Wildest Dreams

2

Through midnight drizzle, I pushed Janice’s Explorer for all it was worth. The coastal roads were narrow and wet, and when I came to the inevitable landslide I punched the gas pedal and tore past a knot of traffic and a shivering highway patrolman who was flagging for a late-night road crew.

If the cop tried to follow me I never knew about it. As it was, I didn’t care about anything in the rearview mirror. What I wanted lay ahead of me, and anyone who tried to keep me from it was going to end up dead.

I was buckled in tight. Diabolos Whistler wasn’t-the Explorer’s seatbelts weren’t designed for severed heads. Whistler’s mortal remains bounced around in the padlocked iron box as I tore over potholes and hugged hairpin curves, but the old man didn’t seem to care.

“Still dead and quiet as an empty grave,” I said. “That’s the way I like you best.”

And that was the way he was going to stay, if I’d read the situation correctly.

Owl’s Roost Road came up without warning, and I nearly spun out trying to make the turn. But make it I did, with a quick footwork duet on the brake and the gas that sent Whistler’s iron prison tumbling to the floor, and when I was on the road and racing into the dark redwoods beyond I stuck to the gas.

Whistler’s teeth clacked against the iron bars as I took curves too wide and too fast, but caution wasn’t in my vocabulary. Speed was. Because speed was what I needed. I had no idea when Circe had scheduled her father’s funeral, or where she might take his remains for burial. Hell, maybe the bitch was planning on cremating the old man’s body, just to be on the safe side. Whatever her plan, I was sure she’d carry it out as soon as possible. No matter what she believed or didn’t believe, Circe wasn’t the kind to leave loose ends untied. The way I saw it, Whistler’s body would be on the road and traveling fast as soon as the undertaker did whatever undertakers do to headless corpses.

A sign flashed by on my right:

ENTERING OWL’S ROOST PLEASE DRIVE SAFELY

I did the former but ignored the latter, passing a post office and a mini-mall, a couple of sad bed-and-breakfasts, and a burger joint nearly hidden by a trio of logging trucks.

Another quarter mile and I hit the outskirts of town. Another sign on the right informed me that I was leaving Owl’s Roost and should continue to drive safely.

Next came a sign for the Owl’s Roost Mortuary. I turned down the gravel drive, my headlights washing a Cadillac hearse that waited near the front entrance.

An elderly man stood near the rear door of the hearse. It was open, as was the door to the mortuary. Bright light spilled from the interior of the building, back-lighting four pallbearers as they carried a coffin through the stained glass doors.

I couldn’t see the pallbearer’s faces, of course. But I saw their silhouettes.

One in particular.

A silhouette that was at least seven feet tall.

Spider Ripley, carrying Diabolos Whistler’s coffin. As far as I was concerned, that coffin was mine. No one was going to take it, and pray over it, and bury it in the ground.

It was mine, and I meant to have it.

I stomped the gas pedal to the floor.

Rocketing forward, the Explorer kicked up a gravel hailstorm.

The seven-footer was the first to rabbit. He dropped his corner of the coffin, and his three companions were stupid enough to try to compensate. They tottered under the load as I crossed the parking lot, and the guy in back lost it and jumped clear just in time, and the two in front looked up just as my bumper fractured their kneecaps.

One went under the tires and the other went over the hood, splintering the windshield with his head as the Ford rammed Whistler’s coffin. Whistler’s severed head slammed against the bars of its iron cage on impact, and then the big metal box that held the rest of him shot forward like a silver bullet through the open mortuary doors, scything carpet as red as sacramental wine as it went.

Ten feet ahead of the coffin and running hard, Spider Ripley glanced over his shoulder. He didn’t know what to do. The corridor was only twenty feet long and the stained glass doors at the other end were closed, and the coffin was coming and I was coming behind it, and both were coming fast.

But the coffin was in the lead. It clipped Ripley’s right ankle and he went down hard against the lid, twisting as he fell, his eyes trained on my headlights as he landed on his belly. He held onto the big metal box for dear life, grabbing the handles, riding the coffin as it skidded across burgundy carpet and smashed through the stained glass doors.

The doors exploded in a hail of flying glass-a rainbow smashed with a hammer-but the coffin didn’t stop.

Neither did I. The Explorer ripped through the entranceway, splintering wood molding and kicking the oak doors to the side. The doors slapped against the walls with a sound like thunder and stained glass blood spit from a dozen little vertical windows that looked like bleeding gashes.

Gashes like those on the face of Spider Ripley. He stared at me as the coffin continued its wild ride into a chapel beyond the hallway. Roses and lilies eclipsed Spider Ripley as Whistler’s coffin crashed through a floral display and into a platform that held another casket.

Which tumbled into the bed of flowers, spilling a corpse on top of Spider Ripley.

A fat woman that pinned him to the chapel floor.

My left foot mashed the brakes as Spider wrestled with the corpse. Roses and lilies spilled off him as he sat up. He stared at me as I stepped out of the Explorer, his eyes brimming with fear.

I pulled one of the. 45s as a shot rang out behind me.

The bullet skinned my left forearm.

Sharp pain jolted me and I dropped the gun.

Before it hit the ground I’d pulled my other pistol. I whirled with it, firing, and the bullets caught the last pallbearer in the belly. He went down screaming and rolled around on the ground, his blood the same shade of burgundy as the carpet.

His screams were horrible. Only death would stop them, but I hoped the pallbearer wouldn’t die. The others, too, the ones I’d hit with the Explorer. I wanted them to live. Not out of mercy. It was just that I didn’t want to hear their ghostly screams.

Those kinds of screams never stopped.

I advanced on Spider Ripley. He tried to rise from his flowery nest but his ankle was broken, so he writhed there like a wounded bug among the flowers.

I could finish him now, but something kept me from doing it. Spider scrambled away from me, crawling backwards until his elbow sank into the fat corpse’s belly. A little deathgasp parted the woman’s prim lips, and the scarred bodyguard grunted in surprise, and I laughed.

Just a dead husk, but she had scared a big scuttling Spider.

Scared him so badly that he couldn’t move another inch.

I said, “If you’ve got a gun, get rid of it.”

Ripley looked at me like he didn’t quite understand. He didn’t say a word. He just sat there and bled. If his buddy hadn’t been screaming so loud, I might have heard Spider’s blood pattering against the dead woman’s corpse.

I pointed my pistol at his face. I was about to let it speak for me when Spider’s hand slipped under his latex coat and came out with a . 45, gripped gingerly by the butt like it was something that might bite him.

I took the gun away from him and tossed it behind me. It clattered among the pews and was lost in the shadows.

“What now?” Spider asked.

I stared at Circe’s bodyguard. His shirt was torn open, and it was plain to see that he was still covering all the bases. As before, a crucifix eclipsed the scarred ankh on his chest.

The silver gleamed in the Explorer’s headlights. I noticed that the upper part of the vertical bar was worn, notched like a key.

I reached for Spider’s throat.

He closed his eyes.

My fingers closed on the rawhide chain, and I tore the crucifix from around his neck.

The pallbearer died. The one I’d shot. His corpse coughed up an oily shade that slipped between his lips and pooled on the carpet with his blood.

Just for a second. And then it slipped through a tear in the carpet and was gone.

I walked down the hall, my boots crunching over stained glass shards as I returned to the Explorer.

In the doorway-now somewhat bigger than it had been a few minutes before-stood the man who had opened the hearse for the pallbearers. Black suit, white hair and neatly trimmed whiskers, and a professionally stern expression that rivaled Diabolos Whistler’s. He was obviously the undertaker.

He said, “Those men outside are dead.”

I glanced past the prone bodies, happy to see their crippled shades stumbling into the woods beyond the parking lot. At the same time the undertaker peered over my shoulder, investigating his own concerns-namely the battered doorway, the shattered stained glass doors, and the wrecked coffins in the chapel beyond.

“I suppose a discussion of payment for damages is out of the question,” he said.

“You might say that.”

He stepped past me and entered the chapel. Seeing his back, I was surprised to see that the old codger had a crisp white ponytail.

The fashion statement amused me, but it didn’t do much for Spider Ripley. He was too busy to notice-wiping his slashed face with a length of funeral bunting from one of the floral displays. The undertaker stepped over him like he wasn’t there and knelt before the woman’s corpse.

She wasn’t exactly looking her best. Her wig had slipped to one side, and gray patches of dead flesh were visible beneath her smeared makeup. Her mouth had been jarred open by the collision, and her dentures lay in a bed of pale pink roses.

The undertaker wiped them with a handkerchief. “Poor Mrs. Cavendish,” he sighed. “We’ve already gone through so much, and it seems more trials lay ahead.”

“She can get in line,” I said.

The undertaker’s brows wrinkled. “Meaning?”

I reached into the Explorer and grabbed the iron box that held Whistler’s head. I inserted the notched bar of Spider’s crucifix into the lock. A twist and the lock popped open. The barred door opened next, and then I had Whistler’s head by his long white hair.

Whistler’s goatee was peppered with ants. I brushed them off as best I could and raised the dead man’s head for the undertaker’s inspection. “This,” I said, motioning toward Whistler’s coffin, “goes with that.”

“Very well.” The undertaker smiled knowingly. “Very well, indeed.”

The undertaker’s name was Albert Parsons. I didn’t like the smell of Parsons’s work room any better than I liked his company. I didn’t like show tunes either, but that was what blared from Parsons’s stereo. Specifically, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera.

The music of the night.

There was no use complaining. I wasn’t setting the soundtrack for this scene, no matter what I thought. The man in the black suit was.

Parsons bent over Whistler’s coffin, tsking and tasking over the dead man’s remains. I ignored the undertaker’s running commentary. I didn’t want to know what he was doing or how he was doing it, as long as Whistler’s head ended up attached to his body.

I turned my attention elsewhere. Spider Ripley lay on a stainless steel worktable, his hands and legs bound with black funeral bunting. The satin pillow from Mrs. Cavendish’s casket was jammed under his head. Fear shone in his eyes, black pupils pulsing as he watched the undertaker going about his work.

I imagined that Diabolos Whistler’s tortured gospel was racing through the bodyguard’s head. Ripley struggled as the undertaker fussed and fidgeted. I glanced at Parsons out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t look long-the stainless steel instruments that filled his hands made my gut churn.

But disgust was quite different from fear. I was convinced that there would be no twisted miracle in Whistler’s coffin. As far as I was concerned, I’d tested the tenets of Whistler’s faith at the bottle house. The result amounted to nothing. It would be the same with his corpse once head and body were reunited.

I was sure of that. Soon enough Ripley would feel the hard slap of reality, and I knew I had to get to him before that happened. I had to find out what he knew about Circe Whistler while he was still afraid.

Parsons came toward me, gore on his rubber gloves. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need an instrument from the cabinet behind you. Can I get it myself, or would you like to do the honors?”

“Get it yourself,” I said, and as he stepped behind me I asked, “How much longer to finish the job?”

“You say it doesn’t have to be perfect?”

“Or pretty.”

“Then I’d say about five minutes should do the trick.”

“Hear that?” I took Spider’s crucifix from my pocket and dangled it before his eyes. “Like they used to say at the Roman Coliseum-you’ve got five minutes, Christian.”

Ripley didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. He bucked and writhed on the table and nearly fell off. I hit him once, hard, in the mouth. All of a sudden he stopped moving-everything but his eyeballs, which rocked and rolled as if they were trying to escape his head.

I dangled the crucifix above his nose, and Ripley managed to focus on it. “Tell me about Circe,” I said, “and maybe I’ll let you get out of here before Daddy wakes up.”

Spider took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Behind me, Parsons closed the cabinet door.

Spider’s eyes flashed open, and I recognized the cold cast of those black pupils.

I didn’t like what I saw.

Spider said, “You’re a stupid fuck, Saunders.”

“Yes, you are,” the undertaker agreed.

A pistol filled his gore-stained grasp. He told me to get my hands in the air and I did. Then he came toward me. I glanced at Spider, and he was smiling.

“What do you think, Albert,” Spider said. “Should we do this fucker the same way we did Lethe?”

“I’m not so sure,” Parsons said as he reached under my belt and took my weapons. “I’ve got a brand new trocar I’d like to try out.”

“Whatever,” Spider said. “Just as long as I get dibs on Saunders’s knife…and his face.”

A dry laugh parted the undertaker’s lips. I felt his breath on my cheek. He was that close.

“I guess I was misinformed,” I said. “I heard they had to twist your arm to get you to handle Whistler’s corpse. But it looks to me like you’re a true believer, after all.”

“Oh, yes. I’m a religious man, baptized in darkness by Father Whistler himself. In fact, I used to be one of Diabolos’s doubles in the days before he moved south of the border.”

I wanted to kick myself. I’d recognized the resemblance-the long white hair, the goatee, even the stern expression-but it hadn’t given me pause.

Parsons knew he’d put one over on me. He flipped his ponytail over his shoulder and smiled, a living mockery of Whistler’s deathgrin. “Of course, I didn’t really see the light until I met Circe. She provided me with a retirement job, financing my funeral home with funds from one of her less controversial corporations. I’ve always had a certain aptitude for mortuary science, but I find it best to keep my religious affiliations to myself. That’s the prudent policy for a man in my business. I’ve always found that it pays to be prudent.”

“Prudent doesn’t always cut it,” I said.

Parsons arched an eyebrow.

A fraction of a second, a fraction of an inch.

The same amount of time it took to bury Spider Ripley’s crucifix in the undertaker’s eye.

Parsons got off one shot before I could finish him, of course. The prudent ones always do. I was lucky. The bullet missed me.

It didn’t miss Spider Ripley, though. The slug splattered his face like a ripe melon.

I dropped the bloodstained crucifix on Spider’s chest.

On the stereo, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom sang of loneliness and desire. I stood on one side of the table, staring down at Spider’s corpse. Ripley’s ghost stood on the other. I asked him a few questions, hoping he really did know something about Circe, but he didn’t seem to hear me at all.

The wispy revenant Spider Ripley had left behind didn’t say a word. That thing was no heavier than a breath, and it stared down at its own bloody corpse, at a crucifix covering an ankh scar.

Spider’s ghost tried to pick up the cross. Again and again and again, spectral fingers dipping through dead flesh and bloodstained silver.

I watched him do it. Maybe the angels in heaven watched him, too. Maybe the devils in hell had ringside seats.

But if they were there, I didn’t see them.

I only saw Spider Ripley.

A dead man scooping up handfuls of nothing.