The Damn Disciples Page 9

  Though the man hardly seemed to know who, or where, he even was. He had the same semiretarded kind of look that Stone had seen on most of them now. It was hard to believe that the fat little slug could have even planned out a whole thievery and sale operation. But whoever ran the show had their reasons for what they did. And though Stone didn’t know what the motivation was, he suddenly realized what the punishment would be. And he wished he hadn’t eaten so much meat at breakfast that morning.

  “Put your head down on the block,” the gray robe commanded.

  “No, no,” the bound slug pleaded, his face covered with grease and snot, his mouth a dribbling stream of saliva.

  “Down, worthless cur,” the robed man screamed again, and this time walked over to the kneeling man and kicked him hard on the back and neck, forcing him down though it took a good dozen blows. The man’s head was now down sideways on a yard-wide square of wood. The robed man raised his hand and the handler began leading the animal forward the few yards toward the victim. There was a sudden silence throughout the entire crowd in which you could hear a pin drop—or at least the footsteps of an elephant. The handler led the mammoth beast right up to the wood and then tapped the elephant on the right leg. It lifted the leg high, a good six feet in the air.

  “Down,” the handler said, “down!” and tapped the beast’s leg with a stick. The elephant’s chair-size foot came down fast and made contact with the head. It was a grisly sight, which repulsed Stone—but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. The elephant dug down hard, like a smoker stamping out a cigarette, and the head just sort of crunched beneath it, exploding out suddenly. The face, the hair, everything just disappeared as it all shattered and shot out from beneath the elephant’s crushing foot like an egg in a blender. The elephant pushed all the way down and then turned the foot several times until it was completely flush against the wood.

  “Up,” the handler commanded, and the great gray leg lifted again. The elephant pulled back and stood there surveying what it had wrought.

  “Yes … see—this is what befalls those who betray Yasgar. This!” the gray robe shouted. He walked around the block, pointing down. Not that you needed to look all that close to see that there was nothing left above the shoulders except a paste that wouldn’t have been enough for a good soup stock. The body of the dead man slid down the slide of the block and lay on the street. It didn’t even twitch, so dead was it.

  Suddenly the elephant reared back as a crow shot down and pecked at the flakes of skin on the wood block, frightening the big beast. The handler snapped a stick against the creature’s side, and the hood flew back. Stone gasped in simultaneous horror and joy. It was his sister. It was April who was handling the elephant. It was his sister who was the executioner.

  “Jesus, God,” he muttered, forgetting in spite of all his training exactly where he was—and what was going on for a few seconds. For he suddenly circled around the back of the crowd and came up to her through the masses just as she got the great beast quieted down.

  “April—April, it’s me, Martin! What have they done to you? What—”

  She stared at him with cold, dead eyes.

  “Oh, Jesus, you’re—one of them,” he gasped in horror.

  “Yes, Martin, I am,” she answered mechanically with that same taut, lying smile that they Al had. “And soon you will be too.” She tapped the elephant on the trunk and stepped back. Suddenly the animal whipped around and grabbed him in its trunk, instantly lifting him twelve, fifteen feet in the air as it shook him this way and that. Stone felt like a an in a baby’s rattle, as if his brains were being pounded within his skull to the consistency of porridge.

  He saw the gray robe approach her. And they were both looking up at him, the man smiling, then laughing as the elephant shook Stone this way and that so that the whole world was flying by around him as if he was in a washing machine. Then it lifted him suddenly very high so he must have been nearly twenty feet up—and then dashed him quickly down again, releasing Stone as its trunk was pointing straight out, so Stone flew through the air and crashed into the cracked pavement of the street. There was a loud honking sound as the elephant trumpeted out its powers. And then Stone was slammed into a darkness that didn’t feel good at all.

  THIRTEEN

  When Stone came to, he was coughing up a thick sticky liquid that was being poured down his throat. He coughed violently, as they’d given him a lot, and the hacking woke him suddenly from the black pool he’d been floating in. Shapes were dancing around him, dozens of them. Robed, so he could see only their bare feet running around him on a wooden floor. He Looked down and saw that he was tied hand and foot to a pole, standing in an upright position. His clothes were still on, but his boots were gone and—

  “My dog,” Stone sputtered suddenly, looking into the face of the black-robed figure who stood a few yards in front of him. “Where’s my fucking dog?” He began yelling. If the bastards had done anything to Excaliber, he’d … he’d.… He’d what? He couldn’t even move more than an inch in any direction. The black-robed man raised his arm and the robe draped off of it, making it Look like a skeletal arm was pointing at him. Two nearly unclad women in jewel-encrusted loincloths and minuscule silver cups over their melon breasts came forward and held a large golden goblet up to Stone’s mouth.

  He tried not to take any in—but they just kept pouring it, and as he at last gasped in for air, Stone took in one, then several more mouthfuls of the stuff. He could feel it already. A hot tingling sensation that ran from his tongue right down his gullet. Whatever the hell it was, it tasted fiery, wonderful in a way. And he knew something else—it was drugged with enough junk to put King Kong on the floor drooling. Within seconds Stone could feel his vision getting blurry, with an almost golden haze to it.

  “Ahh, you feel it now, do you not?” The black-robed figure spoke, and Stone swore that the man was God, the way his voice thundered into his ears. It was as if he were inches from a thousand-watt amplifier. The black-robed figure raised both arms to the ceiling, which, Stone noticed as he followed the motion, seemed to be painted with things—angels, demons, dragons? He couldn’t see clearly, because the room was lit by only a few oil lamps around the walls and candles that some of the dancing figures carried in their hands. Stone thought his mind felt as if it was a rubber band and it was being pulled in about five directions at once.

  Suddenly it was as if lightning bolts were coming down from the ceiling and into the robed figure’s fingers. The man stood up straight, and though Stone couldn’t see any features beyond an ugly bunch of shadows, he could see the two glowing ruby-red eyes within. They weren’t the eyes of a human. Even in his increasingly drugged mental state, Stone at least knew that much.

  “I am the Transformer, the High Priest of the Perfect Aura,” the black-robed figure bellowed out. Again, to Stone’s ears it sounded as though a jet plane was taking off. His brain hurt from the sound, burned as if nails were being driven into it. And even as he tried to focus his eyes, two women danced their way forward, writhing like belly dancers, and poured yet more of the golden liquid into his lips.

  “You have been chosen as one of the lucky ones, to have your aura changed from black to blue, from depression and pain to happiness, bliss and—order.” The eye glowed ever redder beneath the enclosing hood. Stone got a blurred glimpse inside for a flash. He saw what looked like the face of a man long dead—not yet a skull, but definitely no longer a living being either. The muscles were all twisted, the skin brown and rotted in places. Stone felt as if his skull was going to explode.

  “Man is imperfect,” the Transformer said. “His aura is dark and riddled with pain.”

  “His aura is dark,” the dancing robed figures screamed back as they all circled faster around Stone, closing in, whirling like tops as they waved their gray-robed arms around in front of them like windmills. Stone could feel that he was falling into some deep spell, almost a coma. Everything was already golden with a haze, as if he was
Looking at an old photograph instead of real people.

  “The Perfect Aura is golden—that is why we drink the golden liquid.” He pulled out a cup of his own and lifted it to his lips. Stone heard a slurping leathery sound come from within the hood and then the Transformer threw the goblet across the room. “Perfection is no fear.”

  “Perfection is no fear,” the dancing robes screamed back, now reaching a frenzy. Suddenly they pulled out skulls from beneath their robes and held them out in front of them in both hands. Stone gasped as they moved in closer, shooting around him almost at full run. The High Priest pulled back and stood just outside the revolving circle. The skulls danced and waved all around Stone’s head, being slammed toward him, coming within inches of his face.

  “There is no death. There is no life,” the Transformer screamed, raising his hands. And Stone swore he saw sparks shooting out of the tops of them. Although just how much he could vouch for the accuracy of what he was seeing, he wasn’t placing any bets on. For even as he drifted into some weird places in his brain, Stone, or at least some part of him, knew that he was on drugs. That this wasn’t real. Wasn’t all real. Or was it?

  The Nectar hit him more, and he felt his whole body turning to rubber, without sensation, his mind becoming like an infant’s or a savage’s mind, no longer able to judge or even think, just watch and feel terror and fear and. … The skulls seemed to smile now too, and chattered to one another and to him, their teeth slamming on and closed as they flew complex patterns in the air all around him. It might have gone on for seconds, minutes, or even years for all Stone knew. He completely lost track of time, of anything except the blurred circle of skulls, eyeless sockets looking at him, screaming incomprehensible things in unknown languages.

  Suddenly there was a great crashing sound like a thousand garbage cans being thrown off a rooftop, and as Stone tried to focus he saw that the skull-holding modern jazz dancers had pulled back into the shadows, where they continued to do a little two-step to a much slower tempo.

  “There, you see—death is not an enemy. You must learn to dance with the monkey of death, with the gorilla of termination. Do you understand? Your aura is imperfect—l can see with my priest’s eyes. We must correct that by draining you of all fear. As a leech drains the blood of disease, thus shall we drain the impurities of your mind, your soul.”

  “Soun’s like jes’ what I wuz lookin’ fer.” Stone managed to mumble, though his lips felt as though they each weighed about a ton. “Gettin’ my aura leeched.”

  “Bring in the Death Lover,” the High Priest screamed, and again Stone’s ears felt as if they were about to come off their hinges. Either he was losing his hearing as well as his mind, or this fellow had been given a lung transplant from Godzilla. Stone’s eyes managed to focus for a few seconds on a large wooden box that was being carved in from the shadows. Five robed men stood on each side of the seven-foot-long, three foot wide and -deep box as naked women with skulls on their heads danced around them seductively, hissing like animals in heat.

  “Down,” the Transformer commanded, pointing right in front of Stone. The robed carriers faced each other and lowered the thing. It was heavy, crude. And Stone could see, even in his brainless state, that it was a coffin.

  “Open it,” the Transformer ordered, his red eyes glowing like twin suns in the shadowy darkness of the twisted face. Hands reached down and pulled had, and the top flew back. And Stone gasped—even in his rubber-brained state he let out with a sharp sound as his jaw hung open. For inside the coffin was a woman. A dead woman, lying on a bed of royal purple velvet. The velvet was as perfect and smooth as the woman was ugly. He’d seen a lot of corpses in his day. But this one seemed to have been picked for an unusual state of repulsiveness, ugliness, with rot and worms and bugs and slimes all over the damn thing.

  He felt his stomach start to heave, and he an to hold back his rising lava of sickness.

  “Yes, vomit it out,” the Transformer commanded. “Vomit out your imperfect ways, spit up your poisoned aura. For now you shall find your new one, your golden aura. And she”—he pointed to the flesh-dripping corpse—“shall lead you down the path. She shall take your virginity of disease. She shall be your Death Lover.” And as Stone looked down on the rotting pile of sludge that resembled a human in shape only, he did in fact upchuck much of the morning’s meal. It splashed out over the corpse. The High Priest let him look at the thing for another minute or two as the drums began pounding again in the background. Then he raised those dreadful skeletal arms again and pointed at the box.

  “Put him in,” he said simply. The three most horrible words Martin Stone had ever heard. For even with enough drugs in him to take out a bear, he knew he didn’t want a one-night stand with that. But it didn’t appear he had a hell of a lot of choice. For suddenly hands were all over him, releasing him from the stake, untying his hands and feet. Stone clumsily tried to lash out. But he was so spaced out, his brain so unconnected to his body, that he just sort of flopped around like a puppet without a master as some of the dark faces even smiled at his ridiculousness. And even as he sputtered and felt his heart speed up as if it was doing wind sprints, Stone felt himself being placed down into the box with—it.

  “Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus,” he mumbled under his breath over and over again, as if the words might somehow protect him from the filthy slime below.

  “No—no more of the old religions,” the High Priest commanded, walking around the coffin. “Now there is but one God—that is Yasgar. And there is but one truth—that of the Perfect Aura.”

  “The perfect aura,” they all echoed, circling the box, shaking the skulls in their hands. Stone felt himself coming right down on the corpse woman, squashing into it. It was like mud, and it smelled like death itself, with a sickening putridity to it that threatened to make him heave again. And Stone could see, even as his drugged eyes opened slightly in horror, that it was coming up to kiss him. A kiss without lips, just worms, and eyes that looked lovingly at him and seemed to blink with lashes made of cockroach wings and pupils of maggot. Every part of him sank into her as they pushed down from above.

  “Don’t be shy.” The Transformer laughed. “She is a good lover. She will take you where you want to go. She is completely uninhibited. In all ways the perfect woman. Close the box.”

  Words that Stone didn’t want to hear. Hands appeared all around him even as he lay sprawled out on top of the dead thing like a man trying to mount a woman.

  “No! No!” Stone screamed out as they closed the top and the flickering light of the oil lamps and candles around the room disappeared. And as they pushed it down, they pressed him closer into her, like an aunt trying to be a matchmaker. Such nice young kids. Martin Stone, with his brains and looks, and what’s-her-name, so thin and always ready for action. Stone felt the top of the box grinding him into her so that she squished up all around him and began oozing over his legs and back. His lips were pressed right against hers, and because his hands were tied he couldn’t even move. And as he sputtered and tried to breathe in air amidst the stench, a worm exited through the moldy porridge of her mouth and sought entry like an excited tongue into his.

  Stone spat it out, and the thing flopped off down the melting face. He tried to pull back off the thing, away from her. But there was nowhere to go. Nowhere at all. And once the top was closed, they lifted the coffin and began dancing with it around the floor, shaking it and turning it this way and that as they screamed and banged on it. The motion of the turning made the corpse woman grab at Stone, her dead leathery mold-covered arms flapping all around him like a passionate woman giving her all, her fungus-covered thighs slapping opened and closed. And her face—nuzzling him, rubbing against his cheeks, seeking a kiss. A hot kiss for cold soupy lips.

  FOURTEEN

  Thus, Stone spent the night with a corpse. A first for him, but something he would have just as happily gone without. In a weird way the drugs saved him from total madness. They began hitting him s
o hard after about ten minutes that he fell into a semicoma, where his eyes closed and he sank into a state of deep breathing. Which, all things considered, was about the best he could have hoped for. The devotees on the outside continued their dancing and chanting, their skull-juggling, as they paraded around the room with the box long into the night. Then they placed the coffin in front of the altar so that the lovebirds could be one together.

  When the Transformer at last opened the box a good eight hours later, as the sun was just peeking through the glassless windows, Stone was looking straight up at him, his eyes open as much as the wearing-off drug would allow.

  “I hope she don’t have anything,” Stone muttered as the robed face glared down. The face seemed to act confused for a minute as if trying to decipher what Stone had just said. Then he spoke.

  “I see you are trying to be funny. That is not good. There is no humor in the state of the Perfect Aura. That means you are hanging on to your black aura ways. Fighting this world of perfection that we offer.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Stone muttered. “I just don’t want to join a club that makes me sleep with corpses.”

  “Then you must suffer the initiation of the Vermin Room. You must learn to give in, Stone, to submit. For you will join us sooner or later. All have. All—or die. It is just how much suffering and pain you wish to endure before you realize that perfection lies in the acceptance of your diseased state. And the surrendering to me of your mind.”

  “Hey, pal, you can have the rotten thing,” Stone said, trying to force a brave smile, though he didn’t feel too brave. If they were going to put him through something worse than this, he didn’t want to be around to see it. Only, he was. “It hasn’t done me a hell of a lot of good.”

  “You say that,” the Transformer bellowed, his red eyes lighting up with rage. “But it is not what you believe. You are still filled with human failings. I can see them, can see right into your aura—completely twisted.”