, the Federals fell back in ut­ter disarray.

"Major Shroud returned to our ranks, his flesh restored to him, but his face blackened by smoke, and in a very diffi­dent mood. I ordered him to bathe and rest since his experi­ence seemed to have put him into a very unpleasant humor indeed.

"By the light of dawn I was able to assess the extent of the carnage. We came across many of the enemy with their bodies indescribably mutilated, with their limbs twisted into impossible positions, and many of them had been turned completely inside out, like my unfortunate mockingbird, so that their intestines were bound around them like twisted ropes. Others had been cremated where they stood, and were nothing but columns of black charcoal. Although I did not see him myself, another was reportedly stretched out so long that until they discovered his distorted face the surgeons did not realize at first that he had once been a man.

"Despite the success of our action, I resolved that this was to be the first and only time that I would call upon the forces of Santeria to assist us. War has no glamour, but it has honor, and codes of conduct, and should the Confeder­acy win this noble struggle, I want our victory tainted by nothing that could cause our sons and daughters to think of us with shame.

"The brigade was assembled, and I thanked them for their commitment to the cause, and informed them of my decision. However, Major Shroud flew immediately into the most incontinent of rages, and said that he still had much work left to do, and would never rest until the last of our enemies had been incinerated and their cities razed to the

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ground. He held forth with such appalling curses and impre­cations that I immediately ordered him to be put under guard.

"Colonel Meldrum's servant John informed me that while Major Shroud had returned to the appearance of normality, it was plain that the spirit of Chang-6 still exer­cised control over him. When I asked how this spirit might be exorcized, John said that Chango had obviously found Major Shroud to be such an amenable host that he would never be wholly free of this possession for as long as he lived. It was true that while Major Shroud was an excellent officer in the field, and discharged his military duties with courage and diligence, he did have a reputation for his evil temper and his unwillingness to forgive even the smallest of slights. He had also been demoted after First Manassas for cutting the ears off a living Union prisoner as a souvenir of victory, and it was said (although never proved) that he had cut the privates from two other prisoners while they were still alive and forced them into their own mouths.

"John was of the opinion that Major Shroud would con­tinue to pursue the enemy until every last one of them was dead, and any who tried to thwart him in this purpose would suffer a similar fate. Even after the cessation of hos­tilities, there was a real danger that he would pose a mortal threat to anybody who was unfortunate enough to cross him in any matter large or trifling.

"John said that the only way in which this threat could be contained would be to seal Major Shroud alive in a casket lined with solid lead, in which would be placed various pro­pitiatory fruits and herbs, such as apples and sarsaparilla, and over which, once welded shut, a male sheep would be sacrificed.

"This casket, he said, should be taken to sea and sunk to

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the bottom, since Chango's power was much circumscribed by water.

"Of course I was now faced with a truly appalling dilemma. Major Shroud had agreed voluntarily to be pos­sessed of this spirit, and had turned the tide of battle most decisively in our favor. Almost single-handedly, he had pre­vented the rout of our divisions and the taking of Richmond. Yet it was clear that he had become a threat of unimaginable magnitude not only to our enemies but to ourselves. Even as I discussed this matter with Major General Maitland and other officers, a duty sergeant came to advise us that Major Shroud had become so uncontrollably furious and violent that his guards had been obliged to shackle him with the chains which were normally used to secure the cannon.

"John warned that Change)" was one of the fiercest and most warlike of all Santeria gods and that he would not eas­ily be consigned to his casket. He therefore suggested that all of the remaining volunteers should go through the ceremony of possession, which would give them the combined strength to restrain Major Shroud while he was thus imprisoned.

"I was very reluctant to approve this course of action, since there was obviously a risk that the other eleven men would also be possessed forever by their respective gods, and represent eleven times more danger to the Federal forces and to those around us as Major Shroud. John, however, as­sured me that this was unlikely. He said that Major Shroud had probably committed an act of vengeance sometime in his past life which had made him especially susceptible to Chango's possession. Evil, he said, would always give a home to evil:'

Decker finished his beer. "So that's what they did? They all got themselves possessed? And they buried him alive?"

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Captain Morello nodded. "Lieutenant General Longstreet says that he fought against their influence like a devil out of hell. There was lightning, and thunder, and several officers and privates were killed or injured. But between them the eleven other volunteers were strong enough to overpower him and lift him into his casket. It was like 'eleven columns of dazzling light, with a billowing cloak of absolute darkness in the arms.' They filled up the casket with all the apples and herbs that were required to make an offering to Chango. Then the lid was welded shut by the same marine engineers who had worked on the Hunsley—the hand-powered subma­rine that the Confederacy had built in their attempt to break the Union blockade of Chesapeake Bay."

She read again from Lieutenant General Longstreet's diaries.

"That night, the casket was hurried by gun carriage to Rich­mond, and at midnight put aboard the frigate Nathan Cooper to be taken as far out toward Chesapeake Bay as was possible, having regard to the Union blockade, and dropped at the greatest possible depth.

"Unfortunately, the Richmond waterfront suffered that night a heavy barrage from the enemy's naval guns, and be­fore she could even be untied from the dock at Shockoe Creek, the Nathan Cooper was struck amidships by a can­nonball which sank her immediately, along with eighteen of her crew. I am sad for their unfortunate demise, but at least I am safe now in the knowledge that Major Shroud will be incarcerated in his casket forever underwater, and will never again represent a threat to humankind.

"I myself am overwhelmed with remorse for my misjudg­ment, and for having been tempted to take the wrong path, because it is only through the will of the Lord God

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Almighty that righteousness may prevail; and if the Lord God Almighty considers that I was gravely mistaken in ap­pealing to a heathen religion for assistance in our time of ex­treme trouble, then I can only beg Him for forgiveness, and hope that He will understand that I was looking only to save the Confederacy, and its commitment to glory, and to honor, and to God."

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CHAPTER THIRTY

The telephone warbled right next to his ear and made him jerk. He was hunched on the couch with his coat over his shoulders. He had started off the night in bed, but as soon as he had fallen asleep he was overwhelmed by night­mares of fire and screaming and men made of nothing but bones, and so he had camped the night in the living room, with the lights on.

"Lieutenant?"

Decker stiffly sat up and rubbed the back of his neck. "Hicks? What the hell time is it?"

"Seven-twenty. I'm haven't left home yet, but I've been checking my e-mail."

"What do you want? A citation?"

"I had a message from public records in Charlottesville. Alison Maitland's maiden name was Alison Bell, but her mother was the great-granddaughter of Lieutenant Henry Stannard, of the Second Company, Richmond Howitzers."

Decker reached over to the coffee table and picked up the

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transcript of Lieutenant General Longstreet's private diary. "Bingo. Lieutenant H.N. Stannard was one of the Devil's Brigade, too. He was possessed by Oya, who was syncretized with Saint Anne of Ephesus. Father Thomas guessed right. Saint Anne was supposed to have been a virgin, but she be­came pregnant with a child whom she claimed was 'a gift from God.' Her child was killed in the womb and then she was beheaded.

"This is what our perpetrator is doing, sport, beyond any shadow of a doubt. For some reason he's taking his revenge on the descendants of every man who served in the Devil's Brigade, and he's killing them in the same way that their syncretized saints were martyred. Saint Anne, stabbed and beheaded; Saint Erasmus, disemboweled; and so on. And he's doing it in the same order as their saints' days."

"So what was your great-great-grandfather's saint, Lieu­tenant?"

"Hold on . . . here it is. He was Osun, the messenger of immediate danger, whatever that means. He was worshiped in Santeria under the name of Saint James Intercisus."

"So whatever happened to Saint James what's-his­face . . . the same thing's going to happen to you?"

"I guess so. The trouble is, I don't know what happened to him."

"I'm still on the Internet.. I can check it out for you. Want to give me that name again?"

"In-ter-cis-us. Listen, I'm urgently in need of some coffee. I'll see you at nine, okay? If Ayula Adebolu is right, Chango wants this to be my last day on earth. I'm just going to make damn sure that it isn't."

"Okay, Lieutenant. Be cool."

Decker took a shower. Then he brewed himself a double-strength espresso. He dressed in a dark gray shirt with a ma‑

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roon silk necktie and black pants. As he flicked up his hair into his usual pompadour, he suddenly stopped and stared at himself. There were damson-colored circles under his eyes that matched his necktie, and the lines in his cheeks looked as if they had been engraved in his skin. What if this was his last day on earth? What if his visions and nightmares were all going to come true? There was no evidence yet that Moses Adebolu had been killed by anything other than a freak lightning strike, but supposing he had been inciner­ated by Chango, because Chango was angry at him for offer­ing Decker his help?

Aluya had seemed to believe that was what had hap­pened to him; and Cathy had warned him again and again, even at the risk of suffering her killing over and over again, for all eternity.

Up until now, in spite of everything he had witnessed, he hadn't been able to believe that he was in any real danger. Ghosts and visions were frightening, but after all they were only ghosts and visions. But he thought about Lieutenant General Longstreet's account of men being "shoveled wholesale into the fires of hell" and for the first time in his career he felt genuinely unsettled. He had coped in his ca­reer with attacks with broken bottles, knives, and shotguns. Once a half-ton block of concrete had been dropped onto the roof of his car. But there nothing so disturbing as know­ing that somebody evil and angry was coming for him, somebody he might not even be able to see, and that he was helpless to stop him.

He walked back through to the living room to read through Toni Morello's transcript again, and to finish his coffee. As he did so, the long net curtains along the window appeared to ripple, as if they had been stirred by an early-morning breeze. The strange thing was, though, that all of the windows were closed.

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He stared at the curtains for a while, but they didn't move again. For some reason he had the distinct feeling that he wasn't alone, that there was somebody else in his apart­ment, hiding. He didn't know why. He put down his coffee mug and went across to the kitchen. Nobody there. The front door was still locked and chained, although he knew from the way in which Cathy had manifested herself that spirits weren't deterred by walls or locked doors.

He took down his shoulder holster from the hat stand and buckled it on. Then he crossed the living room and went back into the bedroom.

"Anybody there?"

This was insane. Yet Jerry Maitland must have thought that he was insane, too, when his arms started to bleed all down his new wallpaper, and when his pregnant wife was stabbed and her head cut off in front of his eyes. And Major Drewry must have thought he had lost his reason, when he was gutted in the shower. And John Mason, too, when he was blinded and boiled.

There was somebody here, or some thing. Some deeply malevolent force, a force that wanted to do him serious harm. It had warned him right from the very beginning, on Alison Maitland's 911 call, and it had warned him in his dreams. It wasn't quite ready to take him yet, but time was hurrying away and it was very close.

He listened and listened but he couldn't hear anything. But that was what disturbed him so much. The interior of his apartment was utterly silent. No traffic from 1-95; no steamboats hooting; no airplanes flying overhead from Richmond International. He felt as if the entire apartment had been swaddled in thick insulation, or his ears had been packed with cotton.

He took one step across the room, and then another. He stopped and turned around. For an instant, out of the corner

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of his eye, he thought he glimpsed a shadow flitting across his bedroom mirror, but inside it, as if it were another room.

He hefted out his gun and approached the mirror very slowly. He reached out and touched the glass with his fin­gertips. The man in the mirror stared back at him as if he had lost his way and didn't know where to turn next.

Hicks had his feet propped up on his desk and his mouth was full of apple donut.

"Oh, hi, Lieutenant. The captain was looking for you."

Decker went to his desk and quickly rifled through his memos and notes and letters. He sniffed and said, "Any idea what he wanted?"

"Uh-huh. But if you want to know what kind of a mood he was in, I would say 'warpath' just about sums it up."

Oh, God, thought Decker, don't say that Maggie has had a fit of conscience, and confessed everything. If Cab had found out about that, he wouldn't have to worry about Chang& His last day on earth would be over before lunch.

"By the way," Hicks added. "I found out all about this Saint James Intercisus dude."

"Oh yeah?"

"Oh yeah . . . and if that's what's going to happen to you, well, if I were in your shoes I'd be booking myself a plane ticket to some place very, very, very far away."

"Go on."

Hicks produced a printout from the Catholic Patron Saints Web site. "Says here that Saint James Intercisus was a military adviser and a courtier to King Yezdigerd the First of Persia, back in the fifth century. Seems like he was con­verted to Christianity, but he made the mistake of confess­ing his conversion to King Yezdigerd's successor, King Bahram. Apparently King Bahram really liked him, and didn't want to do nothing to hurt him, but, you know, he

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couldn't have people worshiping God when they were sup­posed to be worshiping him. King Bahram asked Saint James to give up on God, but when he wouldn't, he ordered him hung up from a wooden frame and subjected to the Nine Deaths."

"The Nine Deaths? Not too sure I like the sound of that."

"It means chopping bits off of you, one at a time, until you say uncle. First of all they cut off Saint James's fingers and thumbs, that was the First Death, but all he said was, `Lord, I may not have any fingers to write my prayers, but I still worship you.' Then they cut off his toes, the Second Death, but he still wouldn't renounce God.

"The Third and Fourth Deaths meant cutting off his hands and the Fifth and Sixth Deaths meant cutting off his feet, but he still refused to deny God. They cut off his ears, the Seventh Death, and then they cut off his nose.

"He was given one last chance to recant, but all he said was, 'I am like a ruined house, but God still lives in me.' So that didn't leave King Bahram a whole lot of choice. He or­dered his guards to whop Saint James's head off.

"All in all, they cut him into twenty-eight separate pieces, which is why they call him Intercisus, which I guess is Latin for 'cut up into twenty-eight separate pieces."

Decker sat staring at Hicks for a long time with his mouth open. Then he said, "Hicks, I think you just seriously spoiled my day."

"Only telling you what it says on the Web site, Lieu­tenant. By the way, Saint James Intercisus is the patron saint of torture victims and also of lost vocations."

"Lost vocations? That's me all right. I always wanted to be a country-and-western singer."

Cab's door was open but Decker knocked on it just the same. Cab was on the phone and he pointed to the chair

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on the other side of his desk. When he had finished talk­ing he took out his handkerchief and loudly trumpeted his nose.

"I've had a complaint," he said.

"Sorry to hear it. Sounds like you still do."

"I don't mean that kind of a complaint, I mean I've had a complaint about the way that you're investigating these homicides. Ms. Honey Blackwell from the city council says your homicide team has been unjustifiably discriminating against people of color, especially those of the Santeria reli­gion. These santeros, they're very sensitive people. They don't like being rousted."

Decker lifted both hands in a gesture of innocence. "Captain—I'm not discriminating against anybody. I just happen to have a strong suspicion that the motive for all of these homicides is linked to Santeria."

"Junior Abraham's okay. But the other victims were four white middle-class people. What makes you think that they could have any connection at all with Santeria? Where's your evidence?"

"Ah. Well, it's only circumstantial, at the moment. More theoretical, really, than circumstantial."

"All right, then, tell me what your theoretical evidence is, so that I can get Ms. Blackwell off my tail."

"If it's all the same to you, I'd really like to wait until I can firm things up a little."

"Decker, I'm your superior officer and as such I am ulti­mately responsible for the progress of this investigation, which so far seems to be achieving nothing whatsoever, ex­cept to cause major irritation to the Afro-American com­munity, whose trust and confidence it has taken me the best part of seven years to build up."

"With all respect, sir, Honey Blackwell isn't the Afro‑

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American community. Honey Blackwell is a racially moti­vated political opportunist, and a fat one, at that."

"Nutritionally challenged, I'll admit. But we still need her support. I've also had the interim chief on my tail, wanting to know what we can report to the media."

"You can tell them that we're very close to a major break­through. We have a prime suspect and we should be making an arrest within a matter of days."

"We have a prime suspect? Why the hell didn't you tell me? Who?"

"I don't want to go off at half-cock on this, sir. The prime suspect isn't aware that he's a prime suspect, so my strategy is to keep him believing that we're still floundering around in the dark."

"You still haven't told me who he is."

"No, sir. You're right. I haven't."

Cab was about to say something when his phone rang. He picked it up and demanded, "What the hell now? Oh, sorry, ma'am."

It was the interim chief again. While Cab flustered and blustered, Decker idly looked out of his open office door. He looked, and then he looked again, frowning. He couldn't be sure, but the wall of the corridor outside appeared to be slightly distorted, as if he were seeing it through a sheet of flawed glass. He moved his head from side to side, and as he did so, the distortion shifted and altered.

He took off his glasses, but the wall was still oddly curved. He stood up. Cab pressed his hand over the telephone re­ceiver and said, "Lieutenant—I'm not done with you yet!" But Decker ignored him and stepped outside the office.

Halfway along the corridor he saw a tangled, transparent shape. It reminded him of a huge jellyfish that he had once seen in Cumtuck Sound—a glistening and deadly distur‑

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bance that was visible only for what it wasn't, rather than what it was. He didn't know if he ought to approach it or not. If it was Chango, cloaked by a Santeria spell, then he could be in truly appalling danger.

He lifted out his gun, cocked it, and raised it in both hands. Then he edged his way carefully toward the trans­parency, trying to distinguish some kind of outline, some kind of distinguishing features. But it kept on rolling and unrolling, knotting and unknotting, and every time he thought he could make out a face, or an arm, or a shoulder, it unraveled itself into another shape altogether.

"Is that you, Major Shroud?" he said, with a phlegmy catch in his throat.

The distortion moved away from him, and now it became more geometrical, so that the wall behind it appeared to be broken up into irregular diamond patterns. He began to re­alize that he was witnessing an optical trick, a way of divert­ing his attention away from what he was really looking at, like a mirage, or a complicated arrangement of mirrors.

"I know you're there, Major, or Chango, or whatever you call yourself. I know you're there and I know where to find you and believe me, you bastard, I'm coming to get you."

He had no idea if this ripple in the air really was Chango, or Major Shroud, or if he was simply experiencing another illusion. Neither did he know if it possessed any intelli­gence, or if it could hear what he was saying—or, hell, if it could be stopped by a bullet, or stopped by anything. Maybe Hicks was right, and his mind was giving way.

At that moment, Cab came out of his office. "Lieutenant, what in the name of God are you doing?"

Decker didn't turn around. But as soon as Cab ap­proached, the distortion in the air rolled away and disap­peared. Decker waited for a moment to make sure that it had gone, and then he cautiously holstered his gun.

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"Lieutenant?"

"Oh . . . I was practicing my grip, Captain. Sergeant Bliss down at the range said that my balance needed some work."

"Your balance? Too damn right it does. Listen—I have to go talk to the chief. Give me an update on what you've been doing and leave it on my desk. Like, immediately."

"Yes, sir, Captain. It's done already."

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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

He swerved his Mercury into the curb outside Queen Ache's house and both he and Hicks rolled out of their seats like TV cops. Two squad cars followed close behind, with four uniformed officers, three of them black and two of them female. Decker knew his politics.

George and Newton, Queen Ache's bodyguards, stood shoulder to shoulder and blocked the front steps.

"Queen Ache ain't seeing nobody today."

"Says you. I have a warrant here for Queen Ache's arrest on suspicion of homicide in the first degree."

He held it up and George peered at it closely. "Like you can read," Decker said, and whipped it away again.

"She still ain't seeing nobody. She gave me orders. 'Tell everybody I ain't seeing nobody no matter what,' that's what she said."

"George Montgomery, you are under arrest for obstruct­ing a police officer. You have the right to remain silent—"

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"Okay, okay! Cool. I'll tell her you're here. She won't like it, though. She's holding an asiento."

"I don't care if she's holding her breath. Get her to open up."

George went to the intercom and buzzed it. "Mikey," he said. "It's trouble. We got Martin down here and half of the police department. He has a warrant."

After a while, Mikey opened the door. Decker turned around to the uniforms and said, "Give me a couple of min­utes, will you? I'll whistle if I need you."

He and Hicks followed Mikey into Queen Ache's throne room. As before, the white wooden shutters were all closed, and the room was illuminated only by a few thin shafts of sunlight, like a chapel. Queen Ache wasn't there, but Mikey said, "Wait, okay? I'll go bring her." Scores of candles were steadily burning on Queen Ache's shrine, and there was a strong, bittersweet smell of herbs and spices and flowers in the air, escoba amarga, prodigiosa, yerba luisa, and cinnamon. The aroma heightened the sense of unreality in the house, as if he and Hicks were visiting a dream house together. Hicks nervously flexed his shoulders and tugged at his shirt collar.

After a few minutes Queen Ache appeared through the double doors; and she was like a tall ghost flowing into the room. She wore a headdress of blue flowers and silver stars and she was robed in flowing white muslin, with blue and white and crystal beads around her neck. Her makeup was ivory white, although her eyes were circled by crimson eye shadow and her lips were bloodred. Her face reminded Decker of a West African death mask.

"This intrusion is an outrage, Lieutenant! I am holding an asiento for my friend's cousin, an initiation. This is the dia del medio, the day in the middle, when all his family and friends will be gathering to pay tribute to his orisha."

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"Oh," Decker said. "Bummer."

"You can come back in two days. Make an appointment with Mikey."

"Sorry, Your Majesty, this can't wait. I'm here to arrest you on suspicion of the murder of Herbert 'Junior' Abraham."

Queen Ache flapped one hand in contempt, so that her bangles clashed. "You think I would soil my own hands with such a deed? In Santeria we say oddi oche—absolved through lack of evidence."

"In the City of Richmond Police Department we say that maybe a perpetrator can make herself invisible but she al­ways leaves some evidence behind her, no matter how smart an occult cookie she thinks she is."

Queen Ache sat down on the chaise longue. She could even make sitting down appear erotic, the way she slid side­ways and crossed her thighs and looked at Decker from out of those bloodred eye circles around her eyes. "Nobody knows what is at the bottom of the sea, Lieutenant."

Decker cleared his throat. "I'm not worried about the bottom of the sea, Queen Ache. I'm concerned with what happened at Jimmy the Rib's."

"Pfff! I was here at home. How should I know what happened?"

"I have at least one eyewitness who is prepared to swear on oath that it was you who came into that restaurant, and that it was you who personally blew Junior Abraham's head off. I'm talking to other eyewitnesses, too."

"You're crazy. I saw it on the news. Everybody said that Junior was shot by a man—a man who looked like a waiter."

"Sure they did. But that was before I asked a very special somebody to jog their memory. A very special somebody who saw you clearer than anybody else."

"Is that so? I don't suppose you're going to tell me who that very special somebody is."

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"For sure. The best witness of all. Junior Abraham him­self. You tricked everybody else into thinking that they saw a waiter, didn't you? But there was one person you wanted to show yourself to, and that was Junior. Just so he was ab­solutely clear why his brains were going to be splattered all over the wall."

"Ha! Since when did the Richmond City police detec­tives confer with the dead?"

"Since we found out just how powerful your magic is, Queen Ache. Since we learned what tricks you can play with people's perception. I've learned a whole lot about Santeria these past few days, and I have to say that I've de­veloped a very healthy respect for it. A religion that can call on every force of nature. Wind, fire, lightning, you name it. You can walk through solid walls if you know how to do it. You can walk through a crowded room and nobody can see you. You can change the way that people look at you, so that they think you're somebody else."

"Do you seriously think that anybody is going to believe you?"

"Oh yes. Because me and Sergeant Hicks here, we've been prepared to approach this investigation with a very open mind. That means we've been talking to people that other detectives would never think of talking to. Like dead people. Like people who can tell us how you did what you did. Like santeros."

"You can't convict me with the words of a headless corpse. Obbara osa. You're crazy."

"You want to know how crazy I am? I'm also arresting you for the murder of Catherine Meredith Meade."

Queen Ache dismissively waved her hand. "Catherine who? I don't even know who this person is."

"Oh, I think you do, Your Majesty. Catherine Meredith Meade was my partner during that time a couple of years

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ago when I was investigating your various enterprises with illegal substances and property scams. I was called out in the middle of the night to investigate a suspicious drowning. As soon as I was gone, you came to my apartment—you, per­sonally—and you blew that poor girl's brains out. Now do you know who she is?"

Queen Ache said, "I am not going to speak to you any­more. This is insanity."

Decker held up a small plastic evidence bag containing two beads. "Yours, I think. You left them at the crime scene."

"What do two beads amount to?"

"Murderers have been convicted on a damn sight less. We nailed one guy when we found a single grain of gunpowder in his coat pocket, practically invisible to the naked eye."

"I was never at your apartment and I can prove that I was never there. You're wasting my time."

"Ah, but somebody saw you there. Somebody heard you speak."

"I was never there. Never. You are a fool, Lieutenant."

Decker looked at her with his eyebrows raised, saying nothing. Then he turned to Hicks and said, "Sergeant . . . you want to give me a moment alone with Queen Ache here?"

Hicks didn't look very happy about it, but he said, "What­ever you say, sir," and left the room. Decker called out, "Close the doors, would you, sport?"

He went over to Queen Ache's shrine, with all its steadily burning candles. "Who's your personal orisha, Your Majesty?"

"Yemaya, the goddess of the sea waters, and of the moon."

"Powerful, is she, Yemaya? I would guess so."

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"She is the mother to everyone. Her children are as nu­merous as the fish."

"Powerful as Chango, say?"

"Hmm. That shows how little you know of Santeria, Lieutenant. I said that Yemaya is the mother to everyone. She is also Chango's adoptive mother, and perhaps more than that. When Chango returned home after many years away, he did not recognize Yemaya, and fell in love with her."

"So . . . Yemaya could have some influence over Chango? I mean, if Chango was causing trouble, Yemaya could tell him to, like, cool it?"

"Why are you asking me this? I thought you were more interested in proving that I am a killer."

"I know you're a killer, Queen Ache."

"Oh yes, I forgot your evidence. Your two beads, produced years after your girlfriend was murdered."

"Not just beads, but several small hairs, which I've sent for DNA matching. And something else. Another eyewit­ness account."

Queen Ache stood up. "I don't have the time for these fantasies, Lieutenant. I have to get back to my asiento."

"You just wait up," Decker cautioned her. "When Cathy's killer entered my apartment building that night in February, he or she left no footprints and no fingerprints and no image on the closed-circuit television cameras. There is nobody else I know of who could have done that, except you.

"The killer passed through a solid door and didn't materi­alize until he or she was actually standing in my bedroom. There is nobody else I know of who could have done that, except you.

"I know it was you, Queen Ache. You came up real close, so that you could shoot Cathy point-blank in the face.

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Cathy grabbed your hair and pulled out some of your beads. You said, Irosun oche!"

Queen Ache stared at him, her eyes so wide that she looked as if she had gone mad, and actually shuddered. Her white dress was illuminated so brightly by a single shaft of sunlight that it looked like an incandescent gas mantle.

"So you do know," she said, at last.

Decker nodded.

"You will find these accusations impossible to prove in court."

"That doesn't matter, as far as I'm concerned. I'm satisfied that you killed both Cathy and Junior Abraham, and that's good enough for me."

"What are you talking about?"

Decker took his Colt Anaconda out of its shoulder hol­ster, opened the cylinder, and ejected all of the shells into the palm of his hand. One by one, he kissed the tip of each shell and pressed it back in.

"I do this every day," he told her. "I bless these bullets. And do you want to know why I bless these bullets? I do it because once I accidentally shot a fellow officer because I was too jumpy and too quick and I didn't make absolutely sure that I was shooting at the right person. So I promised myself that I would never do that again. If I had to shoot anybody, each bullet would be blessed, and each bullet would be fired with forethought. Not out of fear, or panic, but because it was right, and because I had no other choice."

Queen Ache didn't say anything, but she didn't stop star­ing at him.

"I have a serious problem," he said. "You've heard about this recent spate of homicides, people getting beheaded, people having their guts cut out. I'm pretty certain that they're connected with Santeria, and that the perpetrator is

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possessed by Chang& I'm also pretty certain that there are going to be more. Up to eight more, at least."

Queen Ache frowned. "Why should that be any concern of mine?"

"It isn't, not directly, but I'm going to make it your con­cern. You see, you're the only person in Richmond who has the power to deal with this joker, and in spite of the fact that you're a killer and a racketeer I'm going to ask you to help me to track him down and put him out of business for good."

Queen Ache closed her eyes and tilted her head back and said, "Ha!"

"Ha? Is that a no or a yes?"

She came up close to him. He was almost overwhelmed by the musky perfume of Esencia Pompeya. "You have wasted too much of my precious time, Lieutenant. If you are going to arrest me, then you had better arrest me. My lawyers will have me released before you can say 'insufficient evidence.' Don't think for a moment that you can play games with me."

Decker raised his revolver and pointed it straight be­tween her eyes. "I wasn't really going to arrest you, Your Majesty. You see this warrant? This is only a search warrant to check through your accounts. But I wanted to tell you face-to-face that I am completely satisfied that it was you who killed my Cathy."

"And what?"

"And if you don't agree to help me I'm going to do to you, with two or three of my blessed bullets, the very same thing that you did to her. I don't give a shit for the consequences. You killed the only woman I ever loved and I'm going to blow your fucking brains all over this room."

Queen Ache stared at him, her eyes glittering, her bosom rising and falling as she breathed, as if she had just finished running, or making love.

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"You'd actually do it, wouldn't you?" she said at last. "Oh yes. You can be totally sure of that."

"And if I do agree to help you? What then?"

"Then my witnesses conveniently forget to remember that it was you who shot Junior Abraham."

"And you?"

"Me? I try to accept the fact that at least one good thing came out of Cathy's death."

Queen Ache touched her face with her fingertips as if she were making sure that, in the afterlife, she would always re­member what it felt like. Decker pulled back the Ana­conda's hammer.

"Aren't you going to count?" Queen Ache asked. "You want me to? Okay, five."

"The death penalty is almost guaranteed in Virginia."

"I know that. But at least my ancestors will recognize me. If you don't have a head, how's King Special going to know that it's you?"

"Don't mock my religion, Lieutenant."

"Four."

Queen Ache stood up very straight and flared her nos­trils. She wasn't used to dealing with people who weren't afraid of her, and Decker could sense her rising uncertainty.

"Three."

She was still staring at him as if she were trying to hyp­notize him, but Decker knew without any doubt at all that if she didn't ask him to stop, then he was going to shoot her. The So-Scary Man was going to get him, anyhow, one way or another, and he was probably going to suffer the Nine Deaths, so what did it matter? From whatever limbo it was that her spirit still lived on, Cathy had done everything she possibly could to save him, but if she couldn't, she deserved avenging, at the very least.

"Two."

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At that moment, the doors on the opposite side of the throne room were thrown open, and Hicks came back in. He held up his cell phone, and said, "Lieutenant—the cap­tain wants a word with you. Like, you know, now."

"One," Decker said, without blinking.

"Lieutenant? The captain says that—Lieutenant? Lieu­tenant? What the fuck are you doing, Lieutenant? Lieu­tenant!"

Hicks struggled to get his gun out, but Decker shouted, "Don't!"

"What's going on?" Hicks said, in a panicky voice. "You can't just—"

"You want to say a prayer?" Decker asked Queen Ache.

Queen Ache breathed in, breathed out, breathed in. Then she said, "I will say just one thing. Yenya orisha obinrin dudukueke re maye avaya mi re oyu ayaba ano rigba iki mi iya mayele. An invocation to Yemaya, to fill me with her strength, as I go to face Chango."

Decker lowered his revolver, eased the hammer forward, and slid it back in its holster.

"Where is this man who is possessed by Chango?" Queen Ache asked.

"Not far. Somewhere in Main Street Station."

"And when do you want me to help you?"

Decker checked his watch. "Sooner the better."

"Very well. But only because my orisha wills it, and be­cause I wish to confront this man."

-"Whatever you say."

Queen Ache said, "I have to change. You can wait for me." "Just one thing, before you go. What does irosun oche mean?"

"It is one of the patterns of the cowrie shells. It means `the dead are circling to see who they can seize."

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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Decker and Hicks waited nearly a half hour for Queen Aché to make herself ready. Decker and Hicks sat at the bottom of the stairs, sullenly watched over by George and Newton. People came and went: family members and friends who had been invited to the asiento, all dressed up in their best clothes and carrying baskets of fruit, jars of honey, rum, cigars, chickens, and flowers. When they learned that the asiento had been delayed, and why, they looked across at Decker and Hicks with restless hostility, and one elderly man came over and said, "You are not the law. The orishas are the law. You have ruined my grandson's asiento."

Decker said, "Sorry about that, sport. Nothing personal."

"Something bad will happen to you today because of what you have done here. You will know justice and blood."

"Thanks for the warning, but that's part of my job de­scription."

Eventually Queen Aché descended the staircase, no

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longer a crimson-eyed white-faced ghost in muslin, but a tall, athletic-looking black woman in skintight black leather pants and a dark brown sleeveless suede top, with six or seven silver armbands on each arm. Her head was cov­ered by a dark brown silk scarf, tightly knotted, with a silver medallion dangling over her forehead. She carried a large leather bag over her shoulder, with fringes and beads.

One of her heavily bejeweled henchmen came down with her, a shaven-headed man with mirror sunglasses and a neck like a tree stump. "You listen to me, Mr. Detective. This is Queen Aché here and Queen Ache is the queen of all she survey. Any bad shit come to her, then a hundert times more bad shit is going to be happening to you."

"I'll take care of her," Decker assured him; although he knew that, in reality, Queen Aché was coming along to take care of him.

In the car, with the two squad cars following close behind them, Decker gave Queen Aché a brief outline of who they thought they were looking for, and why. He told her all about the Devil's Brigade, and Major Shroud, and all of his nightmares. She listened, and nodded once or twice, but said nothing.

"You don't seem particularly surprised by any of this," he told her, when he had finished.

"Nothing in Santeria surprises me, Lieutenant. I have known people whose dead ancestors are still walking the streets after two hundred years. You forget that Yoruba be­liefs not only gave birth to Santeria, in America, but Can­domble in Brazil and Shango in Trinidad; and in Haiti, Yoruba traditions were mixed with those of the Fon peo­ple from Dahomey, and resulted in the creation of voodoo."

"So you think that it's perfectly possible that the So‑

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Scary Man could be Major Shroud himself, risen from the dead?"

"Why not? A lead-lined coffin would preserve his body—as well as all the herbs and spices that were buried along with him. And if he was really possessed by Changó, that would preserve his soul. Changó, like all of the orishas, is immortal."

"You think you might be able to call him off? Like, appeal to his better nature or something?"

"Changó is Changó. He is the most popular of all or­ishas. But when he wants revenge, he will never rest until he gets it."

Hicks's cell phone rang. He said, "Yes—yes, Captain. I'm afraid he's driving right now."

"That Cab again?" Decker asked.

"He says he wants you back at headquarters, no arguments." "How does he sound?"

"Enraged."

"Not apoplectic yet? That's good. Tell him to give me twenty minutes."

They parked on East Main Street, right outside the station entrance. Over to the west, the sky was growing gloomy, even though it was only a few minutes past midday, and the clouds had a strange bruised appearance, purple and red.

They pushed their way through the swing doors. Inside it was dark and unexpectedly chilly, and they all took off their sunglasses. The steep stairway was coated in concrete dust and the whole building echoed with hammering and drilling and shouting.

They climbed the stairs until they reached the arrivals' lobby.

Mike Verdant saw them and gave them a wave. He

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crossed the floor of the lobby, stepping over hydraulic hoses and lengths of timber, and held out his hand.

"Come back for another look, Lieutenant? You're in luck—we're just about to reinstall the decorative railings."

"Actually we want to pay another visit to the crawl space."

"Really? I don't think there's anything down there, only debris."

"All the same."

Mike looked dubiously at Queen Aché. "You want to take this lady down there too?"

"That's the idea. She knows what we're looking for more than we do."

"Well . . . okay. But you have to wear hard hats, and I ought to lend you some coveralls. It's pretty slimy down there."

He came back with hard hats and three bright-yellow coveralls with CRDCD lettered in red on the back—City of Richmond Department of Community Development. They stepped into them—Hicks almost overbalancing as he caught his shoe in the leg hole—and buttoned them up.

Mike said to Queen Aché, "Pardon me . . . but do I know you?"

Queen Aché looked down at him haughtily. She was at least four inches taller than he was. "Give thanks to God that you don't."

Mike turned to Decker, pulling a face. Decker shrugged as if to say, That's the way she is . . . don't push it. Mike said, "Here . . . you're going to need these flashlights."

They went back down the staircase to the East Main Street entrance. As they did so, they heard a bellow of thunder, and through the dusty glass of the swing doors they could see spots of rain on the sidewalk outside.

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Mike led them to the break in the wall that led to the lower level. "I'd come with you but I have to put in those railings. One half inch out of line and we're screwed."

"That's okay," Decker said. "I think we can manage from here."

When Mike had gone back up to the arrivals lobby, Hicks said, "Lieutenant----do you really think this is a good idea?" "No, but what else are we going to do?"

"I don't know. But we know how powerful this So-Scary Man is. Think of the way he pushed us both over, in the hospital. Maybe we should try smoking him out of here with tear gas, or knocking him out with nitrous oxide."

"Hicks, we don't have the time, and I can't see Cab au­thorizing a SWAT team, can you? Besides that, I'm not sure whether tear gas or nitrous oxide would have any affect on this joker at all. For Christ's sake, he's dead, or the living dead, or whatever you call it in Santeria."

Queen Aché said, "Egun, the ancestors, who are dead but still live. That is why I call my followers the Egun."

Hicks said, "I still think this is too risky. Either that, or we're wasting our time."

Queen Ache pointed her finger directly at Hicks, as if she were picking him out in a lineup. "You believe, don't you? You're a believer. You pretend that you're a skeptic, but you know that the dead can walk amongst us, and that spirits can talk to us from beyond the grave."

Hicks looked uncomfortable. "Let's just do it, shall we, if we're going to do it?"

"Why do you deny it?" Queen Aché persisted. "Why do you deny your roots? Do you really choose to spend the rest of your life in the soulless world of the white people? The dog has four legs but walks only one path."

"Come on," Decker said. He climbed into the hole in the wall, clambering over heaps of broken brick, shining his

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flashlight up ahead of him. "You next, Your Majesty. Hicks, you watch our rear ends."

Once they had negotiated the bricks, they found them­selves in a low, vaulted cellar. The walls and the ceiling were black with damp and encrusted with salt. In the far corner, the salt had built up against the brickwork in a series of lumpy gray stalagmites, which looked like a gaggle of hideous dwarves, some of them with swollen heads and oth­ers with hugely hunched backs.

"Must have flooded here pretty often," Decker remarked.

Queen Aché said, "The city flooded on the day when I was born. My father always said that it was an omen from Yemayá, that I too would flood the city one day."

"Well, you certainly flooded it with second-rate smack."

They penetrated farther into the cellar, flicking their flashlights left and right, but there was no sign of a coffin, or a niche that the So-Scary Man might have used as a hiding place. No bunched-up blankets, no newspaper bedding, no discarded Coke cans. Over in the left-hand corner, however, it looked as if a large section of the floor had collapsed into the crawl space below.

"What makes you sure that he's here?" Queen Aché asked. Although she was standing still, and her face was se­rious, her shadow was dancing on the ceiling right above her, as if her spirit was mocking them.

"His coffin was sunk right here, in Shockoe Creek, and this is the first time that these lower foundations have been disturbed since the station was built. Apart from that, the little girl I was telling you about . . . the one who can see him . . . she saw him entering the station through the same doors that we came in. Another time she saw a kind of a twisted cloud over the station rooftops, which she thought was a cloud of evil. She even drew a picture of it. For some reason she said it was the House of Fun."

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"The House of Fun?" Queen Aché thought about that and then she shook her head. "No . . . not the House of Fun."

"Excuse me?"

"She probably understood it wrong. She meant the House of Ofun. Ofun means 'the place where the curse is born."

"You're serious? `The place where the curse is born?' Hear that, Hicks? What more proof do we need than that?"

Queen Aché stepped ahead of him, deeper into the cel­lars, occasionally ducking her head because the ceiling was so low. Thirty feet in, she stopped, and raised her hand to indicate that they should stay where they were, and stay silent.

"What is it?" Decker asked, after a while.

"I can smell something," she said.

"Me too. Dead rats and damp."

"No . . . there is something else. Close your eyes. Breathe in deeply and hold it."

Decker breathed in. Hicks did too, and whistled through one nostril. Decker couldn't be sure, but he thought he could detect the faintest aroma of stale herbs, like taking the lid off a jar of dried oregano.

"Smells like my grandma's larder," Hicks said.

"That's right," Queen Aché agreed. "Those are the herbs they would have used to seal Major Shroud in his casket."

She knelt down and opened up her leather satchel. Out of it she lifted a canvas pouch, tightly tied at the neck with black waxed string. She set this down on the floor in front of her, and then she took out four dried apples, a glass bottle of pale green liquid, and another bottle containing a dark red liquid.

While Decker kept his flashlight shining on her, she un‑

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tied the canvas pouch and tipped out a handful of dull, blackened stones.

"What are you doing?" Decker asked her.

"These are thunderstones . . . stones from a building that was struck by lightning."

As if to emphasize their importance, there was a loud bang of thunder from outside, and even here in the cellar they could smell the fresh, ozone-laden draft that came with the following rain.

"I cast the stones, and then I pour this liquid over them. It is made from the leaves of the alamo tree, boiled in water. This will dispel evil. Then I say an invocation to Chang& kabio, kabio, site, and anoint them with rooster's blood."

"Okay . . . and what will this do?"

"It will tell me if any manifestation of Chango is here. Just watch and wait."

Decker hunkered down beside her. She pulled the stopper out of the bottle of blood and sprayed it across the stones like a priest spraying holy water. "Kabio, kabio, sile," she re­peated. "Kabio, kabio, sile."

They waited for over a minute. The thunder rumbled again, and this time it echoed through the cellar as if it had come from somewhere below the ground, rather than the sky.

"I guess he's not here after all," Decker said.

"Wait. This always takes a little time."

Another minute passed, but then Decker heard a faint sizzling sound. He sniffed, and he could not only smell damp, and dried-out herbs, but a burned smell, like meat stock burning on the side of a cooking pot. He shone his flashlight on the thunderstones and saw that the rooster blood was drying up and bubbling, and giving off smoke. The thunderstones themselves had turned gray, and one or two of them were beginning to glow red-hot.

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"Changó is here," Queen Aché said, emphatically. "You're sure about that?"

"Look for yourself. Look at the stones."

One by one, the stones turned to scarlet, and Decker could feel the heat they were giving off, the same dry heat as a sauna. "Chango's power is attracted to this ebbó. He is showing us that he is close by."

"Yes, but where?"

"You won't be able to see him, but I will. I will call on Yemayá to help me against my enemies, and to give me strength."

With that, she reached into her satchel again and brought .4 out a plastic bag, neatly folded and tied with blue tape. She untied the tape and opened the bag, revealing a small silvery-scaled fish. She took out yet another bottle and poured a thin, sticky liquid over the fish. "Sugarcane syrup," she ex­plained. Then she dropped seven shiny pennies onto it.

"Yenya orisha obinrin dudukueke re maye avaya mi re oyu . . ." she sang, closing her eyes and swaying her head from side to side.

Hicks looked at Decker uneasily. "I hope we're not get­ting ourselves into something we can't get out of." "Like I said, sport, we don't have any choice."

Hicks's cell phone rang again, but when he took it out to answer it, Decker said, "Leave it. It's only Cab getting close to boiling point."

" . . lojun oyina ni reta gbogbo okin nibe iwo ni re elewo nitosi re omo teiba modupue iya mi."

Queen Aché stopped swaying and opened her eyes. She arched her head back and stared at the ceiling for a mo­ment. Then she said, flatly, "Yemayá is with me."

Decker looked at her, and then took off his glasses and looked at her even more closely, because there was no ques­tion at all that something had possessed her. It was difficult

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to pin down exactly what it was. But she seemed to radiate an extraordinary energy, and when he took a step closer to her he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising up, as if he were standing close to an electrical transformer. She turned to look at him, and although she was still Queen Aché, with that high forehead and those erotically droop­ing eyelids and those full, slightly parted lips, there was an­other face within her face, a face that was calm and stony-eyed and infinitely old.

Decker realized that, at secondhand, he was looking at the face of an orisha, a goddess from the earliest days of African civilization, a creator of dynasties and magic. He had been frightened before. His nightmares about the Battle of the Wilderness had frightened him. But nothing had ever frightened him like this: the realization that there was a world in which the dead could live forever, and that men could walk through walls, and that none of the laws of pos­sibility meant anything at all.

He was suddenly reminded of Eduard Munch's painting of The Scream—the utter terror of finding out that life has no boundaries whatever.

"What now?" he asked Queen Aché.

"We find out where your So-Scary Man is concealing himself."

She picked up the apples one by one and placed them on the hot thunderstones. They sizzled and blistered, and gave off a thick, caramel-smelling smoke.

"Lead me now to Changó," Queen Ache said. "Lead me through the paths of Changó Ogodo, Alufina Crueco, Alafia, Larde, Obakoso, Ochongo, and Ogomo Oni. Lead me through all his various disguises: Saint Barbara and Saint Marcos de Leon and Saint Expeditus."

Up until now, the smoke had been billowing upward, but as Queen Ache continued her chanting it began to drift to‑

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ward the opposite side of the cellars. It coiled its way past the stalagmite dwarfs, and then it seemed to disappear into the darkness, as if somebody were pulling a long gray chif­fon scarf through a keyhole.

"He's there. Chango can't resist the smell of apples."

Decker unholstered his gun, but Queen Aché laid her hand on top of his. "You must understand that you cannot kill Chango. You can only kill Major Shroud."

"He'll do, for starters."

"But you cannot kill Major Shroud while Changó still possesses him."

"So how can we stop him?"

"In Santeria, we believe that everybody has an eleda. It means their head, or their mind, but it also means their guardian angel. In Major Shroud's case, his guardian angel is Changó. While Changó is alert, he will protect Major Shroud against any attack. But eledas can grow hungry, and need feeding and entertainment. If you invoke Chango, and give him a plaza, an offering of fruit and candy, and light some candles for him, he should be distracted long enough for you to kill Major Shroud."

She dug farther into her satchel and pulled out another cotton bag, tied with red and white string. "I brought apples, and bananas, and herbs, too. Rompe zaraguey and bledo punzó."

"And candles?"

"Of course." She produced three church candles, tied to­gether with red ribbon.

Decker took the bag and the candles and pushed them into his pockets. "You're not really doing this because I threatened to shoot you, are you?"

Queen Aché gave him a strange smile, and he was sure that he could see Yemaya smiling, too, behind the mask of Queen Aché's face.

"When there is no man who can stand up against you,

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Lieutenant, what is left? You have to test your strength against the gods."

"Haven't you ever—"

"Relied on anyone? Yes. Once. But one morning we both woke up and knew that I had grown stronger than him, and so he packed his bag and left without saying a single word."

"Do you know how much I hate you for what you did?"

"No, Lieutenant, I don't. I never loved anybody as much as that."

Hicks was shining his flashlight in the far corner of the cellars, where the smoke was hurrying away; "There's an opening here, Lieutenant. Part of the wall's collapsed."

Decker came over to join him. Just past the dwarfish sta­lagmites was a narrow alcove, and most of the brickwork at the back of it had fallen inward. It looked like the wall in which the drunken Fortunato had been bricked up alive, in Edgar Allan Poe's story The Cask of Amontillado. "For God's sake, Montresor!"

When he probed his flashlight into the back of the al­cove, Decker could see that it led to a cavity between the station walls. The cavity was only a little more than two feet wide, but in between the walls the rubble had fallen to form a kind of staircase, leading down. The smoke was steadily sliding in the same direction.

"Well . . . the smoke seems to think that he's hiding down here."

Hicks grimaced, as if this was all too much for him. "The smoke thinks he's down here? For Pete's sake."

Decker took an awkward step over the broken bricks and eased himself sideways through the opening. The smell of herbs was even stronger here, but there was another smell, too, and it was sickening. The smell of seawater and raw sewage, and bad fish, and half-decayed crabs.

He maneuvered himself around and offered his hand to

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Queen Ache, but she managed to climb through the open­ing unaided. The "staircase" was only a steep slope of crum­bled masonry, slippery with damp, and Decker had to keep one hand pressed against the right-hand wall to steady him­self as he descended. Halfway down he lost his footing and landed on his backside, sliding down six or seven feet before he managed to catch hold of a protruding beam of rotten timber and stop himself.

At the bottom of the slope was the opening to a low, pitch-black crawl space. They shone their flashlights into the darkness, crisscrossing like light sabers. The floor of the crawl space was thick with streaky black mud, and the ceil­ing was buttressed with dripping brick. Decker reckoned that it ran more than two hundred feet, from one side of the station building to the other.

Hicks said, "If you get caught in here, Lieutenant, you won't stand a hope in hell."

"Has to be done, sport."

"But if you can't even see him—"

"I can," Queen Aché reassured him.

"Okay . . ." Hicks said, reluctantly, "so what's the plan?" "I guess we'll just have to search the place on our hands and knees. Do it systematically, in squares."

"No, Lieutenant," Queen Aché said. "You won't have to do that. Look."

Decker turned around. The smoke from the burning ap­ples was drifting steadily down the staircase and into the crawl space. When Decker shone his flashlight on it, he saw that it was hurrying toward the right-hand side, about three-quarters of the way under the station, where it abruptly disappeared downward This was where the ceiling had collapsed from the floor above.

"Looks like we've found him," Decker said.

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"So what do we do now?" Hicks asked.

"We propitiate his eleda."

"I thought we were just going to blow his head off." "Same thing, differently put."

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CHAPTER THIRTY

THREE

Decker took the bundle of candles out of his pocket. Queen Aché untied the ribbon around them and lit them, handing one to Decker and one to Hicks.

"You will have to think respectful thoughts about Change). Make him your offering of fruit and beg his for­giveness for the sins of your forefathers."

"And you really think that will work? Think what he did to Moses Adebolu."

"Change) saw Moses Adebolu as a traitor to his faith. You are only his blood enemy."

"Is that all? That's reassuring. But, well, we all have to die someday, don't we? Let's go do it."

He crouched down and entered the crawl space, the brick ceiling scraping against his back. The sewagey reek of river water was even more overpowering down here, and the

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greenish black mud squashed thickly into his brand-new Belvedere loafers.

As he approached the hole where Queen Aché's apple smoke was disappearing, he could see more clearly what had happened. A large section of the ceiling had collapsed, not enough to cause any structural damage to the station, but enough to cause the floor beneath it to collapse, too. He shone his flashlight on the bricks and rubble and saw that there was a gaping cavity beneath the foundations, black as a prehistoric cave. He could also see rotting wooden up­rights, and part of an old brick wall, which he took to be remnants of the old fishing dock at Shockoe Creek.

Inside the cavity he saw greasy wet planks, blackened with age, which could have been a section of a ship's deck, al­though most of them had given way, and there was another cavity below them, where the ship's hold must have been.

Queen Ache and Hicks came crouching up to join him. Hicks knocked his head on the ceiling and said, "God damn it."

"You see that?" Decker said. "I'll bet you that was the ship that was carrying Major Shroud's casket—the Nathan Cooper, wasn't it? When they started renovating the station last year, all the drilling must have brought the ceiling down, and opened up the old Shockoe dock."

"You mean to say they built the station right over the ship, without even bothering to move it?"

"Maybe it wasn't practical to move it. Maybe the builders were too scared to move it. It looks like they filled in the creek and buried the ship, too."

Decker tried to penetrate the ship's hold with his flash­light, but the darkness seemed to swallow the beam of light completely, and absolutely nothing was reflected back. His jaw was trembling, not only because of the chilly damp

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down here in the crawl space, but because he could sense that something deeply malevolent was very close. It was the same feeling that he had experienced in his nightmares—the feeling that somebody was rushing toward him, some­body who wanted to do him terrible harm.

He paused for a moment and took a steadying breath, and then another, even though the air down here was so fetid. He had never suffered from claustrophobia before, but now he was conscious of the tons and tons of brick and masonry that were weighing down on him, and the fact that he would have to crouch like Quasimodo to escape anything that came after him.

"Lieutenant?" Hicks asked. "You okay, Lieutenant?" "What? Never felt better."

"You really think there's something down here?"

"I'm sure of it. Let's get down there and check it out." "That deck don't look none too safe."

"Well, we'll just have to tread easy, then, won't we?"

Queen Aché knelt down in the mud. Her candle flame was dancing in the draft, so her expression seemed to change from one second to the next—amused, indifferent, scornful, disturbed. "Chango is here, no question about it. Yemayá can sense his Chango's presence, very strong."

"In that case, we'd better go get him."

Queen Ache gripped his sleeve. "Don't forget. You must acknowledge Changó's greatness. You must beg him to forgive you for all of your misdeeds. Whatever Major Shroud looks like, however he talks to you, it is Chango to whom you are paying your respects, not him. When Chango is distracted—then and only then can you deal with Major Shroud."

"How will I know when that is?"

"Because I will tell you. You cannot see Chango, but Yemaya can."

"Okay, then. Hicks, you ready?"

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"I guess so."

Decker turned around and cautiously climbed backward down the heaps of rubble. His shoes immediately dislodged broken bricks and crumbling mortar, creating a miniature landslide that rattled onto the planking of the ship below. As he climbed down lower, he saw that a rusted iron girder had fallen across the ship, preventing the rubble from drop­ping any farther, so that there was a gap of at least three feet between the rubble and the deck. Grunting with effort, he edged himself around so that he could jump down. More bricks suddenly slipped beneath his feet and before he could jump he fell awkwardly sideways and landed on his side, bruising his shoulder and his hip. He said, "Fuck!" His can­dle rolled away from him, into a pool of stagnant water, where it instantly fizzled out.

"Are you okay, sir?" Hicks called.

"Terrific, damn it."

"Your candle!" Queen Ache warned him. "You must light your candle!"

Decker climbed to his feet and retrieved his candle. He dried it on his sleeve and then lit it again with his cigarette lighter. "Queen Aché? You coming down next?"

Queen Aché slid down the debris and landed on the deck with a stumble that was almost graceful. Hicks came next, slithering and cursing, although he managed to jump over the gap and land on his feet.

Queen Aché brushed herself down. "Try to show no fear when Major Shroud appears. He is one of the walking dead, but like all zombis he doesn't know it. He believes that he is still the same man that he was when he was sealed in his coffin, so you must talk to him as if he is a normal person. While you are doing that, I will present your plaza to Chango and see if I can draw his attention away from pro­tecting Major Shroud's head."

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"Sounds like a plan to me."

"One thing, though ... whatever you do, make no at­tempt to kill Major Shroud until I tell you that Chango has left him unprotected. Otherwise, you will be directly attack­ing Chango and Changó's anger will be terrible."

"You got it."

They walked along the deck to the fathomless hole where the planks had rotted away. Decker leaned forward and swept his flashlight from side to side. He could make out some of the timbers of the lower decks, and some coils of rope, and a bulging bundle of gray slime that must have been a bale of cotton, but no sign of a casket. "I guess I'll have to go down there and look for it."

"For Christ's sake, Lieutenant, be careful."

"Hicks, old man, this is part of the job."

Although most of the interior of the ship had been gut­ted by wood rot and boring beetle, there was still the skele­ton of a corroded iron companionway clinging to the right-hand side. Decker inched his way toward it and man­aged to reach out and get a grip on the uppermost railing. The deck planking splintered wetly beneath his weight, but he paused and took a sharp breath, and then he managed to swing himself around and perch both feet on one of the steps.

"You stay there," he told Queen Ache and Hicks. "I'll shout out if I find anything."

He descended the companionway a step at a time, testing each step to make sure that it wouldn't give way. It was at least twenty feet down to the remains of the next deck, and it looked so rotten that—if he fell—he would probably fall right through it, and down to the next deck, and the keel, if the Nathan Cooper still had a keel.

It took him nearly five minutes to climb down to the bot‑

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tom of the companionway. He looked around, trying to ori­ent himself, and trying to work out which way the ship had been docked. The likelihood was that it had been sailed into Shockoe Creek prow-first, and since the sides of the ship tapered off to his right, the hold was probably amid­ships, to his left.

Holding up his candle in his left hand and his flashlight in his right, he crossed the deck toward a darkened, dripping passageway. The floor was heaped with dead crabs in various stages of decay, like the chopped-off hands of hundreds of massacred children, and the stench was so strong that he couldn't stop himself from letting out a loud, cackling retch. He carefully stepped his way aft, his shoes slipping and sliding, and the flickering flame from his candle made it look as if the crabs were still alive, and crawling on top of each other.

As he neared the end of the passageway he heard a loud, flat, clattering sound. He reached a wooden door with bro­ken hinges, and wrenched it open. Beyond the door was more absolute darkness. He stepped out onto a rusted iron platform and found himself in the Nathan Cooper's hold. Wa­ter was cascading down from the hatches above, and that was what was causing all the clatter. Rainwater probably, thought Decker, from the overflowing storm drains along East Main Street. The hold was hung with dozens of heavy-duty chains, which swung and clinked together as the water poured down them. Decker was uncomfortably reminded of the hold of the spaceship Nostromo, in Alien. Chains, and water.

He directed his flashlight downward, systematically sweeping the floor of the hold. At first he thought that it contained nothing more than some stoved-in barrels and a stack of packing cases, but then he shone it right over to the far side, deep into the shadows, and he saw a heap of timbers

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and rubble, and a large grayish green box, a quarter buried in bricks, tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees.

He transferred his candle to his flashlight hand, and hefted out his revolver. Then he carefully swung himself around and climbed down the iron ladder that led to the floor of the hold, testing each rung as he went. He had al­most reached the bottom when he stepped right up to the top of his sock in stinking, freezing-cold river water. "Shit," he muttered. The hold was flooded more than a foot deep. Definitely no chance of salvaging his loafers now.

Holding his candle and his flashlight high, he waded across the hold toward the grayish green box. Ripples spread across the water and splashed against the broken barrels. Beneath the water, the deck was greasy with weed, and he was only a third of the way across when he slipped, and soaked the legs of his pants right up to his knees.

He stopped for a moment, but he didn't say anything. There was nobody to blame but himself. But if Hicks had been here, he would have been shouted at for ten minutes nonstop.

At last he reached the box. Now that he could see it close up, Decker didn't have any doubt that it was Major Shroud's casket. It was huge, more than eight feet long, hand-beaten out of thick lead. A face was embossed on the top of it—a slitty-eyed, almond-shaped face with a mailbox mouth. It looked like the tribal faces that hung on the wall in the Mask Bar.

At first, Decker thought that the casket was still intact, but when he waded his way around it, he saw that one side of it was heavily corroded, pitted and pustular like gan­grenous flesh, and split wide open. He bent down and shone his flashlight inside. He could make out bunches of dried herbs and mummified apples and little wooden figures, but no sign of Major Shroud's body.

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He looked around but he couldn't see anything else apart from mounds of black sludge from the river bottom and more shoals of dead crabs. He paddled his way back toward the ladder, not knowing if he was relieved or disappointed. But he couldn't forget what Cathy had warned him about. If he didn't get Major Shroud first, then Major Shroud was go­ing to get him.

He started to climb the ladder, but he was only halfway up when he felt a sharp, cold draft and his candle was sud­denly snuffed out. Cursing, he holstered his revolver, and searched in his pockets for his cigarette lighter. He flicked it once, but it wouldn't light, so he flicked it again and again. It still refused to light.

He was still flicking it when he became aware that the cold draft was growing even chillier—so chilly that a cur­tain of icy vapor began to pour down from the edge of the iron platform above him, like dry ice off the edge of a stage in a rock concert. He looked up, but his glasses were fogging up and everything was blurred. He took them off and wiped them on his necktie, and looked up again.

At first he saw nothing but vapor, but when he lifted his flashlight he thought he could see the vapor forming a shad­owy outline, as if somebody was standing in it. For an in­stant, as the vapor curled around, he even thought he could see the impression of a face—a face formed of nothing but frozen air. A living death mask.

"Major Shroud, is that you?" His voice sounded small and flat, barely audible over the promiscuous clattering of the water and the clink-clink-clink of the swaying chains.

"Major Shroud? I've come down here to help you. Do you understand that? Do you understand what I'm saying?"

He climbed one more step up the ladder, and then an­other. "Major Shroud? Or is it Changó I'm talking to? The great and all-powerful Changó, king of the city of Oyo? I

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greet you, Chango. The king hung himself, but the king did not die."

He climbed farther still, until he reached the edge of the platform. He shone his flashlight from side to side, and he was sure that he could see the transparent outline of a man's shoulders and the side of his head.

"Changó, listen to me. I've come down here to ask you to forgive me for what my great-great-grandfather did to you. He should never have helped to seal you up in that casket, and I'm sorry, okay? I didn't know anything about you be­fore, but now I do and I want to tell you that you're the greatest. Like, respect."

He waited, while the freezing fog continued to pour down all around him. Changó—if it was Chango didn't reply. Decker thought: How the hell are you supposed to speak to an orisha? And what do you do if they refuse to answer you? Maybe orishas only understand Yoruba.

But as he waited, the fog appeared to thicken and knot it­self into shadows, like the clots of blood in a fertilized egg. Gradually, right in front of Decker's eyes, a shape began to resolve itself, the shape of a tall, dark, broad-shouldered man. In a little over a minute, he had solidified, although his image still appeared smudgy. He looked down at Decker with black, deep-set eyes. He was heavily bearded, and he wore a wide-brimmed hat with ragged black feathers all around it, and a long black overcoat.

"Major Shroud?" Decker said.

"You're a Martin," the figure replied. His voice made Decker feel as if his hair were infested with lice. It was hoarse, and thick, and he spoke with a curious saw-blade ac­cent, which Decker supposed was how everybody must have spoken in Virginia in Civil War days. But more than that, it seemed to come from several different directions at once, as

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if he were standing on the other side of the ship's hold; and close beside him, too, right next to his ear.

"Your forefather was one of those eleven who betrayed me. Your forefather was one of those who condemned me to spend an eternity, imprisoned, unable to move, in absolute darkness, but always awake."

"Major Shroud, I've come here to settle our differences."

"Differences? You call what they did to me differences?"

"What the rest of the Devil's Brigade did to you, back in the Wilderness—look, I know they were wrong. But it was war, you know? It was right in the thick of a goddamned bat­tle, for Christ's sake. Men were dying right, left and center. At the time they genuinely believed that they were doing right."

"They betrayed me, and they betrayed Chango. If it hadn't been for Changes spirit, I would have suffocated and died. I won that battle for them single-handed, with Changos help. But did they reward me? No. Did they pro­mote me? No. They sealed me in that casket with spells and spices and hoped that I would stay there forever."

"They were afraid of you, Major Shroud. Okay—it doesn't say much for their courage, does it, or their com­radeship? But they panicked and they didn't know what else to do."

"All I wanted was the honor that was due to me. I gave up everything—my life, my home, my beloved family—so that Chango could possess me, and we could win the war. Honor? All I received in return was treachery."

"But murdering those men's descendants . . . what good can that do? That's not going to earn you any honor."

"It's not murder! It's revenge! And Chango has taught me all I need to know about exacting my revenge. I lay in that suffocating coffin, for all of those countless years, but

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Changó spoke to me, and he nurtured me, and he gave me strength, and he promised me that I would have my day."

While Major Shroud was talking, Decker saw a quick, furtive shadow in the passageway behind him. After a few moments, Queen Aché appeared, her boots crunching over rotting crabs. She saw Major Shroud, and then she saw Decker, and she stopped where she was. Decker made a face at her and quickly shook his head to indicate that she shouldn't do anything hasty. Queen Aché gave him the thumbs-up.

"You've already killed four people," Decker told Major Shroud. "Don't you think that's revenge enough? They were innocent, all of them. None of them had any idea what their great-great-grandparents had done, all those years ago."

"Revenge is revenge. If you can't have revenge on the fa­ther, then you're entitled to take your dues from the son. And if not the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson, forever."

"Times have changed, Major Shroud. Years have gone by. The North and the South are one nation now, and what happened during the war—well, it's all forgotten now. It's history."

"Chango!" Queen Ache called out. "Listen to me, Changó! I bring Yemayá with me! Babami Changó ikawo ilemu fumi alaya tilanchani nitosi. I have fruit for you. I have honey. I can give you songs and laughter and love."

Major Shroud swung around, his coat billowing. "Who are you? How dare you call on my eleda?"

"I am Queen Aché, daughter of Yemayá, and Yemayá comes to make an offering to Chango."

Major Shroud's voice abruptly changed. When he spoke now, he spoke in a harsh, abrasive growl. "Chango refuses

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your offering. Chango sees you for what you are. Yemayá be­trayed Chango in the Wilderness as surely if she had sealed the casket with her own hands. She allowed the eleven or­ishas to bind him and take him away—Yeggua and Oshun and Eleggua and all the others—and she didn't lift one fin­ger to intervene. You might have been Changes stepmother once, Yemay^a-you might have been his lover—but that night you turned your back on him, and he has never for­given you."

"I bring you a plaza, Chango. I bring you ram's blood, and manteca de corojo."

Major Shroud didn't appear to have heard her. He low­ered his head and pressed his fingers to his forehead, as if he were thinking. Queen Aché caught Decker's attention, her eyes wide and alert. She raised her hand with her index fin­ger pointing straight out and her thumb cocked like a re­volver hammer. Decker got the message and lifted out his Anaconda. Any second now, Chango would be distracted by her offering, and Decker would be able to blast Major Shroud's head off.

"Kabio, kabio, sile," Queen Aché murmured, her voice soft and seductive. "Welcome, Chango, my darling one. Welcome, my child and my passionate lover. Take a mo­ment's rest for apples and herbs. Refresh yourself with honey and blood."

Major Shroud remained as he was, his head bowed, ap­parently lost in thought. Suddenly, however, crackles of thin blue light began to dance around his hat, like electri­fied barbed wire. Queen Aché looked triumphantly at Decker. Chango was gradually making his appearance, and in a few seconds he would leave Major Shroud unprotected so that he could taste the food and drink that Queen Ache had brought him.

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Decker lifted his revolver and pointed it directly at Major Shroud's head. From this angle, the bullet would enter the soft flesh underneath his jaw, penetrate his tongue and his palate, blow his sinuses apart, and exit through the top of his skull, carrying most of his frontal lobes along with it.

"Come on, Changó, my love," Queen Aché coaxed. She sounded distinctively different from the sophisticated southern lady of color that she usually was. Her intonation was much more African, with a lilting, knowing accent. "Honor my family by tasting my plaza. Eat your fill."

The blue electric crackling grew more and more agitated, and it began to form a cagelike structure around Major Shroud's head, like a fencing mask. Queen Aché opened the bag of offerings that she had brought with her and held it up and swung it from side to side.

"This is for you, 0 great one. My son and my lover, and the god of all fire."

There was a deafening crackkkk! and a bang like two cars colliding. For a split second Decker actually saw Chango-the orisha of thunder and lightning. Chango's hair flew up in all directions, showering thousands of glittering sparks. His eyes glowed like red-hot thunderstones. But what struck Decker more than anything else was his mouth, which seemed to have tier upon tier of jagged teeth, with caterpil­lars of lightning crawling on his tongue.

"Here!" Queen Aché said, taking out an apple and hold­ing it up to him. "Take it, eat, my beloved Chango!"

But just as the crackling mask of Chango's head turned sideways, to take a bite of Queen Ache's apple, Major Shroud screamed out, "No! It's a trick! You can't leave my head, Chango! They'll kill me, and then you won't have anyplace left to hide!"

Queen Ache shrilled, "Lieutenant—now!"

Decker fired, and the Anaconda kicked in his hand. But

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Major Shroud swayed backward at an impossible angle, more like a swiveling shadow than a man, and the bullet only clipped the brim of his hat. Black crow feathers burst in all directions, but the bullet thumped harmlessly into the wooden bulkhead. The blazing vision of Chango instantly vanished, like a firework dropped into a bucket of water.

Major Shroud screamed at Decker in hysterical fury.

"Damn you! Damn you to hell! A Martin betrayed me in the Wilderness and now a Martin has betrayed me again! I will cut you into pieces for this, I promise you!"

"Chango!" Queen Ache cried. "Listen to me, Chango!" But it was obvious from the desperate tone of her voice that she had very little hope of tempting him back out of Major Shroud's head.

"You will surely die, Martin," Major Shroud fumed. "Not tonight, because your appointed day is tomorrow, the feast of Saint James Intercisus, and I can happily wait one more night until I come to kill you. I've waited long enough, God knows."

But then he turned to Queen Aché. "This santera, on the other hand, is a very different matter. She has perverted her religion and sullied the names of the saints. Look at the way she tried to trick Yemayá into betraying her only son and her only real love! Those who try to deceive the orishas must pay for what they have done, and pay with their lives."

Decker said, "Let her alone, Shroud. This was my idea."

"Revenge is revenge, Martin. Nobody can go unpunished for their sins, ever. That is the law."

"The law? What law? The law of the African jungle? The law of Santeria, and voodoo, and zombis? What law says that you can cut a pregnant woman's head off because her great-great-grandfather tried to stop you from committing a massacre?"

"The law of the earth, and of all things, and of natural

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justice. The law of Changó, who protects his followers against their enemies."

Decker lifted his revolver again, and aimed it directly be­tween Major Shroud's eyes. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, sport, but there's a greater law than Changó's law, and it's called the law of the State of Virginia."

Queen Aché said, "No, Lieutenant! Don't shoot him!"

"I don't think he's given me a whole lot of choice, do you?"

Major Shroud's vaporous image appeared to slide side­ways, like smoke caught in an unexpected breeze. "There is nothing you can do to stop me, Martin. Tomorrow you will die in the same way that Saint James Intercisus died. But so that you will fully understand what your fate will be, I will punish this santera in the same way."

"What?"

Major Shroud turned around, and as he turned around he disappeared, leaving nothing in the darkness but a twist of vapor. He disappeared from Decker's sight, but it was plain that Queen Aché could still see him, because she suddenly screamed out, "Changó! This is the daughter of Yemayá Changó!" But Major Shroud said nothing at all, and Changó didn't materialize. Queen Ache suddenly flung one arm up to protect her face and stumbled backward into the passageway.

"Queen Aché!" Decker yelled. "Get the hell out of here!"

He wildly waved his revolver from side to side but he couldn't see anything to fire at. He thrust it back into its holster and heaved himself up the last five rungs of the iron ladder. The jumbled light from his flashlight showed Queen Aché on her hands and knees, trying to scramble along the passageway over the mounds of crabs. She had dropped her

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candle and her bag of offerings to Changó, and she was whimpering like a beaten animal in terror.

"Shroud!" Decker yelled. He hauled out his revolver again and fired a warning shot into the ceiling. The explosion was deafening, and made his ears sing, and for a fleeting mo­ment, in the gunsmoke, he saw the outline of Major Shroud's back, and an arm lifted. His flashlight caught something else, too—the long curved glint of a cavalry saber.

"Queen Aché! Get up! Get out of here!"

Queen Ache seized the wooden handrail at the side of the passageway, but the second she did so Decker heard a quick, sharp chop! and all of the fingers of her left hand were scattered onto the floor, still wearing her gold and sil­ver rings. She screamed, and held up her bloody, fingerless hand. "Yemayá! What has he done to me? What has he done to me? Yemaya! Help me! Yemayá !"

Decker hurried into the passageway and knelt down beside her, his knees squelching and crunching into layers of putres­cent crabs. He lifted up her hand and wound his handker­chief tightly around it, although it was immediately flooded dark red. She was juddering wildly, and staring at him in shock. "He took off all of my fingers. He took off my fingers!"

She gripped his shoulder with her right hand and begged, "Get me out of here, please! Get me out of here! He's going to kill me!"

Decker coughed and stood up and tried to lift Queen Ache from the floor. She clung to his shoulder with her good right hand, and was almost off her knees when Decker felt a violent blow against his back, as if he had been struck very hard with a walking stick. Queen Ache screamed again, and dropped onto her knees. "My fingers! My fingers! Yemayá, save me! My fingers!"

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She held up her right hand—and that, too, was left with nothing but the stumps of all five fingers, and all of them squirting blood. Christ almighty—now Decker knew what Major Shroud was doing. He was attacking Queen Ache with the Nine Deaths that Saint James Intercisus had suf­fered, just to show Decker what he could expect.

He groped his left shoulder blade and found that his coat was soaked with blood. Major Shroud had chopped right through Queen Ache's fingers, right through his coat and shirt, and into his trapezius muscle.

"Get up!" he yelled at Queen Ache. He thrust his arms under her armpits and hoisted her onto her feet. She was a good three inches taller than he was, and at least as heavy, and he almost dropped her back onto the floor. But he man­aged to wind her bloody left arm around his neck and grip her wrist to stop her from falling, and together they man­aged to stagger back along the passageway, tilting from side to side as they went.

At last they reached the forward hold. Decker was mo­mentarily dazzled by a beam of light, but then he looked up and saw Hicks kneeling on the deck above them.

"Hicks! For Christ's sake, Hicks, give me a fucking hand here, will you?"

"Lieutenant? What's happening? You look like you're hurt."

"Just shine your flashlight on the steps, will you?"

Decker guided Queen Ache to the foot of the compan­ionway. She was keening under her breath like a mourner at a funeral, and her knees kept giving way. "You're going to have to climb," Decker told her.

"How can I climb with these?" she demanded, raising her mutilated hands like a pair of scarlet mittens.

"Listen to me," he told her, pointing the flashlight in his

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own face so that she could see him clearly. "There's no other way to escape. I can't carry you up."

Queen Ache looked up at the companionway. Decker heard a scuffling noise close by, and turned around and fired two shots at nothing at all. "You have to climb, Your Majesty, otherwise you're going to die here."

Queen Ache miserably approached the rusty steps and tried to curl her right wrist around them.

"That's it. Now your foot. Now pull yourself up."

She managed to climb up one step, and then another, but then she had to stop. "My hands," she wept. "They hurt so much! Yemaya, please stop them from hurting!"

"Climb," Decker urged her.

"Oh, Yemayá, please take this pain away from me, please!"

"Fucking climb, will you!"

Queen Ache hooked her left wrist around the railing and pulled herself up a little farther. At last she was close enough to the top for Hicks to be able to lean over and take hold of her forearms and help her negotiate the last few steps. Decker scrambled up right behind her.

"Major Shroud?" Hicks asked, wiping his bloody hands on his pants.

"Oh, you bet your ass. He's here and he wants his pound of flesh and he's not listening to any apologies or any deals. We have to get Queen Ache out of here double quick. The Nine Deaths, remember? Fingers, toes, hands, feet."

Between them, they lifted Queen Ache up from the

- deck, and helped her over to the slope of rubble that led to the crawl space up above them. "How the hell we going to get her up here?" Hicks asked.

"Have you tried calling for backup?"

"No signal. Not down here."

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"Shit. Okay, here's what we do. We climb up backward sitting on our butts, and we heave her up after us."

Decker guided Queen Ache to the fallen girder and made her stand with her back to it. Her face was pale gray, and her eyes were filmed over. "Queen Ache? Listen . . . stay there, just like that. Hicks and me, we're going to pull you up the slope. You got it? If you can, dig your heels in to stop your­self from sliding back down again, that'll help."

"Justice and blood," Queen Ache mumbled. "Oggunda ofun—justice and blood through a curse."

"Forget about the sayings, we have to get you out of here, and you're a big tall lady, and we need you to help us to do it." "Yemayá, I pray to you, save me."

"Absolutely. And while you're at it, you can say three Hail Yemayás for me and Hicks, too."

Puffing with effort, Decker climbed up onto the girder, and then sat down on the slope of rubble, kicking a few bricks away to give himself a better foothold. Hicks climbed up beside him, and then the two of them leaned forward and lifted Queen Ache up so that she was sitting on the rubble, too.

"Leave me," she said, her bloodied hands hanging loose. "I can't take any more. Leave me. Yemaya will take care of me. Chango would never hurt Yemayá."

"It's not Chango I'm worried about, Your Majesty. It's Ma­jor Shroud. Chango has all of the elemental power, that's for sure. He's got all of the thunder, and all of the lightning, and he's truly frightening. But Major Shroud is the one who's in charge here."

Hicks frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, sport, that this is a case of a possessed person taking control of the spirit that possesses him—because he's meaner, and more determined, and much more focused. Sure—the great god Chango had the power to set fire to

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those woods in the Wilderness, and to turn those Yankee soldiers inside out, but who was the one who was really sali­vating to do it?

"Changó isn't fundamentally evil. Chang() takes revenge on people who do him wrong, but Changó doesn't murder innocent people for the sake of it. It's Major Shroud. Now, let's get this lady out of here before he comes after her again. One—two—three—heave!"

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

In showers of sliding sand and broken bricks, they man­aged to manhandle Queen Aché up to the top of the slope and lay her down on the mud in the crawl space. Hicks prodded at his cell phone again but there was still no signal.

"Come on," Decker panted. "There's nothing else for it, we'll just have to pull her along behind us."

He hunkered down beside Queen Aché and said, "How are you feeling? Think you can stand being dragged a bit farther?"

She stared up at him and her face was expressionless, al­though he still had the feeling that he could see another face, a far older face, looking through her eyes. "I can't feel my hands anymore."

"Believe me, that's probably a blessing."

"Why didn't you leave me behind?"

"Are you kidding me? Shroud would have diced you and sliced you."

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"But I killed the only woman you ever loved. If I had been in your place, I would have left me behind."

"You know what? That's because King Special never taught you the difference between justice and revenge."

"He took me to a santero once, when I was thirteen, to have my fortune told. The santero told me that I was going to be strong and tall and beautiful. But then he said, 'Re­member one thing . . . even the saints in all their glory can­not save you from the living dead.' I never understood what he meant, not for years, but now I do."

"Let's just get you out of here. We can worry about the hocus-pocus later."

Decker took hold of one of Queen Aché's arms and Hicks took hold of the other, and together they dragged her across the crawl space, leaving a snakelike trail in the black, slimy mud. They were less than halfway toward the broken-brick staircase, however, when the beam of Decker's flash­light was suddenly refracted at an angle, bent sideways. He lifted it higher and pointed it back toward the cavity in the floor, and he was sure that he could see a distortion in the air, so that the brickwork shifted and rippled.

"Shit, he's following us! There, look! You see that?" "What? Where? I don't see nothing."

"Over there, just left of that pillar. Like the air's dancing around."

"I still don't see nothing."

They started to drag Queen Aché farther, but they had only shifted her four or five feet when they heard a whip­ping sound, and Queen Aché let out a cry like a run-over dog. The toecap of her left boot had been sheared clean off, taking her toes with it.

Decker pulled out his gun and fired off a single shot, even though he knew that there wasn't even a cat-in-hell's

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chance of hitting anything. "Shroud! You fuck!" he shouted. "You cut her again, I swear to God, Shroud, I'll do the same to you!"

"He's there!" screamed Queen Aché. "He's there! I can see him! He's there!"

"Point!" Decker shouted, and she pointed wildly to her left. Decker fired again, and again. Chips of brick sprayed from one of the buttresses, and a ricochet sang from the op­posite wall.

"Did I hit him? Is he hit? Where's he gone now?"

"I don't know, I don't know," Queen Aché moaned. "I can't see him anymore."

Decker seized her arm again. "Come on, Hicks, let's just get the two-toned hell out of here."

Crouching under the overbearing arches, they pulled Queen Aché out of the crawl space. All they had to do now was carry her up the rubble slope to the station's lower level. Decker lifted her up under her arms, while Hicks took her legs, and together they struggled upward, one bent-legged step at a time, sweating and grunting, while Queen Aché lolled lifelessly between them.

At last they reached the top, and managed to maneuver her through the narrow hole in the back of the alcove, into the basement. They laid her down gently on the floor, and Hicks sat down beside her, while Decker leaned against the wall, trying to get his breath back. His arms and legs were quivering from the effort.

"What's the plan, Lieutenant?" Hicks asked.

"First of all, we're going to take Queen Aché to the hos­pital. Then we're going to work out how we're going to deal with Major Shroud."

"How about a SWAT team? If they laid down, like, wall-to-wall machine-gun fire, somebody's bound to hit him."

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"Oh, really? And how do you think he's going to retali­ate? The same way he did in the Wilderness. He's going to incinerate the whole place and turn our guys inside out."

"So what are we going to do?"

"I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to think. I'm go­ing to use my head, while I still have it."

He bent over Queen Aché. She had been unconscious while they carried her up the rubble staircase, but now her eyelids flickered open. "Am I really here?" she asked him. Her scarf had slipped off and one side of her tightly braided hair was caked in mud.

"You're here, yes. But not for much longer." He looked up. Hicks was already splashing across the flooded cellar floor, to call for an ambulance and backup.

Decker took off his coat, bundled it up, and propped up Queen Aché's head. "My rings," she said, with a small, re­gretful smile. "When he cut off my fingers, I lost all of my precious rings. My daddy gave me such a pretty gold ring when I went through my ebbó de tres meses."

"We'll find them for you," Decker reassured her.

"What good will they be, if I have no fingers to put them on?" She was so matter-of-fact that Decker knew that she was deeply in shock. He remembered a man in a serious car smash on the Midlothian Turnpike who had smiled and winked at him and said, "See that leg, my friend—over there—on the median strip—that's my leg."

Hicks came back. "Ambulance in five minutes, backup in three."

"Okay," Decker said, standing up straight. But at that mo­ment, hell arrived. There was another whippp! and the toe of Queen Aché's right boot was whacked off at a sharp di­agonal, and a fine spray of blood flew up Decker's cheek. Hicks said, "Jesus Christ!"

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"Where is he?" Decker yelled at Queen Ache. "Tell me where he is!"

But Queen Aché was too stunned to answer him, and the next second her right arm was pulled straight up into the air, as if she were giving him a defiant salute. Decker seized her wrist and tried to pull it back down, but he was shoved in the chest so hard that he was thrown back against one of the hunchback stalagmites, jarring his spine. He was still struggling to get his balance when Queen Aché's fingerless hand was chopped from her wrist and sent flying across the basement floor.

"Hicks—grab him!" Decker shouted. Hicks came forward, crouching and feinting like a wrestler, but as soon as he tried to grapple with their invisible opponent, his legs were kicked out from under him and he fell heavily backward, knocking his head.

Queen Aché's left arm was yanked up in the same way as her right, and with a crunch of bone, a V-shaped cut half severed her hand, so that it flopped sideways on a skein of skin and tendons. Seconds later, another cut lopped it off completely.

"Shroud!" Decker roared at him. "Show yourself, you bas­tard!" He fired another two shots but he knew that he must have missed. He ejected his cartridge cases, but as he tried to reload he was violently slammed in the shoulder and sent flying against the stalagmites again.

He rolled over, winded. He was still on his hands and knees when Queen Aché's feet were chopped off at the an­kles and thrown in different directions, with blood spinning out of them like Catherine wheels. Then her hair was sud­denly tugged up, so that her head was lifted from the floor. Her left ear was sliced off, upward, and then her right. Then—with no hesitation, and with a gristly crunch—her

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nose was cut away, so that she had nothing left in the mid­dle of her face but two triangular holes, bubbling with blood. Decker fired again, twice, as close to Queen Aché as he dared.

He waited, panting, straining his eyes to see the slightest deflection in the air.

"Shroud . . . I swear to God, I'm going to kill you for this."

"Changó protects me," Major Shroud said. His voice sounded so close to Decker's ear that he twisted around in alarm, his gun raised two-handed in front of his face.

"He has punished this santera. Tomorrow it will be my turn to take my revenge on you."

Decker could hear police and ambulance sirens, although he didn't know what possible use any backup could be. He tried to stand up, but the air suddenly warped in front of his eyes, and Major Shroud pushed him roughly back onto his side. "Why do you struggle, Martin? You might just as well fight against the wind."

He tried to get up yet again, but again Major Shroud thrust him back down. "If you defy me anymore, I will give you a Tenth Death tomorrow. I will cut off your manhood and push it down your throat."

"I bet you will, too. You did the same thing to those poor young kids after Manassas, didn't you? You're a fucking out-and-out sadist, Shroud."

"Sadist?" Shroud said, puzzled.

"Somebody who gets their kicks out of hurting people, asshole. This is nothing to do with Changó, is it? You're us­ing Chango's power, for sure. But this is nothing to do with Santeria, it's all about you. Eleven good men found out what a psycho you were, and sealed you up where you belonged, and that's the only reason you want your revenge. Believe me, you're not going to get it."

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"You really think so? Believe me, Martin, I've waited far too long for this day."

Decker heard car doors slamming outside, and running feet. Hicks shouted, "This way! This way!"

The distortion in the air flickered away from Decker and moved around Queen Ache, who was lying on her back with a shiny balloon of blood where her nose had been.

"Don't," Decker said. But at the same time, he asked him­self if Queen Ache would even want to go on living, with­out hands, without feet, grotesquely disfigured as she was.

Queen Aché was slowly lifted up. She rose like a puppet, her arms hanging loose, her knees half bent. Her head hung to one side with long strings of blood sliding from her nose. As she stood erect, on her chopped-off ankles, half a dozen uniforms came running into the basement with their guns drawn.

"Lieutenant! What's happening here? Lieutenant!" Decker climbed to his feet and raised his hand. "Take it easy, guys. This is kind of a hostage situation."

The rest of the men stayed back but Sergeant Buchholz came waddling right up to him. He was a big-bellied man, with a moustache like a sweeping brush. "What's the story, Lieutenant?" He jerked his thumb toward Queen Aché. "What the hell happened to her?" She appeared to be stand­ing on her own, but she was smothered in blood and she swayed improbably from side to side.

"You don't recognize her? Well, I can't blame you. That's Queen Aché."

"Queen Aché? Holy shit."

"She's being held hostage."

"Hostage? What do you mean? Who by?"

"He's right here, Buchholz, but he's not exactly one hun­dred percent visible."

"Excuse me?"

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Decker laid a hand on his shoulder, more for support than anything else. "The hostage taker is holding her up. Look at her. She can't stand up on her own, because he cut her feet off."

Sergeant Buchholz was even more baffled. "He's holding her up? I don't understand what you mean, Lieutenant. There's nobody there."

"Tomorrow, Martin!" Major Shroud called. "This is what will happen to you!"

Sergeant Buchholz turned wildly around, first to the left and then to the right. "Who said that? Who the fuck said that?"

"Shroud," Decker said. "I'm begging you."

"Shroud? Who's Shroud? Come on, Lieutenant, for Christ's sake!"

"Shroud!" Decker repeated, but he knew that it was no use. He caught the faintest shine of a saber blade, and Queen Aché's head was struck from her shoulders and tum­bled onto the floor. It rolled over and over and ended up close to his feet, noseless, earless, and staring at him. Her headless body stood upright for three countable seconds, one, two, three, with arterial blood jetting out of her severed neck like spray after spray of scarlet flowers, and then she twisted around and collapsed.

His eyes bulging, Sergeant Buchholz jabbed his revolver in every possible direction. "Who the hell did that? Who the hell did that?"

Decker lowered his Anaconda. "You witnessed that, right?" "Of course I witnessed it. But who did it?"

"Sorry, Sergeant. It's a very long story."

"Somebody cut her head off, for Christ's sake. But there's nobody there."

"Like I told you, the hostage taker isn't exactly visible." "Meaning what, Lieutenant, or am I missing something?"

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"Meaning he's here but you can't see him, that's all." "So where the hell's he gone now?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Sergeant. He could be standing right behind you, for all I know."

"What?"

"Unlikely. I think he probably left the building already." Hicks came over, circling as far away from Queen Aché's

sprawled and bloodied body as he could. He glanced down

at her head but then he looked away.

"You okay?" Decker asked him.

"What do you think? I've spent the whole of my life try­ing to get away from this voodoo stuff. My grandmother, my aunts, and my uncles, they all had their spells and their magic cures and their coconut shells. My friends at school got sick, their parents took them to the doctor. When I got sick, they rubbed me with egg yolks and blew cigar smoke all over me. It made me feel like I was some kind of savage.

"Why do you think I don't like Rhoda doing her séances? It's mumbo-jumbo. It's slave stuff. Why can't they leave it where it belongs, back in Africa, back in the past? I hate that stuff."

"Maybe you do, but it works."

Hicks said, "The Nine Deaths. Jesus. And that's what he's going to do to you."

Decker checked his watch. Three paramedics were com­ing through the basement, pushing a loudly rattling gurney. The police officers were milling around, wondering what to do. Decker said, "I still have five and a half hours till Saint James Day."

"How are you going to stop him?"

Decker looked down at Queen Aché's head. "I told you, I'm going to think."

"If I were you, I'd take the first flight out of here, as far away as possible."

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"Uh-huh, that's not the way to do it. You got to face up to things, sport. No use in running away."

Hicks gave Queen Aché's head another disgusted look. "Something else, wasn't she? Really something else." "Oh yes. But she didn't get any more than she deserved."

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Cab said, "I guess I can be thankful for one small mercy." "Oh yes? And what's that?"

"The whole time you failed to report back to headquar­ters, I didn't sneeze once. It ain't myrtle I'm a martyr to, it's you."

Decker didn't know what to say to that. Cab opened the folder on his desk in front of him and studied it for a while, and then he said, "Queen Aché accompanied you voluntar­ily to Main Street Station?"

"Yes, Captain. No duress whatever."

"And she was mutilated and eventually decapitated by your prime suspect, whom you conveniently managed not to tell me the name of the last time we spoke? Right in front of you, and in front of Sergeant Hicks, and seven uniformed officers?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you have any idea what the political repercussions of this killing are going to be? I mean, do you have any idea at

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all? We haven't informed the media yet, but I'll give it an­other hour before somebody from the Egun makes a public complaint. Ms. Honey Blackwell is going to accuse us of everything from willful endangerment to institutionalized racism.

"Apart from that, Decker, where the hell are you going with this investigation? The interim chief is screaming down the phone at me every five minutes and the Times-Dispatch has started calling us 'Richmond's Finest Fumblers."

"Well, Captain, you have to understand that this is a very unusual case. Even more complex than it appeared at first sight. It's going to take patience, and imagination, and even more patience."

"But you do have a prime suspect?"

"Absolutely."

"So . . . who is it?"

"I'd rather not give you his name, sir, not just yet." "I am your captain, Decker."

"Yes, sir. But I seriously believe it would jeopardize my in­vestigation if I were to tell you his identity before I made my final move."

"Oh yes. And why is that?"

"Because (a) you wouldn't believe me, and (b) you couldn't officially approve of what I'm planning to do in or­der to stop him."

"I don't like the sound of the word 'stop."

"All right, 'apprehend.' "

Cab heaved himself up from his chair and walked across to the window. "You're a good detective, Decker. Tell me that I can trust you on this."

"You can trust me, Captain. Really."

"So how much patience are you looking for?"

"Twelve hours' worth, maybe a whole lot less. It depends on the suspect."

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"All right, then, much against my better judgment. But if I give you that much rope, it'll be your fault if you hang yourself with it."

"Hanging? That's the least of my worries."

Billy Joe Bennett was polishing a Civil War coffee boiler when Decker and Hicks came into the Rebel Yell.

"See this?" he said, holding it up. "This is a genuine rar­ity. When the army of northern Virginia went to war in 1861 they took along whole wagon trains of baking trays and sheet-iron stoves and cutlery and flour boxes and every convenience you could think of. But after six months of toting all that stuff around they threw away just about everything but a bucket and an ax and a frying pan."

Decker said, "I'm looking for a uniform."

"A uniform? Sure. Depends what you want. I've just bought a jacket from the Second Company, Richmond How­itzers, used to belong to Captain Lorraine F. Jones and it's still got his name in it. I've got pants from Cutshaw's battery, and any number of slouch hats and buck gloves and belts."

"I'm looking for a general's uniform. I want to dress up like Robert E. Lee."

Billy Joe raised his eyebrows. "Fancy-dress party?" "Something like that."

It took almost a half hour of rummaging, but eventually Billy Joe came up with a double-breasted frock coat, a pair of gray pants with canvas suspenders, a broad-brimmed hat, a pair of long buck gloves, and a pair of high black riding boots. Decker tried on the hat and the frock coat, and Billy Joe stood back and nodded in approval. "All you need now is a white beard and Traveler. That was Lee's favorite horse. Oh, and how about this?"

He went over to the display cabinet and came back with

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the same wrist breaker that he had refused to sell to the cus­tomer from Madison, with a decorative scabbard for Decker to hang it on his belt.

"Can't have Robert E. Lee without his sword, wouldn't be right. But don't go swinging it about, Lieutenant. You don't want to be taking anybody's bean off, by accident."

As they drove away from the store, Hicks said, "Are you going to give me any idea what this is all about?"

"You'll see." He picked up his cell phone and punched out Jonah's number. "Jonah . . . it's Decker Martin. No, don't worry about that. No. Listen, you remember that store you took me to, to buy all those gifts for Moses Adebolu? That's right. Can you do me a favor and go there and buy me everything it takes to make an offering to Changó? Ba­nanas, spices, apples, and all those herbs, you know, like rompe zaraguey and prodigiosa. Oh yes, a live rooster, too. Why? You don't need to know why. Just drop it all off at po­lice headquarters. Yes, of course I'll pay you."

When they reached Seventh Street he took a left and parked outside Stagestruck Theatrical Supplies. It was a small store with a window display of Shakespearean cos­tumes—Romeo in doublet and hose, and Juliet in a long pearl-studded dress and a wimple. Decker went up to the diminutive old gnome behind the counter and said, "I'm looking for a beard."

"A beard, you say? Then you came to the right place. We have the finest selection of surrogate facial hair in all Vir­ginia. What are you looking for? Goatee, Abe Lincoln, or Grizzly Adams?"

They collected Jonah's shopping from police headquarters. The sergeant on the desk handed over the basket contain­ing the live rooster with obvious relief. "Damn thing wouldn't stop clucking. Worse than my wife."

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Next, they stopped at the Bottom Line Restaurant on East Main Street for hamburgers and buffalo wings and beer. Decker could eat only two or three mouthfuls of his ham­burger. "Shit—I feel like the condemned man, eating his last meal."

"You have a plan though, don't you?"

"Not much of one."

"You're going to dress up like Robert E. Lee?"

"That's the general idea."

"And you think—what? That Major Shroud is going to stop and salute you?"

"Maybe. The point is that Major Shroud feels deeply ag­grieved because he expected to be treated like a hero in­stead of a war criminal. He spent nearly 150 years sealed up in that casket. Can you imagine it? Never able to sleep, never able to die. That's plenty of time to develop a raging homicidal obsession, wouldn't you say?"

"He's not going to believe that General Lee is still alive, though, is he?"

"I don't know. If he doesn't, then this isn't going to work. But he's not mentally stable, there's no question of that. Who would be, after being buried alive for so long? And if we can take him by surprise—"

"I still think we should call in the SWAT team."

Decker shook his head. "Waste of time. When Shroud's invisible he's not a solid physical presence in the same way as you or me. He has the kinetic energy to push us around, that's for sure, but I don't think we can hurt him with bul­lets. It's all part of the same Santeria magic that allows him to walk through walls. God knows how it's done. I mean, it defies every law of physics you can think of. But maybe it's like ultraviolet light, which you can't see, or dog whistles, which you can't hear. Just because you can't see them and

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you can't hear them, that doesn't mean they're not there." "Too heavy for me, Lieutenant."

Back at Decker's apartment, Hicks hung up his coat and an­gled one of the armchairs so that he was facing the door. He laid his gun on the coffee table beside him, for all the use that was going to be. Decker unloaded all of Jonah's shop­ping in the kitchen, including the fretfully clucking rooster, and then went through to the bedroom.

"Help yourself to a soda," he told Hicks. "I don't know how long we're going to have to wait for Major Shroud to make an appearance."

"Not too long, Lieutenant, if you want my opinion. The way he was talking, he's just champing at the bit to cut you into chitterlings."

"Sure. Thanks for the reassurance."

Decker laid out his Civil War uniform on the bed. He hoped to God that he hadn't misjudged Major Shroud's motives, or overestimated how much control Major Shroud was able to exert over the spirit of Changó. But when Major Shroud had ordered him to, Changó had im­mediately returned to protect him—in spite of Queen Aché's offer of apples and herbs. Why would Changó have done that, unless—in this unholy symbiosis of god and man—Major Shroud was the dominant partner? Men and their gods are inseparable, and sometimes the gods have to do what men bid them to do, for the sake of their own survival. When men don't believe in them any longer, gods die.

Decker picked up the photograph of Cathy on the Robert E. Lee footbridge. If I get out of this, the first thing I'm going to do is visit your grave and lay camellias on it, heaps of camellias, your very favorite flower. Wherever you are now, I love you still,

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and I always will, just as much as you love me, and more.

He pulled on the rough gray Civil War pants and fastened the withered suspenders to hold them up. The pants were two or three inches too short in the leg, but that wouldn't matter when he put his boots on. He picked a plain gray shirt out of his closet, and then he shrugged on the heavy frock coat and fastened it right up to the neck. It smelled of dry-cleaning, and age.

The boots were a size too tight, but he managed to force them onto his feet by repeatedly stamping his heels on the floor. He didn't know how he was going to get them off, but he could worry about that later. Finally, he went into the bath­room and painted his chin and his upper lip with the spirit gum that the gnome in Stagestruck had sold him. He took his bristly white beard out of its polythene bag and carefully pressed it on. In a few minutes, he looked twenty years older. A slightly sharp-faced version of General Lee, but not an unconvincing likeness, apart from his Italian designer glasses. He adjusted his wide-brimmed hat, hung his saber onto his belt, and then he stood in front of the full-length mirror and struck a pose.

He came out of the bedroom, stalked across to where Hicks was sitting, and stood in front of him. In a deep, sonorous voice, he said, "After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the army of northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to over­whelming numbers and resources."

"Holy shit," Hicks said, rising to his feet.

"Think it'll work?" Decker asked.

"Well, you sure convinced me."

Decker took off his hat and sat down. "This is madness, isn't it?"

"I don't know. This whole thing is madness. Maybe the only way to fight madness is to act even madder."

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"Well, sport, I hope you're right. I don't know what the media are going to make of it, if I get chopped into pieces while I'm all dressed up like Robert E. Lee."

All they could do now was sit and wait. Midnight passed, and Hicks checked his watch and said, "That's it, Saint James Day," but after twenty minutes there was still no sign of Major Shroud, and the only sound they heard from out­side was the lonely hooting of a riverboat.

Decker said, "If this doesn't come to anything . . . you know, if Shroud doesn't show . . . you won't mention this to anybody, will you?"

"What, you dressing up like General Lee?" Hicks hesi­tated, and then he smiled and shook his head. "What kind of a partner do you think I am?"

"You're a good partner, Hicks. Hardworking, bright. I think you're going to go far."

"I don't know. This investigation, you know, it's thrown

me completely. I keep asking myself, how would I have han‑

dled it, if I'd been in charge? You know what I mean?" "Sure, I know what you mean. And what was your answer?" "I wouldn't have dared to do anything that you did." "Of course you would. Don't sell yourself short." "You think I would have arranged a séance with my part‑

ner's wife, without even asking him?"

"I'm sorry about that, I told you."

"You don't have to be sorry. It was the right thing to do. Do you think I would have blackmailed Queen Aché into looking for Changó for me?"

"I don't know, maybe."

"That woman frightened three colors of shit out of me. I wouldn't have dared to do that."

"You can't say that. Maybe you would."

"I wouldn't, because I didn't want to believe in any of this

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Santeria stuff. You didn't want to believe it, either, but at least your mind was open, and you followed the clues where they led you."

The white-bearded Decker said, "That's where you're wrong, sport. I didn't follow any clues. I was shown the way, by a spirit who loves me more than I even realized. That was the only reason I believed in the Devil's Brigade, and Chango, and that was the only reason I went looking for Major Shroud."

Hicks looked at his watch. "How about a cup of coffee? Want me to make it?"

"Sure, sounds like a good idea."

Hicks went into the kitchen and switched on the light. As he did so, there was a ring at the doorbell. He turned and stared at Decker, and Decker pulled his Anaconda out of his holster and cocked it.

There was a long pause, and then the doorbell rang again. "Think it's him?" Hicks asked, in a hoarse whisper.

"He'd just walk through the wall, wouldn't he? He

wouldn't ring the bell."

"Yeah. But it could be him."

"Go take a look through the spyhole."

While Hicks went to the door to see who was there, Decker went from lamp to lamp, switching them off, so that the light was subdued, apart from a single bright desk lamp directly behind him. Then he stood in the center of the room, stiff-backed, bearded chin protruding, as if he were General Robert E. Lee himself, expecting an audience.

Hicks turned around and said, "It's not him."

"It's not? Then who is it?"

"Friends of yours. Sandra Plummer and her mother." "What? What the hell are they doing here?"

"You want me to let them in?"

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"Of course I want you to let them in."

Hicks opened the door and Sandra came in, blinking against the light. She was wearing a gray duffel coat and a maroon woolly hat. Eunice Plummer came in right behind her, her hair even wilder than usual, dressed in a long brown raincoat.

"Where's Lieutenant Martin?" she asked.

Decker took off his hat. "Right here, Ms. Plummer. Don't let the beard fool you."

Eunice Plummer peered at him closely. "My goodness, it is you. Why are you dressed up like that?"

"Because I'm expecting a visitor, Ms. Plummer. I'm ex­pecting the man who killed Jerry and Alison Maitland, and George Drewry, and John Mason. Apparently I'm next on his list."

"But why do you have to look like Robert E. Lee?"

"I'm flattered—you guessed who I was supposed to be. It's

called psychology, Ms. Plummer. Catching your suspect off

guard. But what are you two doing here? It's past midnight." "The So-Scary Man is coming," Sandra said, emphatically. "How do you know that, Sandra?"

"She woke me up and said she could feel it," Eunice Plummer said, somewhat impatiently. "I told her she was imagining things, and to go back to bed, but she wouldn't. I'm afraid she threw a bit of a tantrum, so in the end there was nothing I could do but bring her here and show her. Otherwise she could have suffered an episode."

"An episode?"

"A fit, Lieutenant, and they can be very harmful." Decker said, "Sit down, please. How about a cup of cof­fee? Sergeant Hicks here was just making some."

"No, thank you," Eunice Plummer said. "But Sandra might like a glass of warm milk."

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Decker sat next to Sandra and took hold of her hands. "Sorry about the beard, Sandra. It's my disguise."

"You look like Santa Claus."

"Yes, you're right. Ho-ho-ho! Sorry I don't have any pres­ents for you. But listen—tell me what you felt about the So-Scary Man."

"I was having a dream. I was dreaming about the House of Fun."

"Go on."

"I saw the twisty cloud over the rooftop and then I saw the So-Scary Man coming out of the door. He was wearing his long gray coat and he was wearing a hat like yours, and I knew that he was coming to find you."

She hesitated, and then she said, "He was carrying a sword, too. Just like yours."

Eunice Plummer looked at Decker keenly. "You're really expecting him, aren't you? What Sandra saw in her dream—that was real, wasn't it?"

Decker nodded. "The So-Scary Man is Major Joseph Shroud, who was possessed by a Santeria god called Chango, back in 1864, during the Battle of the Wilderness. Chango gave him such power that he was able to massacre hundreds of Union soldiers, and I guess he could have turned the tide of the war, if Lieutenant General Longstreet had allowed it."

"I don't understand. How could he still be alive today?"

"I don't really understand it myself. But his fellow officers sealed him in a lead casket so that his body was preserved, and I guess that his life spark was kept alight by Chango."

"And he's coming here—tonight?"

"My great-great-grandfather was one of the men who sealed him up. He wants his revenge."

Sandra said, "I woke up and I looked out of my bedroom window and I saw the black twisty cloud over the House of Fun and I knew it was real."

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"You're right, Sandra," Decker told her. "It is real." He turned to Eunice Plummer and said, "There's no doubt about it—Sandra has some extrasensory sensitivity, what­ever you want call it. Otherwise she wouldn't know that Main Street Station is the House of Fun—or, actually, °fun,' which means 'the place where the curse is born."

To Sandra, he said, "Sandra—I want to thank you for all of your concern. You've been amazing, and you've helped us to solve all these murders. But things could get danger­ous here tonight, so I want you to take your mom home, okay? When all of this is finished with, and we've locked the So-Scary Man up in prison, I'll come around and take you and your mom out for lunch. How do you like fried chicken ?"

"He's outside the door," Sandra said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Excuse me?"

"The So-Scary Man. He's standing right outside the door."

Decker immediately stood up and jammed on his hat. "Hicks!" he shouted. "Forget about the coffee! He's here! Bring in the fruit and everything! Bring in that rooster! And bring in that carving knife, too!"

Eunice looked flustered. "What shall we do?"

"You and Sandra go into the bedroom. Close the door and lock it. He won't try to hurt you unless you get in his way."

"I have to stay," Sandra said.

"You can't! This man is a homicidal maniac! Now get in the bedroom, please!"

"But you won't be able to see him!"

Hicks was coming out of the kitchen with a paper bag of groceries in one hand and the rooster in the other. The rooster was fluttering and flustering and trying to burst out

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of its basket. Hicks said, "She's right, Lieutenant. Think what happened to Queen Ache."

But Decker took Sandra's arm and started to propel her toward the bedroom. "I can't risk it. If the So-Scary Man sees that you've been helping me—God alone knows what he could do to you!"

"I have to stay!" Sandra protested. "Don't you under­stand? It's what I was born for!"

Decker stopped pushing her and stared at her. Sandra stared back at him, her pale blue eyes unblinking and determined.

Eunice Plummer came forward and put her arm around Sandra's shoulders. "She's right, Lieutenant. Don't you see? She was born with a handicap, but she was also born with a very great gift. This is her destiny, isn't it?"

Decker opened his mouth and then closed it again. He didn't know what to say.

Hicks lifted up the brown paper bag of fruit and herbs. "All ready, Lieutenant."

"Okay, then, sport." Decker turned back to Sandra and looked at her seriously. "If you really want to stay, Sandra—you can stay. But promise me you'll keep right behind me, and don't attract attention to yourself. If things start to go wrong, don't hesitate, don't try to help—you and your mom run into that bedroom as fast as you can and lock the door tight and call the police."

Sandra said, "I promise."

Decker turned around. Hicks was waiting in the kitchen doorway and gave him the thumbs-up. "Is the So-Scary Man still outside?" he asked Sandra.

Sandra nodded. "He's saying something, inside his head. Like a prayer."

"All right, then. Hold tight."

After a while, Sandra closed her eyes and began to mut­ter. Decker couldn't hear everything she was saying, but he

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recognized some of it. "Babami Chango ikawo ilemu fumi alaya tilanchani nitosi . . . "

He went back to the middle of the room, took off his glasses, and stood very stiff, in the same way that General Lee had posed for so many photographs and engravings. He tried to look calm and unafraid, even though his heart was galloping like a panicky horse and he kept seeing flashes of Queen Ache, hopelessly holding up the stumps of her fin­gerless hands, with sticks of bone showing above the flesh.

Sandra muttered, ". . . Ni re elese ati wi Change) alamu oba layo ni na ile ogbomi." She paused for a while and then she opened her eyes.

"Is he moving yet?" Decker asked.

Sandra said nothing. Her eyes seemed to be focused on nothing at all.

"Sandra? Is he moving yet?"

"He's already inside," Sandra whispered. "He's standing by the door."

Decker narrowed his eyes, trying to see any disturbance in the air, but without his glasses the middle distance was a blur.

"He's coming nearer. He's walking past the kitchen. He's here. He's right in front of you. He's staring at you."

Decker cleared his throat. "Major Joseph Shroud?" he asked, gruffly.

"He's still staring at you," Sandra said. "He's got his hand resting on his sword handle."

Decker said, as grandly as he could, "I've received a dis­patch about you, Major Shroud, from Lieutenant General Longstreet."

"He's taken his hand off his sword handle. He's lifting his arm. He's saluting you."

"General Lee, sir? Is that really General Lee?" Major Shroud's disembodied voice was husky with emotion.

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"It seems that the army of northern Virginia owes you a considerable debt, Major Shroud."

"I only did what was required of me, General."

"No, Major Shroud, you did much more than that. You sacrificed yourself for your country. Single-handed, you drove back the enemy, and you safeguarded our capital and our cause. In recognition of your valor and your devotion, I am hereby promoting you to the rank of colonel."

"I'm honored, General."

"Yes, Major Shroud. You are honored. Not condemned, not reviled. But honored. Let me see you now, so that I can grasp your hand."

"He's giving you a funny look," Sandra warned.

"Come now, Major Shroud," Decker urged him. "Where is your hand?"

"You can't see me, General? How did you know I was here, if you couldn't see me?"

"I sensed you, Major. I can always sense bravery. I can smell it on the wind."

Seconds ticked by. For a long moment, Decker thought that Major Shroud had recognized him behind his disguise, and that there would be no way of stopping him from in­flicting the Nine Deaths on him—or even, God forbid, the Ten Deaths.

But then Sandra whispered, "Look." And gradually, the air in front of Decker began to curdle and thicken. It formed in dark, shadowy lumps, and then veins and arteries began to wriggle from one lump to the next, and bones took shape, and in less than a minute Major Shroud had materi­alized, in his crow's-feather hat, and his long gray topcoat, and his boots.

"At your service, General," he declared.

Decker gave a grave, dignified smile. He stepped forward

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and took hold of Major Shroud's hand and shook it. Even through his buck gloves it felt as if it were nothing but knuckles and finger bones.

"Major Joseph Shroud, I hereby promote you to the rank of full colonel in the army of northern Virginia. You have your country's unceasing admiration and thanks, and the name of Shroud will enter the annals of this mighty conflict as a name forever associated with valor and with duty faith­fully performed."

It was then, while he was still gripping Major Shroud's hand, that he said, quite quietly, "Now, Hicks."

Hicks came out of the kitchen shaking the brown paper bag. "Chango! Chango, listen to me! I bring you an offer­ing! I bring you fruit and and spices! I bring you rum!"

"What is this?" Major Shroud demanded. "Who is this nigger?" He tried to pull his hand away but Decker held it tight.

"Chango!" Hicks sang out. "Leave this host and refresh yourself! Kabio, kabio, sile!"

"General Lee! Release me!" Major Shroud shouted. He was powerful, and his bony hand was knobbly and awkward to hold on to, but Decker didn't loosen his grip.

"I honor you, Chango" Hicks cried. "I give you every­thing you hunger for!"

He tore open the bag and scattered the fruit and the herbs across the floor. "Kabio, kabio, sile! Welcome, Chango"

Oh, God, this is not going to work, thought Decker. Chango isn't going to leave him. And with a sudden twist that almost sprained Decker's wrist, Major Shroud tugged his hand free and immediately went for his saber. He drew it out of its scabbard with a metallic sliding sound that set Decker's teeth on edge.

"Chango! I welcome you! Chango!"

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Decker shouted at Sandra and Eunice Plummer, "Back—both of you! Get into the bedroom!"

Major Shroud advanced on him, his eyes glittering, his teeth bared in the black briar thicket of his beard. "You're no more Robert E. Lee than I am, are you? You're that damned Martin! Well, now, Martin, you're going to see where downright treachery gets you!"

Decker knew that he couldn't shoot him, not while Chango still protected him. Changa's anger at being at­tacked would be a hundred times worse. But all the same he drew out his own sword, Billy Joe's wrist breaker, and he waved it defiantly from side to side.

"You want to cut me to pieces? Okay, you throwback, let's see you try!"

Major Shroud lunged forward and his sword clanged and clashed against Decker's saber and almost knocked it out of his hand. Decker swung his arm and managed to deflect an­other lunge, but then Major Shroud performed a quick flurry of movements and the point of his sword jabbed deep into Decker's left shoulder.

Decker hardly felt any pain, but now he was seriously worried. Major Shroud began to press him harder and harder, his sword flashing in crisscross patterns that Decker could hardly see. He kept clashing his saber from side to side, and he managed to parry most of Major Shroud's lunges, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to hold him off for very long.

Retreating, he fell backward over the arm of the couch. Major Shroud raised his sword high above his head and smacked it down on the seat cushions just as Decker rolled off them onto the floor. Multicolored sponge stuffing flew up like a snowstorm.

Decker tried to crawl away, but Major Shroud had him

348

now. He stabbed him in the back of his right thigh, and then his right shoulder, and then he straddled him and gripped him tight between his knees.

"The Nine Deaths, Martin," he grunted. He reeked of stale sweat and gunpowder and filthy clothes and herbs. His hair was seething with lice.

Decker twisted himself around and tried to seize Major Shroud's wrist, but Major Shroud sliced him across the palm of his hand, at least a quarter inch deep, and blood poured out between his fingers and down his sleeve.

"Now for the First Death;" Major Shroud told him, and took hold of Decker's left arm. "I'll grant you a little respite, Martin, and take the fingers off your left hand first."

He raised his sword—but as he did so, Decker heard a fu­rious clucking. Hicks came forward, and he was holding up the wildly flapping rooster by its legs.

"Chango!" Hicks shouted. "Come to me, Chango! This is your sacrifice! This is your blood! Come eat! Come drink! Kabio, kabio, site! Welcome to our house!"

Major Shroud turned his head around and screamed back, "What are you doing, you damn fool nigger? Get away from here! Get away! By God, I'm going to have your head next!"

"Chango! Let us see you! Chango, master of fire! Chango, master of thunder and lightning! Chango--are you master of your own destiny?"

With that, Hicks slashed the carving knife across the rooster's neck, almost beheading it. He swung the bird around and around, high above his head, and blood flew everywhere, spattering the walls, spattering Decker's face, pattering onto Major Shroud's hat and coat.

"No!" Major Shroud roared. "No, Chango! I forbid it! I forbid it!"

But Decker could see the blue crackle of electricity

349

crawling around the outline of Major Shroud's face. Then—while Major Shroud still ranted in frustrated fury—a lattice of quivering light formed around his head.

"No! No! No! Chango! You have to protect me! If I die, you die!"

But Chango slowly rose out of Major Shroud like a ghost rising from a grave, his arms outstretched. His face was a mask, decorated with fire. His eyes burned red, his hair was like a hundred streamers of flame, and his mouth was filled with dancing, sizzling voltage. He wore a cloak of billowing brown smoke, in which Decker could glimpse intermittent flashes of lightning.

"You can't leave me!" shrieked Major Shroud. "You can't leave me!"

The whole apartment began to shake. Pictures dropped off the walls, lamps overturned and smashed on the floor, chairs tipped over. A double fork of lightning jumped from one side of the living room to the other, and Decker was al­most blinded. Then—almost immediately—there was an earsplitting bellow of thunder. The couch burst into flames, and then the drapes.

One arm raised to protect his face from the heat, Hicks yelled, "Chango! You are indeed your own master! You are the master of the world!"

Major Shroud climbed off Decker and went for Hicks with his sword flailing. Decker scrambled to his feet, too, and pulled his Anaconda out of his Civil War holster. Hicks was retreating toward the kitchen, trying to parry Major Shroud's lunges by wildly waving the dead rooster from side to side. In the middle of the room, half hidden by thick, swirling smoke, Chango glittered and blazed.

Decker cocked his revolver and pointed it at Major Shroud's head. "Major Shroud!"

There was another flash of lightning, and then another

350

rumble of thunder, far longer than the first, a rumble that seemed to go on and on, as if it would never stop. Lumps of plaster dropped from the ceiling, and wide cracks appeared in the walls. The apartment was already fiercely hot, and one of the windows shattered. A hungry wind gusted in from the river, and the couch flared up like a Norse funeral pyre.

With the briarlike afterimage of the lightning strike still dancing in front of his eyes, Decker took aim at Major Shroud again, and fired. Major Shroud tilted his head to one side, and the bullet hit the picture of the Dutch girl and smashed the glass. Decker fired again, and again, but Major Shroud moved like a speeded-up film, and both of his shots went wide.

"You'll have to hit me to kill me!" he screamed, above the funneling noise of the fire. He hacked furiously at Hicks, and caught him a blow on the shoulder. Hicks said, "Shit!" and dropped to the floor, still clutching the bloody rooster. Now Major Shroud turned on Decker, and came striding to­ward him, with his sword whistling in ever more compli­cated figures-of-eight.

"Nine Deaths, Martin? Ten? I'll give you twenty!"

He lifted his sword right back behind his head, and there was a look on his face that Decker had never seen on a man before. It was triumph, and mockery, and an excitement that was almost orgasmic. But it was more than that. It was the look of a man who had undergone a physical and spiri­tual metamorphosis. He was no longer a man, nor a beast, but something altogether more terrible. He was viciousness incarnate, and vengefulness, and war.

Decker fired at him again, and again he missed. He was just about to fire again when there was a third flash of light­ning, so bright that Decker was blinded. It struck the tip of Major Shroud's sword, and Major Shroud was hurled bodily

351

across the living room, colliding with the opposite wall and tumbling onto the floor. He lay there, jerking and twitch­ing, with smoke pouring out of his coat. His beard glowed with a thousand orange sparks, like a smoldering sweeping brush.

Decker looked around. The burning figure of Chango was standing in the smoke, with one arm still extended. Decker said, "You did that?"

Chango opened his mouth and static electricity sparkled on his teeth. He didn't actually speak, but somehow Decker could hear him, inside his head, and in a strange way, more like pictures than words, he could understand what Chango was trying to tell him.

He kept my spirit prisoner for thousands of darknesses. He thought of nothing but bringing pain and death to those good men who harbored my brother and sister orishas. He deserved nothing but punishment. He killed those warriors who fought to set my people free.

Decker said nothing for a moment, but nodded, and coughed.

Chango said, Your gift is well received. Your summons was welcome.

With that, his fiery image began to fade. For a few sec­onds, through the smoke, Decker could make out an arrangement of twinkling stars, more like a distant constel­lation than a dwindling god. Then Chango was gone, and there was nothing but the burning couch and the black­ened, burning drapes that flapped in the wind.

Major Shroud groaned. Decker walked over to the other side of the room and looked down at him. Major Shroud's face was blackened and his eyes were rimmed with red.

"—betrayed me," he complained. "Even my god be­trayed me."

"Nobody betrayed anybody except you, Major Shroud."

352

"It was war. That's what you forget. It was war, and I was doing my duty. The only trouble was, I did it too well."

"Yes," Decker said. "You probably did."

With that, he cocked his Anaconda again and pointed it between Major Shroud's eyebrows. "Hicks," he said, "can you walk okay?"

"Yassuh, boss."

"Go get Sandra and her mom out of the bedroom, would you?"

Hicks limped across the living room and opened the bed­room door. "Come on out, it's safe now. But hurry."

He led them out of the door while Decker kept the muz­zle of his Anaconda only an inch away from Major Shroud's forehead, unwavering.

"The South will rise again," Major Shroud said. "You'll see."

"Pity you won't," Decker replied, and pulled the trigger.

At that instant the apartment exploded. Decker was flung against the kitchen archway, knocking his head so hard that he saw nothing but a blinding white light. He managed to crawl to the door, and Hicks grabbed hold of his coat collar and dragged him out into the corridor.

"My hat!" he said. "Billy Joe will kill me if I lose my hat!"

They walked out of the apartment building together to find the street already crowded with fire trucks and squad cars and sightseers. When Decker looked back up to his apart­ment, he saw that flames were waving out of the window like a burning Confederate battle flag, fanned by the early-morning wind.

As he crossed the curb, holding hands with Sandra, a TV floodlight was suddenly switched on, and this was instantly followed by a barrage of camera flashes.

353

Somebody called out, "Hey—it's Robert E. Lee! I swear to God, it's Robert E. Lee!"

Hicks turned to him and grinned, even though his left shoulder was soaked in blood. "They still love you, General Lee."

As they were surrounded by reporters and police and paramedics, a woman's voice began to sing "Dixie," and one by one, others joined in, and as Decker stood in the middle of the crowd, there was nothing he could do but nod and smile and lift his hat in the same respectful way that Robert E. Lee had lifted his hat to his defeated army.

The crowd didn't sing the popular words about the cot­ton fields, but the rousing battle hymn written by Albert Pike.

Southrons, hear your country call you! Up, lest worse than death befall you! To arms! To arms! To arms! In Dixie!

Lo! All the beacon fires are lighted! Let all hearts be now united!

To arms! To arms! To arms! In Dixie!

Advance the flag of Dixie!

Hurrah! Hurrah!

For Dixie's land we take our stand, And live or die for Dixie!

Cab arrived and climbed out of his car. It was obvious by his stripy collar that he had hurriedly pulled his big red sweater over his pajamas. "What happened here, Decker? Why the hell are you dressed up like that?"

Decker gritted his teeth and slowly tugged off his beard. "Long story, Captain."

354

Cab looked up at the fire. A turntable ladder was being swiveled around toward the side of the apartment block, and there was a fine spray of water in the wind.

Decker said, "We got him, Captain. You can call up the chief and tell her it's a wrap."

Cab sniffed, and then he sneezed. He didn't have a hand­kerchief, so Eunice Plummer had to hand him a crumpled tissue. "You're a good detective, Decker, but don't ever tell me how you do it. I think I'd come out in hives."

Three days later, on his first day back to the office, Decker's phone rang.

"Decker? This is Captain Morello."

"Well, well, and a very good morning to you, sir." "You're a general now, sir. You don't have to call me `sir." "You saw the news, then. I was going to call you and

thank you for everything you did."

"Lunch would be a very welcome thank-you."

"So long as you don't mind making it a threesome. I have another young lady that I have to thank."

"Should I be jealous?"

Decker thought about it, and smiled, and looked across at Sandra, who was drawing a picture of Chang() on the back of a crime-report sheet.

"Yes," he said. "I think you should."

Before he took Sandra and Toni Morello for lunch, he stopped off at the cemetery and stood in front of Cathy's grave, with an armful of white camellias. The breeze blew across the ruffled surface of the James River and made the trees whisper.

"I don't know where you are now," he told Cathy, as he laid the flowers on the red marble plaque. "But thanks, sweetheart. Thanks for everything."

355

GRAHAM

MASTERTON

THE DOORKEEPERS

Julia Winward has been missing in England for nearly a year. When her mutilated body is finally found floating in the Thames, her brother, Josh, is determined to find out what happened to his sister and exactly who—or what—killed her.

But nothing Josh discovers makes any sense. Julia had been working for a company that went out of business sixty years ago, and living at an address that hasn't existed since World War II. The only one who might help Josh is a strange woman with psychic abilities. But the doors she can open with her mind are far better left closed. For behind these doors lie secrets too horrible to imagine.

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SPIRIT

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Peggy Buchanan is such an adorable little girl, all blond curls and sweetness. Then comes the tragic day when her family finds Peggy floating in the icy water of their swim­ming pool, dead, her white dress billowing around her. Her sisters, Laura and Elizabeth, can't imagine life without Peggy. They know from that day forward their lives will be changed forever. But they can't know the nightmare that waits for them. Peggy may be dead–but she hasn't left them. As the sisters grow up, a string of inexplicable deaths threatens to shatter their lives. No matter how warm the weather, each corpse shows signs of severe frostbite ... and each victim's dying moments are tortured by a merciless little girl in a white dress, whose icy kiss is colder than death.

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THE WIND

R D. CACEK

Listen to the leaves rustling. Hear the wind building. These could be the first signs that Gideon Berlander has found you. They could be the last sounds you hear. Gideon hasn't been the same since that terrifying night in the cave, the night he changed forever—the night he became a Wind Caller. But the power to call upon and control the unimaginable force of the wind in all its fury has warped him, twisted his mind, and unleashed a virtually unstoppable monster. Those who oppose Gideon are destroyed . . . horribly. No one can escape the wind. And no one—not even Gideon—knows what nightmarish secrets wait in its swirling grasp.

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IN

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GARY A. BRAUNBECK

Robert Londrigan seems to have it all. He is a newscaster with a rising career. He has a beautiful wife, Denise, and a new baby on the way. But in just a few short hours Robert's world is turned upside down. Now his family is gone—but the torment only gets worse when his daughter's body is stolen from the morgue by a strange, disfigured man... .

Robert is about to begin a journey into a world of nightmare, an unimaginable world of mystery, horror and revelation. He will learn—from both the living and the dead—secrets about this world and things beyond this world. Though his journey will be gro­tesque, terrifying and heartbreaking, he will not be allowed to stop. But can he survive with his mind intact? Can he survive at all?

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GRAHAM MASTERTON

Graham Masterton is the author of more than 70 horror novels, historical sagas and thrillers. His first horror novel, The Manitou, was published in 1976 and filmed with Tony Curtis, Susan Strasberg, Burgess Meredith, Michael Ansara and Stella Stevens.

Other notable horror novels have included Charnel House (awarded a Special Edgar by Mystery Writers of America); Tengu (awarded a Silver Medal by the West Coast Review of Books); Picture of Evil (only non-French winner of the Prix Julia Verlanger); and The Chosen Child (named Very Best Horror Novel of the Year by Science Fiction Chronicle).

Masterton's short stories have been collected into three volumes, and three of them feature in Tony Scott's TV series The Hunger. He was the editor of Scare Care, a horror anthology published for the benefit of abused chil­dren in the USA and Europe.