I strain at my imprisoning flesh, but it won’t move. Dead, of course; silly me! I may have learned a thing or two about death when the Cult of the Black Pharaoh were busily trying to feed me to the Eater of Souls, but that doesn’t mean I can reboot the cellular machinery from scratch once the algorithms of life have run their course and halted for good. And while there may be some kind of animation trigger that’ll make the mummy dance, I don’t have it.
Something brought me to wakefulness here. What? Or who?
I shiver involuntarily. There’s a low rumble, resonating through the tiny bones of my inner ears. Moments later I feel, as much as see, the corpses on the spikes to either side of me vibrate in sympathy. A dusty ripple spreads out across the plain in front of the Pyramid, rising on a blast of shocked air. The vibration intensifies, the ground rocking, setting my jawbone clattering uselessly against my skull. Somewhere a phone is ringing off the hook.
Earthquake?
The phone is ringing as the earthquake intensifies. It’s my phone, I realize, and I reach for it, and the dream disintegrates around me on the darkling plain as I roll sideways and swipe, my arm spasming across the bedside table until I grasp the phone and hug it like a drowning man with a lifebelt.
It’s still ringing. I clutch it to my ear and hiss, “Yessss… ?”
An unfamiliar female voice says, “Hello? Can I speak to Mr. Howard, please?”
“Speaking.” My blurry eyes slowly focus on the bedside alarm clock.
“I’m conducting a survey on behalf of Scamworth and Robb Double Glazing; would you be interested in doing a short questionnaire? Our salespeople are in your area and I wonder if you’d—”
“It’s four thirty in the morning.” Everything comes into very sharp focus. “And I very much doubt you’re in my area, unless you are flying a helicopter over downtown Denver. Where did you get this number?”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry Mr. Howard—”
“Where did you get this number?” I repeat, a horrible focal point of hunger crunching itself tighter and tighter inside my head. “Tell me!”
“You’re…in our database…” Her voice begins to slur.
“You will remove this number from your database.” My voice is deathly and controlled. “Then you will tell your supervisor that if any of your people ever call this number, men in unfamiliar uniforms will drag them away in manacles and they will never be seen again. Do I make myself understood?”
“Wha…! There’s no need to be rude!” She sounds indignant. Obviously she doesn’t get the message.
A silvery spike of pure rage flashes through my head: “Listen! Obey! Submit! I bind you in the name of—”
I bite the back of my tongue with my molars, hard enough to draw blood. High Enochian is harsh on the vocal chords; more importantly, what the fuck am I thinking? I switched to a metalanguage of compulsion because I was about to tell a double-glazing call center sales drone to go and—oh Jesus, no. That’s the sort of thing the Black Assizes nail you for.
I hang up, hastily, with a shudder. Then I swallow something warm. Blood. I’ve bitten my tongue and it’s bleeding.
It’s four thirty in the morning. I roll out of bed, stumble to the bathroom, and welcome in the new day by throwing up in the toilet. After which I can’t get back to sleep.
I SLEEPWALK THROUGH SATURDAY MORNING IN A STATE OF borderline shock, unable to trust myself. The world outside is still there, just the same as before, but somehow it feels different, more distant. Tenuous and breakable. I go downstairs and hit the hotel swimming pool, but after a couple of dozen lengths I’m gasping for breath. Denver air is thin and unsatisfying. So I wander out, find a coffee shop to hang out in with a pretzel and a mocha and something that claims to be a newspaper.
Towards late morning I go back to my room. It’s been made up, as before. Good. I make myself comfortable on the bed then cold-bloodedly drop myself back into Persephone’s head.
There have been changes.
Persephone is standing in the open courtyard outside the timber-framed conference hall. Consternation: so are the other students. There’s a trestle outside, and the door handles are taped shut. “I’m sorry,” one of Schiller’s assistants from the night before is saying, “we can’t use the conference hall today, there’s been a leak. We’re waiting for the bus right now, so we can continue off-site in one of the Ministries’ buildings. And the reverend has been delayed—he’s in a meeting this morning, some kind of business that couldn’t wait.”
“Are we going to run late?” asks one of the men from the previous night—Persephone’s memory prompts, Jason, an accountant from Colorado Springs—thick-set, red-faced, hypertensive. “Because if so, I’ve got a—”
“It’s coming now,” interrupts the woman. (Christina, according to Persephone. Slightly heavy, ruddy-faced, wears a cross that’s just slightly too large for her neck.) Persephone turns. There is indeed a smallish shuttle bus, outfitted with leather-upholstered seats.
“He’s worried about being late,” Darryl the real estate agent confides in Persephone’s ear. “You ask me, he should worry more about being late before he’s got himself square with Jesus.”
“Are you square with Jesus?” Persephone asks with a bright and elegant smile.
“I surely am.” Darryl is smugly self-satisfied about his salvation status. His eyes wander around Persephone’s person, unconsciously undressing her—she briefly fantasizes about rabbit-punching him—then settle on her wrist. “That’s a pretty bracelet.” He focuses on the engraved silver band as the bus draws up, its doors opening to take the course participants up to the Golden Promise compound. “What’s it say?” She raises it, turns her wrist. “Huh. W. W. L. J. D.—does that mean ‘What Would Lord Jesus Do’?”
“Something like that.” Her smile widens. Thank you, Johnny, she thinks, and I glimpse in the front of her mind what the bracelet really stands for and choke, which is when she notices me.
For a moment I’m somewhere very very dark and very very bright, like a bug on a microscope slide the size of a galaxy, pinned down by laser-bright spotlights beneath the inspection of a vast, unfriendly intelligence.
***Mr. Howard. Get out of my head and stay out.***
She is not pleased, but I get to live—this time.
***Uh…okay,*** I manage.
With an effort of will I begin to disentangle myself from her senses. But I’m not fast enough, and she is obviously not happy, because suddenly she shoves, chucking me out of her mind so hard that I lose consciousness.
WHICH IS WHY I DON’T HAVE A RINGSIDE SEAT IN PERSEPHONE’S and Johnny’s heads when everything goes right to hell.
9. SPEAKING IN TONGUES
“IT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND GOD’S PLAN,” SCHILLER says, clasping his hands behind his back, chin lowered to his chest, braced against the force of his own wisdom.
“First, we must follow His instructions. Go forth, be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth with souls obedient to His will. Live good lives, obey His rules, be faithful members of His flock, and when the end comes we’ll be safe forever in heaven. That much is clear. But. But.”