The Impaler

Chapter 58

The General thought Edmund Lambert handled himself very well with Ereshkigal; for if in fact Cindy Smith was Ereshkigal, the General mustn’t allow himself to be seduced as the Prince had been all those years ago. True, that had been the beginning of Nergal’s love (if you could call it that) for the goddess; but it had also been the end of his rule in the land of the living. And it was to the land of the living that Prince Nergal wished to return; to once again take his throne in the sun and be worshipped.

But the Prince needed the General to return as much as the General needed the Prince. The General was the last of the doorways, and through him not only would Nergal become a living, breathing god again but also the General would be able to travel back and forth through the doorway to Hell. The General still wasn’t clear how it would all work in the end—such things were still beyond him—but it would work. He was sure of that. The Prince had revealed it to him in his visions; and before that, the equation had told him so, too. 9:3 or 3:1, depending on how you looked at it.

Yes, it was how you looked it that was the key. And thus, in order to determine exactly how Ereshkigal fit into the equation, the General figured that the answer must lie in how he looked at her as well. He thought about this long and hard during the ride home from Greenville; but only when he pulled past the crumbling fieldstone columns at the head of his driveway did the answer, in a flash of insight, finally come to him.

Of course! he thought. Ereshkigal had to be part of the equation if one were to look at things from the other side of the doorway! Only with Ereshkigal could the equation of 3:1 be balanced in Hell—the General, his mother, Ereshkigal on one side of the colon, the Prince on the other. And perhaps the colon itself was a symbol for the doorway, which meant the numbers indicate their relative positions after the Prince’s return.

But how would this work out in the end?

No need to worry about it now, the General thought giddily. No, the most important thing was that Ereshkigal did fit into the equation after all. Indeed, the answer was so obvious that the General actually began to laugh at how stupid he’d been for not seeing it earlier.

“But I still need to be careful,” he whispered to himself as he entered the farmhouse. The concept of careful was inherent to the equation itself. The General already knew, for instance, that he would need to bring the throne through the doorway for his own protection. That was part of the legend. And so, he thought, he would also need the throne to protect his mother and carry her back while the Prince was busy with his return. That was the plan; that would be tricky enough—but now there was Ereshkigal, too. He would need to keep his meetings with her and his mother secret until the very last moment. The Prince was jealous of anyone talking to his princess; but even more so, the Prince was jealous of allegiance to anyone but him.

After all, wasn’t that why the Prince took Edmund Lam- bert’s mother from him in the first place? So there would be no one left for the boy to worship other than the Prince?

At first, when the General began wearing the lion’s head, he’d hoped that—once the Prince saw how loyal he was—he would eventually grant Edmund Lambert’s mother freedom from Hell. Prince Nergal had never done such a thing be-fore—no, he was greedy and covetous of his souls—but perhaps, just perhaps, he might make an exception in the General’s case.

But as time went on, more and more the General began to think that the Prince would never allow such a thing. He needed an alternate plan; and even though he still wasn’t sure how it would all go down in the end, with the introduction of Ereshkigal the General felt confident that the Prince would have to yield to the 3:1 himself.

Perhaps that was written in the stars, too, the General thought. Perhaps that was why the Prince never wanted to talk about Cindy Smith.

“No use getting ahead of myself,” the General whispered, and he went upstairs and showered. It would be daylight soon, and the Prince would be sleeping if he wasn’t already. The General had consulted with him before heading off to the cast party, upon which the Prince gave no indication that he was aware of Edmund’s secret meeting with his mother and Ereshkigal. Quite the opposite, the Prince’s visions indicated that he was excited about the cast party, and wanted the General to report back to him.

And so, once he was clean and dry, the General sat naked by his bedroom window until the sun was up and he could see no more stars in the sky. That meant the Prince was asleep. The General wanted to sleep, too, but first he needed to consult with his mother and Ereshkigal; needed to look for them in the swirling colors and confirm that his reading of the 3:1 was correct.

He went down into the Throne Room and stood before the lion’s head, listening until he felt like Edmund Lambert again.

Mama? he called out in his mind. Mama, are you there?

“Yes, Edmund,” he heard her say after a moment. “I’m here.”

Edmund removed the Prince’s head from the shelf and slipped it over his own. For a moment nothing happened; then all at once he felt as if the air was sucked from his lungs and his body was surging forward.

Thhwummp!—a rush of brightness—and the doorway was open.

There she was again! Radiant, floating in the swirling colors. She was alone this time, coming toward him, arms outstretched and smiling.

“C’est mieux d’oublier,” she said.

“I’ll never forget,” Edmund replied, taking her hands. He was about to kiss her when—flash-flash—his mother’s face changed. A low moaning seemed to rise up all around him, and suddenly Edmund realized he was staring into his grandfather’s eyes. “C’est mieux d’oublier,” the old man said, deep and guttural. Edmund was about to speak when—flash-flash—everything became the god Nergal.

“WHERE IS SHE?” he roared—hovering, wings spreading, teeth gnashing.

“No!” Edmund cried—flash-flash—and the moans became screams, louder and louder as Nergal grew until he filled the entire sky—a black orange sky above hordes of chanting soldiers; a smoking battlefield with lines of the impaled stretching as far as the eye could see. Edmund could smell it and taste it and feel it—

“WHERE IS SHE?”

Now Edmund could see the souls of the sacrificed rising toward Nergal’s mouth, snaking and twisting their way around his monstrous fangs like tendrils of cigarette smoke. And there was his mother among them, screaming and pleading for help!

“Mama!” Edmund cried—but she could only call her son’s name one last time before slipping through the god’s teeth and disappearing into his throat.

“You can’t take her again!” Edmund screamed, but the Prince flapped his wings and knocked the young man backwards onto—

The cellar floor? Something hard and cold on his naked back. A glimpse of the throne through the lion’s mouth, of the headless body seated before him and—

No, he was up and moving now. Through a maze—a dark maze that brought him to the temple doors at Kutha.

“WHERE IS SHE?”

Now a whirring sound and wind—the god’s breath! Edmund could feel it and smell it! A hot smell like burning pennies—

And then he was in the workroom, staring through the lion’s mouth at the grinder on the workbench.

It was turned on to high.

“Please, no!” Edmund screamed, his voice coming back to him in echoes both hollow and deafening.

“WHERE IS SHE?” the god bellowed inside the lion’s head, and Edmund was suddenly both at Kutha and in the workroom; could feel his hands on the temple doors and on the workbench at the same time as he stared through the lion’s mouth in disbelief.

“Please, no,” he sputtered—his actions not his own, the scene before him terrifying in its inevitability as he saw the temple doors crack open and felt the wind of the grinder’s wheel against his skin. He was hovering above it now, his chest only inches from its spinning steel bristles.

“I’m sorry, please, I—

The temple doors swung open as the grinder bit into his flesh. A bright burst of pain passed before his eyes, and Edmund howled in agony—his cries matched only by the Prince’s incessant “Where is she?” and “C’est mieux d’oublier.” It was all one now inside the lion’s head, as was the white liquid fire squirting from the abyss beyond the doorway. It splattered him like acid milk and then turned red as the grinder tore open the flesh between his pectoral muscles. The blood spattered everywhere, and Edmund felt a hot wetness run down the backs of his thighs. And as the spinning bristles, like thousands of little teeth, chomped farther and farther down the center of his torso, incredibly, amid his pain Edmund registered somewhere that he’d shit himself.

Thhwummp!—a rush of darkness and yellowy light, and now there was only the workroom through the lion’s mouth. The grinder continued to whir somewhere behind him, but Edmund was moving again—legs trembling, chest screaming as the blood ran down his stomach and soaked his geni-talia. The cellar began to spin; and in what seemed like a leap forward in time, Edmund found himself on the cellar stairs, sobbing and panting uncontrollably as the shit and blood trailed off behind him. He felt weak, but at the same time as if he was being dragged upstairs by an unseen hand.

He ended up in his grandmother’s parlor, kneeling beneath the mirror that hung above the fireplace. The General had recently tilted it downward so he could sit naked on the floor and admire the doorway.

But now it was Edmund Lambert who gazed up at his reflection. And when he saw himself kneeling there with the lion’s head atop his shoulders; when he saw the 9 and the 3 that Billy Canning had so intricately tattooed on the temple doors split apart by a thick red gash, the young man knew with chilling certainty that the General had severely underestimated the Prince.

“WHERE IS SHE?” Edmund cried in the voice of the Prince himself—but, in the gaping bloody maw that was to be his doorway to Hell, the young man could not find his mother anywhere.