The Impaler

Chapter 3

Now he was the General.

Seated at the computer in his white robes, the General scrolled his mouse to the top of the Web page and hit the print button. An article from the Raleigh Sun about the murder of Randall Donovan—details still sketchy, appeared to be some kind of drug hit, investigation ongoing. Just as he expected. Everything part of the equation.

The General rose from his chair, tore off a piece of Scotch Tape from the roll on the workbench, and retrieved the article from the printer. The cellar felt cold to him this morning—colder than usual—and as he sauntered out of the workroom, he thought he could feel his nipples grow hard.

“I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heardme speak.

Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

The music in the background was much softer than it had been for Randall Donovan. “Dark in the Day” was the song—a Clone Six remake of the 1985 version by the one-hit won- der High Risk. The General had been only five years old when the original came out, but still he remembered it from the days before his mother died. There had been messages back then, too—keys to his understanding of the equation—but back then, through the ears of a child, the General had simply been too stupid to understand.

Now, however, the General understood the equation perfectly. The others were capable of understanding, too, but they needed to be reeducated, needed to hear the song over and over—old and new, old and new—to finally understand like he did.

“There were many who came before me, but now I’ve come at last,

From the past into the future, I’m standing at your door.”

The General entered the adjoining room—the reeducation chamber, he called it—and taped the article to the wall. He stood back and admired how it looked among the others—thousands of messages he’d printed from his computer or copied on the machine during his day-life.

All parts of the equation.

The General breathed deeply. The dentist’s chair and the floor were clean now, and the room smelled refreshingly of Pine-Sol.

“I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heardme speak.

Tell me how could you think, I ’d let you get away?”

“Your body is the doorway,” the General said along with the Clone Six lead singer. And then the chorus kicked in.

The cover version was slightly different from the original, but the message was the same—always the same, always part of the equation. Just as it had been long before his mother died.

The General often thought about his mother, but never about his father. He knew him only from a yearbook photo that his mother sometimes showed him before bedtime. “All right,” she’d say. “You can kiss your father good night.” The General could no longer remember what his father looked liked; only blurry rows of black squares that smelled in his mind like perfume and old paper. His mother kept the yearbook hidden underneath a loose floorboard in her bedroom, and made the boy promise never to tell his grandfather she had it. And the boy kept his promise.

For even as a boy, the General always kept his promises.

Smiling, the General walked from the reeducation chamber, down the darkened hallway, and entered into the last of the cellar’s three rooms: the Throne Room.

The General dropped to his knees and bowed his head.

The Throne Room was the smallest but most sacred room in the house. It had once served as his grandmother’s pickling closet, but was now empty except for a large wooden throne at the far end. The General had constructed the throne himself out of pine—it had to be light enough to carry, that was part of the equation, too—and the softness of the wood made it easier for him to carve the intricate designs that adorned the arms and legs and back. He also painted the throne gold and illuminated it with a single spotlight hung from above. The General had stolen the spotlight during his day-life, but unlike the belt sander and other tools he’d taken from his place of employment, his boss never missed it.

“I shall return, my Prince,” the General whispered, but the figure on the throne did not respond. That was all right. The General hadn’t expected the Prince to respond. Not today. Not for a few days, perhaps, or at least until the General fulfilled the next part of the equation.

9:3 or 3:1 was the proper ratio, the equation that held the key to the formula.

The Prince understood the equation. And although he was demanding, he also understood that his General had worked hard to keep the formula in balance—knew that it was time for him to rest. After all, the Prince was a general, too. The supreme general, a general spelled G-E-N-E-R-A-L in big capital letters—the most fearful of them all, in fact. “The Raging Prince,” his soldiers used to call him on the battlefield; sometimes, “the Furious One.”

The General rose to his feet, bowed perfunctorily, and turned off the spotlight. He climbed the cellar stairs in the dark, emerged into the kitchen, and locked the door behind him. He was hungry, but would wait until lunchtime. He had learned to resist temptation; needed to stick to his diet and keep his muscles lean. No more cheeseburgers. General’s orders. That had been the hardest sacrifice of them all. He really missed the cheeseburgers.

Then again, war was all about sacrifice, wasn’t it? At the very least, war was not meant to be easy. Even for the greatest generals. Nonetheless, the General felt confident in his mission. He’d been preparing for it for two years now; could see the results of his hard work in the sinews of his muscular physique; could feel his growing strength in the ease with which he lifted the heavy loads during his day-life.

And the Prince had rewarded him for all his hard work, had promoted him to second in command. A general, too. A warrior-priest who served only the Prince.

Then again, the General was born to serve. And hadn’t the Prince been grooming him for this mission nearly all his life?

The General made his way quickly from the kitchen, through the hallway, and up the stairs to his bedroom. He was going to be late today, and would have to work doubly hard to keep up the appearance of his day-life. But that was all right; the Prince would allow him a respite before the big push toward May. Yes, now that he had laid the groundwork for the Prince’s return, everything would come together much more rapidly in the weeks to come.

Everything would have to if the equation was correct.

And the General was sure the equation was correct.