There’s a mountain range off to the side of where we lie. I climb off Hobaica and he struggles to his feet.
“Where did those mountains come from? I swear they weren’t here before.”
An opening appears in the side of one mountain. Pale light shines out onto the dim plain.
“That’s for me, isn’t it? I’m going to Hell.”
“Don’t feel so bad. It beats Fresno.”
Hobaica drags his arm over his forehead, wiping away the blood.
“I’m a fool.”
“You bet on the wrong horse, yeah. But you’re not the first one, so don’t beat yourself up.”
I sort of feel bad for the sucker. I mean, his life has been a joke from day one. But Hobaica’s current attitude isn’t a bad way to enter Hell. There’s not much the Hellions can do to him that he isn’t already doing.
He says, “What do I do now?”
“You can stay where you are for the rest of eternity, which, the way things are going, might not be that long. Or you can go inside.”
“To Hell.”
“Yes.”
“So, I can be somewhere awful or nowhere at all.”
“It’s a lousy choice, I know.”
He looks at me. His clothes are speckled with his blood. He looks a little like what he looked like back in the meat locker. It’s pathetic.
“Which would you choose?” he says.
“I didn’t get to make a choice when I went. But if I were you, I’d choose to be someplace. All they can do in Hell is hurt you. Out here with nothing but yourself to talk to, you’re going to destroy your mind. Being alone is worse than being somewhere bad.”
He nods. Even manages the faintest smile in human history.
“Thank you,” he says, and starts for the mountains.
“Vaya con Dios.”
He stops.
“Is that a joke?”
“Yeah. Not one of my best.”
“A bad joke isn’t much of a send-off before an eternity in Hell.”
“I could tell you the one about the one-eyed priest and the bowlegged nun.”
“I’ll be going now.”
He walks to the mountain and goes into the tunnel without looking back. It closes behind him. Alone on the alkali plain, I sit down with my legs crossed. I wipe the blood off my face with my hand and the alkali burns the cut in my forehead. The drunken feeling comes over me again. My shoulders sag. My head falls forward and my mouth opens. Something light drifts out and settles on my leg.
I wake up in the circle across from the severed head. There’s a puddle underneath it where it’s starting to defrost. Candy takes my arm and helps me up. I run my fingers over my forehead. No blood. Score one for the bag of bones. I didn’t have to bleed in real life after all.
I put Hobaica’s head back in the cooler and hand it to Wells.
“I’m done with this. It’s your problem now.”
He sets it on the floor. Goes to a sink and washes his hands.
“Did it work? Did you see anything?”
“Some bad dental work. And fire. And bodies being ripped apart. The meat locker where I found ice-chest man was feng-shuied with body parts.”
“You think the man cut up the bodies?” says the Shonin.
“Him and his friends, yeah. My guess is those meat piñatas were volunteers. More Angra zealots.”
“They wanted to be cut up like meat?” says Candy.
I nod.
“Yeah, but they didn’t see it that way. The feeling I got from Hobaica—that’s your dead man—is that he and his pals wanted to be hacked up like those bodies. They thought if they sacrificed themselves right they’d be reborn as bouncing baby Angras.”
The Shonin laughs at that.
“They’re even dumber than you.”
“Did he actually tell you he cut up those bodies?” says Wells.
“I wasn’t taking a deposition. These are all just impressions I got from a shell-shocked dead man on his way to Hell.”
“Is that all?”
“Some of the body parts clumped together and made new bodies. There were caves they might have drifted into. Everything was on fire.”
“It sounds like the realm of the Flayed Heart,” says Shonin.
“It was.”
“Zhuyigdanatha likes underground places,” says Shonin to Wells. “If there’s a larger Angra group, you might find them there.”
Wells shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
“What caves are we talking about? Carlsbad Caverns? A salt mine in Louisiana? Lascaux?”
The Shonin pours out the muck he gave me. Puts water and green tea into the pot and places it back on the burner.
“These were California boys, so it will be a California cave that connects, at least on a spirit level, with the Flayed Heart’s dwelling place.”
I start to say something, but don’t. I know some caves nearby, but if the Vigil doesn’t know about them I’m not going to tell them yet. I need to check with someone first.
Candy is slumped on a metal stool on the other of the room, away from everyone. She’s pale and fidgety. I go over to her.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine,” she says. “Just let me sit here.”
“I can take you home if you want.”
“I’m fine. Okay?”
I nod.
“Okay.”
“Stark,” says Wells. “You know lowlifes. Any of your pixie friends like to spend their time underground?”
“What makes you think the Sub Rosa or Lurkers have anything to do with this? Angra worshipers are mostly lily-white civilians.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
I look at the Shonin.
“You want to know about underground dwellers? Why don’t you ask the jabber over there?”
Jabbers are ghosts so scared of the afterlife that they won’t even leave their dead bodies. They claw their way through the soil under the city, dried-out bones living in dirt.
“Don’t you dare talk about Ishiro Shonin that way. This is a holy man. Jabbers are cowards. What this man did took years of dedicated training and preparation. Successful self-mummification is incredibly rare.”
I fish around in my coat pocket for a pack of Maledictions. I find them but they’re soggy with rainwater. I crumple up the pack and throw it in a wastebasket.
I look at the Shonin.
“You’re what successful looks like? I’ve met Buddhist monks before. None of them looked like Johann Schmidt’s foreskin.”
“It took a thousand days to purify my body and mind before I could inter myself, preparing to come back when the world needed me. Of course,” he says, looking around, “I didn’t think I was coming back to a world of gaijin, urban yôkai, and whatever it is you are.”
“Angels call me Abomination, but looking at you, I don’t feel so bad about it.”
“What’s ‘urban yôkai’?” says Candy. Her voice is shaky.
“He means Lurkers. Don’t you, muertita?”
The Shonin says, “I knew, for instance, respectable tengu back home. You Los Angeles people—humans, and monsters—you are lost beings.”
“Speaking for all the yôkai in L.A., go fuck yourself,” says Candy.
“Watch the profanity,” says Wells.
I go over to him.
“Exactly what is Mr. Bones doing here?”
“He was a yamabushi back in Japan. A lone mountain monk in Sennizawa. They called them Swamp Wizards. He has a deep background in the mystical arts. He’s going to figure out how to make the Qomrama Om Ya work.”
“I’m supposed to be lab partners with this guy?”
The Vigil has the 8 Ball locked up in a secure clean room all by itself, suspended in a magnetic field. It floats in the air and changes shape as you walk around it.
“Not supposed to,” says Wells. “You are. It’s done and settled. He’ll figure out the Qomrama and you’ll use it.”
“Why don’t you clue me in on these things from time to time so I know what to expect?”
Wells pushes the cooler against the wall with the toe of his highly polished shoe.