He stepped back and looked at the whole wall of cages at once, unfocusing his gaze to include them all. What would happen to them if he let them go? He’d thought about it a lot lately, in the last few weeks. Not that he didn’t care for them. Not that he didn’t admire and even like them. But the idea of releasing them was part of something larger that was growing inside, and Hypok knew that when you grew inside you got bigger on the outside too, and had to shed your skin off to make room for the new, fortified thing you became. And once something started growing inside you it always kept on growing. It might go away for a while, but it always came back. Like... well. Once, just last week, he’d packed up all his snakes but one and driven them in his van out to Caspers Wilderness Park to set them free. But he’d just circled the remote parking area, then skedaddled on home, relieved that he could find no convincing reason to go through with it. It would be like letting little parts of your body go free.
But now, as he stood here contemplating all the cages and all the moving bodies within them, he told himself again — just as he had at the park — that to free them would be an act of deepest respect and love, the greatest thing he could ever offer these beautifully made, unthinking little machines. And every time he added to his collection he imagined the day he would set the new specimen free, didn’t he? Yes. Those were the best reasons he could come up with, though they hadn’t been good enough at the park and they weren’t good enough now. He knew they weren’t good enough.
The real reason was that he had to. You think it. You feel it. You see yourself doing it. Then you have to. To not do it is to deny your nature. Like... well, that again.
Then, oddly, he imagined letting them go and it was a pleasant thought — the right thing to do. It scared him, the way his mind could just flip one way and then another, like a switch. It meant a big change was coming on. Again. Take an Item but let the Item go free. Take another Item but let that Item go free. Get Collie to list the house for sale; then get her to unlist it. Drive to the park to let the snakes go; drive home without letting the snakes go. Black hair; brown hair; blond hair. Beard and mustache; smooth. There was no end to it. He reached into his robe pocket and took two nice big gulps off the flat hard bottle. There.
Then he backed away and turned to face the opposite wall. It was one huge tank, made of floor-to-ceiling panels of half-inch glass, built by Hypok’s own exacting hands. Moloch dozed in the water basin, his massive girth and weight supported by the liquid. When he inhaled, the water level rose perceptibly on the glass. Blue light, moon-silver shadows, moon-silver eyes. Tongue out. Tongue wavers in lunar glow. Tongue in. Moloch, his pride and joy, the diamond of all the jewels in his crown, his co-conspirator, blood brother, ally, friend and namesake. Something he would never let go.
Moloch.
Mike, for short.
Suddenly the silver twilight disappeared, replaced by a bright sunlike shine that cheered the room. The snakes all froze in place, uneasy, threatened by the change that could turn them from hunters into hunted. Hypok stiffened too, pure reflex. He felt suddenly exhausted with the thing growing inside him, with the way he kept changing his mind. Enough now. Enough!
He closed his eyes and willed away the pressure, willed away the indecision. For a while his brain was like jazz, just fizzing along without any pattern. Finally it quieted down so he could hear himself think.
Take the things between blinks just one at a time, he thought.
Be happy with what you have. Better. Better now.
Looking around, he was pleased to see his room, his snakes, his cages. Pleased to see his robe. Pleased that the new timer on his cage light circuit was working so well. Yes, pleased to see all of this. He owned it all, every bit of it. Well, Collette’s name was on the house but he made the payments to her, so that was just a protective technicality. His idea.
He started to feel better. His things anchored him. What you owned and what you created. He considered the new light that filled the room. Thanks to his timer there would now be twelve hours of artificial full-spectrum sunlight, a time for withdrawal and rest. A time for serpent dreams. In light that he created. In time that he owned.
Better.
He walked into the little rear bedroom and opened the lid of his UV chamber. He’d made it himself, from glass panels and a little wood, to fight the agony of his chronic psoriasis, which had afflicted him since boyhood. It was a medically proven fact that sunbaths were good for his condition, so he had created his own sun chamber to lie in, out of the sight of humans. Lamps along the inside of the lid; lamps left and right of him. Pillows for head and feet. Like a coffin with long rods of UV-emitting lights and heat lamps.
He took off his robe and slippers and the bracelet with the little red serpent on it, flipped the switch, put on his sunglasses and climbed in. Easing down into the chamber he could already feel the heat lamps on his skin, already feel the drying sensation of the UV rays on his sores. Sores, he thought: thank my fucking mother again for those. Amusing, however, that the doctors called the patina that grew over the sores, “scale.” I’ll show you scale, he thought. He lay back, lowered the door and looked up through the glass. Must get more Lidex delivered. So much to think about, and the mind never stops.
He lay still, a festering human in a glass tube filled with light. He relaxed and let the light have him, let the pain of the flesh and the pain of the brain waft up out of him like spirits. He wondered where they went. All he knew for sure was that they never went away.
Half an hour later he padded out of the cottage and locked the door behind him, headed for the main house and his bed, where he could catch a few hours of well-deserved hibernation while the new day dawned.
Eight
Joe Reilly, the director of our Forensic Sciences Lab, had left an e-mail message for me the next morning.
NEW HORRIDUS STUFF. SEE ME ASAP.
I knew that Joe Reilly was a man who took his time to get things right. So I called Johnny at home and told him to start the search of the Sharpe residence without me. I knew that he and Louis and Frances would do better than just a good job — I trusted them completely.
I passed through the doors of the lab five minutes later and found Joe at his desk. It was six o’clock. Reilly is a soft-spoken and thoughtful man in his late fifties, with a head of minning black hair he combs straight back and a baby’s blue eyes. He’s Irish American, like me, and I’ve tried several times to exploit that connection, but Joe is so thoroughly fair and unbiased that my Irish-kin overtures have never worked. Though he was a San Francisco patrolman early in his law enforcement career, it’s hard to picture him wearing a gun, let alone pointing it at somebody. Through the department grapevine I’ve gathered that Joe’s off hours are spent studying astronomy and collecting rocks. He has the curiosity and the resourceful mind of a scientist, combined with a cop’s shrewdness about the evidence he analyzes.