“One of the hierarchs, but there could be others about too.”
I winced at the madness. “That was an occult rite we just witnessed, Zalen. After all I’ve learned, and everything you told me that happens to be true, there has to be more…”
“Of course there is,” the spindly vagabond retorted. “But all that shit out there by the lake?” He seemed amused. “It’s just tradition, Morley, it’s just ritual; it means nothing. All it proves is how much lower mankind’s mentality is; the only way we could ever really relate to the fullbloods—even back in Obed Larsh’s time—is through ignorant ritualism like this…”
“Just a veneer,” I speculated, for so much occultism in the Master’s work was just that. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“You hit it right on the head. What looks like devil-worship and simple paganism is just the icing on a very different kind of cake.”
The analogy, trite as it may have been, validated my assurances now. I followed Zalen unknowingly for a time, my mind too active with a plethora of conjectures. “But all societal systems ultimately have a defined purpose,” I insisted. “If this occultism is veneer—or ‘icing’ used to cover something else up… what is the something else?”
“You ask too many questions. I warned you about that,” he said. “We have to get out of here, that’s all. You’ve got money and a gun, and I’ve got the way out. If we’re lucky, we might make it.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a motor-car,” I nearly exclaimed.
“Sure, I do—er, I should say, I know where we can get one,” he supplemented with a chuckle. “The Onderdonks have a truck. That’s where your gun comes in.”
For whatever reason, this decidedly promising news did not reduce the regard of more of my questions. “You could’ve stolen their truck anytime in the past. Why is escape on your mind now?”
“I told you,” he smirked back in spattered moonlight. “Because they’re onto us now. Someone overheard me talking to you earlier—”
“So that’s it, a breach of the secrecy everyone here must adhere to,” I surmised. “More, more of the story.”
“Because Lovecraft’s story wasn’t really a story. I told you that too. Most of it’s true. And now we’ve got to live with it—or die.”
I continued to follow his footsteps, still confounded and—why, I’m not sure—enraged more than terrified. The smell of slow-cooking meat waxed dominant; it sifted down the narrow trail to tell me that Onderdonk’s property drew near. I was appalled to admit that the aroma—even in knowing as I did the origin of the meat—was delectable. It also appalled me that Zalen, an inveterate thief, criminal, and, worse, one who was a willing party to infanticide, represented my greatest chance of escaping with Mary.
“Mary,” I said next. “She must go with us.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” he snapped.
“I insist. I have a great deal of money, Zalen. It would behoove you to accommodate my indulgence. Mary, her son, her brother, and her stepfather will be joining our escape.”
At this he actually laughed. “Her and the kid, maybe. But Paul’s deadweight; he’s a Sire who went impotent. Only reason he wasn’t killed and taken to the tunnels is ‘cos she begged the hierarch.” His next chuckle could’ve passed for a death-rattle. “And the stepfather? Haven’t you been listening?”
“I can’t fathom you, Zalen. Mary’s stepfather is aged and rife with infirmities. It would be un-Christian of us to abandoned the old man.”
“The stepfather is a crossbreed!”
I gawped at words as though they were fragments of shrapnel. “But-but, I thought—”
“Crossbreeding between the two species was made illegal by the new hierarchs, so—”
“So all the existing crossbreeds were exterminated in the concerted genocide,” I’d already gathered. “Which doesn’t explain why Mary’s stepfather is still alive.”
Zalen stopped to face me, with that nihilistic grin I was now all-too-accustomed to. “You’ll love this part, Morley… but are you sure you wanna hear it?”
“Don’t toy with me, Zalen. Your psychological parlor tricks are quite juvenile if you’d like to know the truth. So kindly tell me that—the truth.”
“We don’t know exactly how their political system works but we think it’s several of them in charge and there’s one who’s more powerful than the others.”
“It’s called an oligarchical monarchy, Zalen. The senior hierarch would suffice as the sovereign, akin to the Soviet Union of today, or this man in Germany, Hitler.”
“Yeah. The sovereign. The sovereign’s hot to trot for your wonderful little Mary. How do you like that? He’s got kind of a thing for her. That was probably him back there at the lake. Don’t worry, it won’t fuck her—it’s not allowed to… but it’ll probably do everything else.”
The information sickened me but also made me feel haunted. Thoughtlessly, I seized my handgun and turned to head back to the lake.
“You really are an idiot, Morley,” I was told amid more laughter. He’d grabbed my arm and thrust me back. “Even if you did get a clear shot at it, there’d be a hundred more after you in two minutes. They’d sniff us out. We wouldn’t stand a chance”
I leaned against a tree, gripped by a harrowing despair. “You’re telling me that Mary’s stepfather was spared from the genocide because—”
“—because Mary begged the hierarch not to kill him. She agreed to keep the old stick in hiding, at her house.” Zalen nodded. “Hate to think what she had to do to get that favor.”
I could’ve killed him on the spot for saying such a thing, but I knew there was truth behind it; desperation led to desperate acts. Instead, I collected my senses and continued to follow him. “What about those who aren’t in Olmstead’s town collective?”
“Rejects, like me, are left alone as long as we don’t tell outsiders what’s going on here, and as long as we don’t leave.”
“Those things can’t possibly be everywhere,” I declared. “With a modicum of forethought, I’d suspect that escape would be easily achievable.”
“Sure, you’d think so,” he counted, “but why do you think nobody does? Why do you think Mary’s still here? It’s not because she wants to be, I can tell you that. None of us do.”
“Fear, then?”
“Uh-huh. In the past people—mostly women—have tried to escape. They just can’t handle giving up their babies. But every single one has been brought back”—now Zalen’s expression turned cold—“and made an example of. There are a whole lot more of those things than anyone can guess. If you leave, they’ll track you down the way a bloodhound catches a scent, Morley. They travel along any existing waterway, and they’re very fast.”
I had no choice but to postulate, “So even if we do manage to get out of here, you don’t deem our chances of success to be very high.”
“No, but when they’re on a rampage like they are now, if we don’t try, we’re dead by morning for sure.”
Waterways, hunting a scent, I thought. If we made it back to Providence, I’d install Pinkerton’s men round the clock. Either that or I’d relocate to a place so far removed from any waterways.
“There’s the truck,” Zalen whispered just as the trail had navigated us to an opening in the woods just behind Onderdonk’s property. The aroma of slow-cooking meat hung dense. Several shacks sat teetering in shadows; betwixt two of them I spied a pickup truck that looked as dilapidated as everything else. The only sound that came to my ears was that of pigs chortling.